The boundary of “My team”

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When someone says, “My team”, what does it mean to you? In the first year as a GM, I had a great opportunity to broaden my perspective. Allow me to share what I learned and my experiences.

 

I am currently responsible for sales, operation, customer support, and technical support team with the P&L responsibility in a few countries in Southeast Asia. When I joined the current company, I previously never had management experience or P&L responsibilities. It was a drastic change because I was just a regional marketing manager in another organization. Suddenly, I have managers reporting to me and became responsible for the expanded function. Since then, I have committed to providing career development opportunities, guidance, and coaching to reporting members.

 

One day I realized my attitude was different towards the members who report to me and those who don’t. As a newbie GM, I thought it was natural to treat them differently because those who don’t report to me are not “my team”. OK. I must admit that the current attitude may still be somewhat different. However, one insightful message from a leadership coach significantly changed my view and motivated me to provide similar coaching and feedback to members who don’t report to me.

 

The advice from the coach was, if I continue to focus on receiving output from non-reporting members, then there will be boundaries and limitations to how far I could nurture my leadership skills. If we take a step back, my goal is to provide the best products and services to my customers - while achieving the financial targets. In that context, everyone including those who report to me, those who don’t, and even people outside the company - should be considered as “my team”. This means I should provide a similar level of coaching and career development opportunities to non-reporting members. If they all work towards the same goal. Grow and develop their skills - they will ultimately benefit from achieving the goal. Furthermore, if we can manage non-reporting members, it will show signs of being capable of doing what the manager is already doing.


Where do you draw the line of "My Team"?

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