It seems like I have a little trend of leadership posts going on. This one goes along the lines of my previous post where I talked about Surpassing Expectations. The next leadership concept that I want to talk about comes from Brad Feld and he calls it Negative Maintenance.
Here’s how Brad describes it from his perspective:
There are days that I’m high maintenance. Everyone is. But if you subscribe to my “give before you get”, or #givefirst, philosophy, you are constantly contributing more than you are consuming. I’ve talked about this often in the context of Startup Communities, but I haven’t really had the right words for this in the context of leadership, management, and employees in a fast growing company.
I think that this description applies just as well to healthcare organizations. We all know the Hospital CIO who takes more than he gives. The hospital CIO that makes a project 10 times harder than it needs to be with the exact same (or sometimes worse) results. Hopefully you’ve also known leadership that makes your life easier. They remove roadblocks. They clearly articulate the path forward. They make the work easier as opposed to harder.
The same applies to anyone on a project team. There are those people on a team that are high maintenance, no maintenance, and negative maintenance. The highest performing teams are those that have a team full of negative maintenance people.
What kind of team member are you?