Perspectives

Meeting after meeting, have you ever wondered how people can walk away with a different understanding of what the team goal is?  Or ever been to a training class where people walked away with a different understanding of the material presented?  It happens every day, every hour, if not every minute, and it’s called having a “perspective”.

Perspectives can be derived from a myriad of exposures (i.e. how and where we were raised, our religious beliefs, our political beliefs, and something as simple as our gender or race).  Because everyone has their own perspective, particularly in an organizational or team setting, it can either be exceptionally easy to work with others or exceptionally difficult if the members of the team do not see eye to eye.  What are others trying to get out of a meeting or a goal?  Are we all looking for the same thing?  Do we see all of the details or are we missing something?  A great example was the video of the basketball players.  The question at the beginning of the movie was to count the number of times the players in white passed the basketball.  So immediately my focus was on counting how many times they passed the basketball.  However, I missed an important detail – the dancing bear. 

When in meetings, conversations, trainings, and more, we as individuals focus on our perspectives and goals, and fail to try to even understand the needs and / or initiatives of others.  Another way to look at this is as a manager, I should seek to understand my employees’ strengths and weaknesses so that I can put them in positions where they can excel and develop.  Without this I am doing a disservice to my company as well as my team because I am not maximizing the potential of my group which in turn would potentially maximize profits for the company.