What do elephants and vampires have in common? (compliments of Jon Gordon)
What do elephants and vampires have in common?
They will both sabotage your team if you let them.
Elephants in the room are the issues that you have not addressed, and they will stomp on your morale and teamwork if you don’t address them.
Energy Vampires are the people that suck all the positivity out of your culture, and they drain your time, team and energy.
Too often leaders ignore the elephants in the room and energy vampires on the team and as a result the issues, problems, and negativity only get worse.
Team members often choose negative conversation with another team member that isn't involved - not only is this the epitome of gossip, but we become part of the problem (and just might be an energy vampire) when we avoid the elephant.
The key is to identify your elephants and discuss them and addressing your energy vampires.
Both require you to have difficult but necessary conversations!
And here in lies another challenge. Too often we avoid difficult conversations and that’s why we don’t deal with the elephants or vampires.
We avoid conversations and conflict that make us feel uncomfortable. We also avoid them because we don’t know how to adequately have these conversations.
Jon Gordon and Amy P. Kelly wrote Difficult Conversations Don’t Have to be Difficult. Check out the STAR3 Model for difficult conversations - this guidance will make your conversations easier and your team whole lot better.
Yeah, I get it. You'll likely feel super awkward at first when implementing the STAR3 Model. Through the research and preparation by Gordon and Kelly, they actually found that the model gives us confidence to move through the fear, embrace the discomfort, and grow in the process.
After all, discomfort leads to growth if we step out in faith, utilize smart strategies, and take action - So you don’t have to get the garlic and wooden stakes to take care of your vampires and there’s no need to harm elephants. We love them!
