Leader = Linking Pin: 3 skills for leaders & 3 tips to make it a team value

by Sep 28, 2016Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS, Keynote topic, Leadership, Performance Management, Professional Development

Leadership is . . . ensuring that every significant decision gets communicated to your team so they always know what, why, and who.  It is your job, as the leader, to make sure you serve as the linking pin for your leadership team and for your own team.  Rensis Likert came up with the concept several decades ago, and here is what it looks like:linking-pinThe theory is that any team you join puts you in a position to ensure that connections are made to other teams.  Linking pins hold things together, and coordinate critical work, even under extreme stress.

3 skills all Linking Pins possess (or develop):

  1. Ownership = See this role as a duty and are excited about the work and the responsibility.
  2. Make time = Create time in meetings to report, gather questions, debate, and leave with actions designed to keep other teams in sync.
  3. Take notes = Remember things and make sure they never get lost.  NEVER!

When miscommunication happens Linking Pins take it personally.  Then they fix it.

3 things teams can do to make Linking Pin a team value (EOS users: this is why you do things):

  1. Meet weekly.  Always!  (And layer meetings so info gets moved up and down through Linking Pins.)
  2. Keep all critical info in shared documents/spaces.  (Nobody has to look or ask for critical info – it is accessible and easy to find.)
  3. Have communication norms.  (Return calls/emails in 2 hours, texts in 30 minutes.)
  4. Share calendars.  (Make it easy to create time to share and make critical decisions.)

Are you a linking pin?  Do you ask your team to be linking pins?

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