It is nice to exercise freedoms and feelings at work as well as off work. The problem is that everybody feels that way, and since the office brings people together, they can easily get in each other’s way.

When there are seven, 70, or 700 in the staff or in a building, reality dictates that they work together as some form of a team, with a single purpose and spirit. In this situation unbridled individualism can really muddy the water or ruffle the feathers.

Hence, the number one requirement for work efficiency and enjoyment: compatibility. Working with co-workers means magnanimity, not just proximity.

The team approach

No matter how good you are at our job, you often need help around the office, and finding an ally is a smart move towards simplifying work. It can be someone who works with you, for you, or even just around you – someone you can call on when a task is better done by two.

Someone who can be trusted to pass on a message in your absence, cover for you, suggest you not send that angry letter, make a joke when you take yourself too seriously.

When you head a team, the ideal assistants are the ones you can give an assignment to and just let hem run it – research things as necessary, and then carry through. To achieve this:

• Make them part of the process of decision-making.
• Take them to meetings with you.
• Fill them in on the whole and they will do their part better.
• Give them specific goals but let them tell you how they are going to get there.
• Do not do all the interesting work yourself and leave all the boring, brainless stuff for them.
• Give them things that challenge their abilities and knowledge; let them become team experts in some areas.
• Do not let yourself get so busy that you fail to communicate with them regularly (and that does not mean once every other week as you are rushing out the door).

If you accomplish a task early, help your team members out. When someone is stuck with a problem, try to help find the solution. Such efforts get reciprocated.

Never make a job indispensable, it is too much pressure for any one person. Arrange things do everyone has relief.

Kind coaxing, or a cuff on the side of the head? The other part of the team has not gotten its share of something done, and it is undermining your efforts. The options:

1. Bad: Ask them again and beg and whine for it.
2. Worse: Report them to the boss – you have just made new enemies.
3. Worst: Shame them in front of everyone – you have just made new eternal enemies.
4. Marginally better: Do it for them – generally the quickest and simplest solution, but a bad precedent.
5. Best: Diplomacy. Offer to help them do it and schedule time to do so.

Unreliability usually is not a lack of skill or ability, but of commitment. It can be corrected by nailing down expectations (the job or assignment, its time, the place, the requirements) and then asking just three questions of the person to whom it has been assigned.

• Do you really want to do it?
• Do you have full instructions for it?
• Will you do it?

If the answer to all of the above is yes, wait a while, and ask one question more: Did you do it? If the answer is no, you do not need their “help.”

Giving and getting clear instructions

Let’s say you are willing, ambitious person, arriving fresh and inexperienced on a ranch, and the foreman says simply, “Go get the cows.” That is clear objective but not clear instruction. Whether you are giving instructions or asking for them, strive for clarity:

• Where are the cows?
• Do we want them dead or alive?
• Shall I use the pinto or shank’s mare?
• What’s our brand?
• How many cows are there? What breed?
• Both cows and calves?
• Where should they be corralled? Where do you want them after I get them?

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