The 15 Skills of Leadership and Management: Knowing and Using the Resources of the Group

This skill simply requires the leader to understand that each group member brings with them a unique set of knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal experiences that could prove useful to the success of the group at any time.  These are called the group’s internal resources.  Beyond these are the group’s external resources.  They are anything and everything the group can obtain to help them complete their tasks.  Examples include: time, money, tools, materials, equipment, vehicles, office supplies, literature, manuals, people outside the group, additional training or skills, and electronic devices.  The leader must learn to recognize each individual’s abilities quickly and assign tasks that match those abilities.  By doing this, he will develop an efficient and successful group.

My crew started with relatively similar skills and knowledge.  Everyone had received the same training class and several had previous working experience at the park.  While their general experiences were similar, their individual experiences were different in certain ways.  For example, every crew member at one time or another has had to tell a guest that their child is too small to go on a ride.  If the guest yelled and screamed at the employee, they would learn to resent the guests and just be mean to all of them.  Also, the employee might try to avoid being yelled at again by just letting short kids on or telling them to put on an extra pair of shoes to make them taller.  If the guest politely accepted the rule and walked away, the employee would think that the guests were courteous and reasonable, and he would continue to enforce the rule without reservation until he encountered a different experience.

Besides personal experience, I don’t recall any of my crew members being particularly skilled at anything; on the other hand, the job truly didn’t require them to be, nor did it allow them to show any particular skills.

Our external resources included: our supervisors, other crews, the ride, the maintenance department, cleaning supplies, forms, radios, phones, reference sheets, and training manuals.  I also strongly relied on the counsel of managers I knew in other organizations and my leadership manuals from pervious seminars.

One final word to the leader; mastering these skills will take time and some skills will take longer to learn than others.  Do not become discouraged by your abilities or limitations.  No leader is perfect and every leader strives to be better at his job every day.  As the leader, you have a unique gift of knowledge and charisma that will bring people to you and unite them to work towards a common goal.  The world will always need great leaders; do not be afraid to accept the challenge.  The more experience you encounter, the better you will be at using these skills, and the stronger you will become as a leader.