Give the 3 gifts of Trust in 2008

I have blogged incessantly this year regarding the successes my team has had. I have not omitted the failures, but I was extremely lucky in 2007. The failures were overshadowed by our successes—and I expect 2008 to be more of the same.

Much of this success can be attributed to Decade's commitment to Scrum and the concepts of Perpetual Teams™ , but our successes can be equally attributed to a hard-working team committed to achieving their goals.

After recently reading Patrick Lencioni's holiday retrospective on the best gift you can give employees, I realized that part of the reason my teams were committed as they were, was likely due to the gifts I gave them since I have been in this position.

Lencioni sums up those "gifts" in this way...

• First, get to know your people better than you know them today. Take an interest in what is going on in their lives and find out what their dreams and passions are, both professionally and personally. The only caveat is that you have to be genuinely interested. If you haven’t done this much before and you’re afraid that it will feel weird to start now, do it anyway. Your employees want it, need it and will thank you for it.
• Second, talk to them about how their job impacts the lives of others—customers, vendors, colleagues, even you!—in some way, large or small. Help them understand that their work matters, to someone, and that without them, others would suffer.
• Third, help them figure out how to best measure and gauge how effectively they are doing their jobs, especially in terms of the impact they have on others. Give them the ability to determine for themselves whether they are succeeding or not, and free them from depending on your subjective opinion for a sense of accomplishment or esteem.

These gifts cost little, but given sincerely, they are worth a fortune. If you are looking for team success in the coming year, I recommend that you start handing out these gifts right away.