Why You Welcome New Team Members vs. Haze Them | #PeopleSkills
by Kate Nasser | 2 Comments »
Do you welcome new team members to the workplace? Or do you believe they must earn the right to feel welcome? This may sound like a strange question. Yet, very often existing team members don’t welcome new team members. Too bad! Existing team members and the organization are wasting the benefits that the welcome delivers.
In contrast, high performing teams know the value of welcoming — not hazing — new team members. The famed New York City Rockettes are one such high powered team! When asked if they haze new Rockettes, they replied, “Are you crazy? This show demands absolute precision and teamwork. There’s no room for veterans to make new members feel lousy.”
Welcome New Team Members – Never Haze Them. Image by Bob Jagendorf via Flickr.
Welcome New Team Members: Don’t Haze Them!
Benefits:
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Faster assimilation, learning, and performance
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Great morale, maximum commitment, and contribution from mutual respect
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Faster trust building – the key to high performance teamwork
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Tighter teamwork to conquer any challenge together
Abandon These Old Team Building Myths:
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Treating people badly makes them work harder. No!
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Disrespecting people makes them respect you more. No!
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Struggle builds individual strength and tighter teams. Absurd. Struggling against each other breaks teams apart. Struggling together — as one — builds tighter teams. Big difference.
Don’t haze team members to see if they measure up. Welcome them and see the results! Team performance is more than individuals performing together. Respect, trust, and support is the magical difference.
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
11 Behaviors & Beliefs to Create Teamwork & Common Ground
5 Essentials to Build Remarkable Teams
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Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
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I’ve worked places where people made me feel welcome and others where they did not. In one case, I was brought in as a senior leader and another leader invited me out to lunch. I thought it was a great way to get to know her and start a good relationship. Instead, she told me that she didn’t think my position was needed, she didn’t want me speaking to her team, and to stop asking questions about the culture. I didn’t last long.
Why not welcome people to our orgs? What could possibly be a good reason to make their assimilation hard? Crazy.
Will share, Kate!
Alli
Thank you for sharing THIS story Alli. It is all too common. So you have clearly identified one reason people don’t welcome new team members — power grabbing hunger and empire building. WOW.
That leader missed out on all the potential greatness that the two of you could have created together.
Kate