Team Building – What we can learn from Margaret Thatcher

You do not get a good team, You built one

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.

She was from a lower middle class and her father was a grocery store owner. She came into politics in difficult times and gradually she became the 1st female prime minister ever from Europe. Those were some difficult times, England went to an undeclared war with Argentina over Falklands and won that war.

Irish Republican Army was another big threat for UK and she has to deal with it. An attempt was made on her life and she barely escaped it but finally IRA issue was resolved. She became prime minister three times and was in power longer than any one in UK history. She was also the first female opposition leader. She is considered one of most successful politician and prime minister of England history.

It was a common perception that she had average intelligence, her memory was not great, her decision power was weak and she did not had charismatic personality but she turns out to be a very successful politician and prime minister and she set many trends in England’s political landscape. Some people claimed that she was just lucky and that was discussed once on a TV show.

The TV host asked her “I think you got good advisors and ministers due to your luck and these advisors and their good suggestions made you the iron lady“?

Margaret Thatcher replied “Yes, your analysis is 100 percent correct. If I did not had good advisors and ministers, I would not have succeeded but the question is, who found these advisors? who selected them? and who empower them and gave them freedom to do their job?”

“Off course it was you madam prime minster” host replied. Thatcher smiled and said “You do not get a good team but you have to search for it and I found these brilliant people and that was my success. A Leader has only one job and that is to build a good team and if a leader is successful in building that team then the rest is easy and if he/she is unable to do that then it doesn’t matter how smart, honest or visionary he is, he will fail.”

The Awakening

If you think about it, that’s it, a very simple but powerful key to success and which is very consistent with the ground realities. Some time people disagree with it and they normally argue that if the leader is great, visionary and super smart then it doesn’t matter much if he has smart people working for him or not, he can fight all the battles alone with very less dependency on his team. Well, I am not going to argue about it and would like to hear what you think about this.

We know from history that even if the team leader is not a very smart person, may be even incompetent, but if he is able to put together a good team then they are most likely to succeed. A good Team always have people who are experienced, intelligent and thinker. Imagine the situation where team-leader is not experienced and the people around him are just like him, you can imagine the end result.

Simple steps towards building a great team

Its difficult to maintain a perception of fairness when you are challenging the long standing ideas and ideologies. People are naturally resistant to change and you might have few in your team who are set in their certain ways and they might be expert in their field. As a team leader, your only job is to help them guide their strength towards your project goals, do not try to change them by bringing in some consultant with hours long boring sessions, that not gonna work. But empower them, keep an eye on project progress but give your team freedom to make choices and you will find they will naturally make the choices which are geared towards project’s success. It might not happen overnight but you will see better results very soon. Of course freedom of choice doesn’t mean that the decisions shall not be discussed, keep an open mind and welcome their ideas and let them know that their are being heard.

Summary

How good is your team is going to decide the future of your project. You should try to build a great team and if you have already one then do not take them for granted. Work with people and help them help you in project’s success. Till Next Time.

Reference

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War