In business, terms are tossed around all the time that seem very similar but have very different impacts on the community and culture you want to encourage. By knowing when to use each one, and what makes them different you can encourage retention, engagement and peek performance on your team and within your company. Let’s unpack a few…
Accommodate vs. Adapt
In teams, we often struggle to meet everyone’s needs. That’s normal, and the struggle means you recognize there are needs to be met; great first step! The second step is determining how to effectively support those needs.
Consider this scenario: someone on your team tells you that they’re struggling with your communication style; they’re a straight shooter and they find you a bit too go-with-the-flow. They ask for more structured objectives and a roadmap that reaches far into the future. Having listened to their concerns, you have two options:
1) Accommodate their needs: you carve out time in your schedule to build a roadmap for each quarter knowing full-well that it will probably shift down the line and you’ll have to re-do it. Next, you start telling them things straight, no embellishments or niceties, does it feel natural? No, but it’s what they want, right?
2) Adapt your style: you ask them to develop their own roadmap and plan to meet and review it, encouraging them to take that initiative and agreeing to hold them accountable to it. Then, you shorten your 1:1 meeting times, knowing that if you have less time, you’ll get straight to the point faster.
While both options are viable, adapting is significantly more sustainable. It’s not rocket-science, it’s simply understanding the need and getting creative with your approach.
When you accommodate, you change yourself for someone else, but what happens when 3 more team members come with radically different needs? This is how you develop multiple personalities, and that’s not helpful for any team. When you adapt, you keep your core approach and implement new processes that naturally create a mutually beneficial environment. In other words, you keep doing-you in a way that resonates with them.
Consistency vs. Fairness
Consistency is approaching every situation with the same guidelines, fairness is knowing when to adjust those guidelines. Both are useful if they’re understood independently and used at the right moment. So when do you use what?
Consistency is great for the day-to-day. It manages expectations and enables your team to act autonomously and in alignment. That being said, consistency taken too far becomes a dictatorship, which most companies like to avoid.
To balance out consistency, you need to be fair, but be consistent so that you CAN be fair.
Fairness is understanding the human condition. It involves recognizing that sometimes the guidelines you’ve set-up might not work for certain situations, and determining what adjustments are needed for those one-off cases. When you’re consistent, your team knows that they have to request days off 2 weeks in advance. When you’re fair, you wave that period when a team-member’s partner surprises them with a long-weekend in Paris.
Leadership vs. Management
Let’s start by stating the facts: the best managers are also leaders, but not all great leaders manage people. When you’re a leader, you’re comfortable rolling your sleeves up, you lean into feedback and you take pride in the work that you do. Leaders inspire people without ever opening their mouth, it’s based on actions and mindset, how you approach a crisis or step-up when help is needed.
When it comes to management, there’s a tendency to try and inspire with words, set-up structures that reduce crises and provide everyone with roles that meet the needs of the team. This works well, until it doesn’t. Fires in business are like rain clouds in England, inevitable, unavoidable and easily managed with the right tools. So, be a manager, set-up the structures, put the right people in the proper seats and give your fancy speeches. But, also be a leader! Be the first one to grab the hose when the fire erupts, share your concerns but don’t be overcome by them and ask for the feedback when it’s all over.
..be a manager, set-up the structures, put the right people in the proper seats and give your fancy speeches. But, also be a leader!
There are many more terms like these that regularly lead to mis-executed strategies, burnt-out managers and frustrated teams if they aren’t understood and used at the right moment. Here’s a pro-tip: take 15 minutes and come up with your own list. Get humble, dig deep and ask yourself these questions:
How do I define this word?
Have I misused this word?
How do I want to use it moving forward?
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