response 270 of 480:

Dec 13 23:38 UTC 2006

My question to you is:  what have you done that makes other staff members look
good?

Nothing in your statement gives any information about your people skills. 
In order to help build a new culture within staff, everyone on staff is going
to have to cultivate their people skills, and their ability to demonstrate
their EQ.  "Not play political games" often translates into "not consider
other people's values when making decisions".  

"I speak THE truth" is an impossible statement.  "I speak MY truth clearly"
is possible.  Strength and talent are not sufficient to make you a good
addition to a team.  In fact, teams that work well together don't need strong
geniuses as members in order to be successful.  

There is a book out, "The Wisdom of Crowds".  Much of the research in that
book demonstrates that organizations that spend time and money searching for
the planet-level expert have worse outcomes than those which put a good team
on the problem.  

My experience with over 175 engineering teams, selected from the University
of Michigan engineering school, confirms that "wildflowers" need to learn how
to value EVERYONE's contribution to the solution, not just their own.  Hence
the question: What have you done that makes other team members look good?

Many engineers hold a belief system that they must be heros and work alone
to solve problems in order to be respected.  Cred is not earned that way. 
Another good book is "How To Be a Star Engineer" which is longitudinal
research done at Bell Labs.  The people who were most respected as engineers
were not the Lone Rangers.  

I'm hoping that the Grex staff can begin to incorporate some of this new
information into the way they solve problems.