Catching the "A"-Team

"I am a geek, I am friendly, I am a designer, I am strict, I am a business guy..Woow, I should be in the company's "A"-team!!"

If you really think that a company can have different classes of teams, then you are totally wrong. We can prove this by contradiction :)
Let's assume that a client calls for your service; a team will be assigned to provide the client for his needs. If he is lucky, he will get the "A"-team and get what he really expected; otherwise, of course he will be unlucky. When you claim that your company possesses a "A"-team, the later unlucky client will smash your head "Where the hell was that team when my project was under construction?".
On average, your company has not an "A"-team, customers will certainly turnover.

So, we agree that the dilemma is not individual; it's a team work by the end.

Now, you can start to ask yourself about your chances to catch the world's "A"-team.

6 Great Factors to catch it

1-Possessing Positive Attraction:

We are all influenced by the "Law of Attraction". Everyone has his own impact on his environment. You should increase your positive impact. Are you trying to deal positively with events which you observe around you? Or you just complain your bad luck and the lack of resources?

You should also have the ability to reject negative thoughts from people surrounding you and substitute it by your own positive ones. Know that what anyone or any source offers you; it is only one view, one description or interpretation of an event or truth. It is only one perspective of an interpretation gained from other third parties who in turn focuses on the topic and did not experience the subject first hand.

Positive attraction will help you more for the team spirit, you will think for the best of the team on the long run. your colleagues will be inspired by your attraction. You will be a good team player who has a positive effect on his environment.
the Secret is a very good movie indicating the effect of positive attitude on your life.

2-Building Trusts

Why trust is important?
" If you don't have trust, people won’t cooperate, won’t be committed, and won’t know where they stand.”
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about an “emotional bank account”which is the reserves of trust that we build up in our relationships with people. The bank account becomes full when there is a lot of trust between people. You feel safe, committed, and comfortable with the other person. Trust is what makes us feel understood. It’s what makes work groups get along. It’s what makes us believe in people, organizations, and causes. Trust is the thing that makes us commit and stay committed, despite problems and misunderstandings.

Gaining trust:
Before searching for trust you must trust yourself.

• Be reliable and available. Try always to be available when the client wants to talk directly to the people working on his project whenever he wants. Don't let him feel that he has to send 100 emails and 100 phone calls to make you appear online.
• Keep your promises and follow through with commitments
• Forgive and move on
• Don't be threatened by people who are different from you
• Tell the truth
• Communicate openly and honestly

Be aware that Trust is bidirectional relation. You should evaluate how much trusting you are in order to make a successful trust construction.

Check plenty of resources about building trusts here.

3-Self Motivated.

Why anybody needs self-motivation?

Because if you want to improve your self esteem or improve yourself in any way at all you first need the inner desire and will to do it. Of course, anybody may be motivated by external factors, others may encourage you to start something new or begin moving in a positive direction.

But you cannot always rely on others to encourage you. To take up a new activity, hobby or challenge. The self-motivation is the way to "Initiative", without motivation you can't take any initiative on any level.

Increase your self-motivation

• Focus on what you really enjoy doing. Think about giving it priority to start doing what you love doing.
• Always keep a list of things you'd like to improve on and how you're going to do it.
• from time to time, try to totally forget all the negatives you have faced and review all the success in your life.
  
• Contact positive people.
• Give your soul a break to read some good books.(NLP, How To increase your energy, Getting things done, Motivated Mind, How to Raise your Self Esteem, Self Help Stuff that Works..etc)

You can find recommended books here

4-Knowing About Business.

Client-side:
Keep in mind the budgetary and time constraints that the client faces. This will help you define the customer goals and priorities in concrete terms. Further, it will help you to deliver a robust business solution through usable deliveries.

Tools-prespective:
Constitute a cross-industry perspective of the technologies you can consider in developing. You should keep some kind of aim at the different technology trends. Your attention should be varying significantly across industries. This can be done based on continuous data entries for the "benefit Vs mainstream-adoption" (can be called "Priority Matrix") for each technology such as Web 2.0, Ajax, Grid Computing, RFID, DNA Logic, Social Network Analysis, wikis..etc

The end result should be awareness (or at least prediction) of the following regarding each technology:

• Prevalence: How prevalent is it in the current crop ventures.
  
• Essential: does this characteristic stem from expediency or is it a core part of competitive advantage, Newness, Longevity.
• Newness: Is this characteristic really new, or just rediscovered or relabeled.
• Longevity: Will this last during the next five years.
  

A characteristic can be:

• User: content, metadata, usability,
  
• Open: open SRC product, public API, open process, open source platform,
• Lightweight: Ajax, REST, Scripting Languages,
  
• decentralized: RSS/Content, Code, Development,
  
• Still Missing: Security, Transactions, Durability, Global Audience, Mobile.

5-Listening

You start a project by learning and listening. The result will be a clear plan that ensures results for you and a great experience for your customers.
Listen is another aspect to the "trust", it is an important key on the building trust journey.
You should know how much you like to involve others and seek their opinions when working on a project.

• When you are talking with someone face to face, don’t answer the phone, check e-mail, or sort the papers on your desk.
• Make time to talk one on one with your spouse or partner.
• Be a patient listener. Not everyone thinks or speaks as fast as you do.
• Avoid putting words in people's mouths.
  

6-Flexibility

Referring to the IEEE, flexibility is the ease with which a system or component can be modified for use in applications or environments other than those for which it was specifically designed. Yess that's right, imagine that you are the system or the component. So, we mainly mean your flexibility to switch between different methodologies and dealing with new concepts and technologies.

"There is nothing permanent except change"; said Heraclitus. That has been true throughout the history, but it is especially true in our exciting and ever-changing field. You should value the "Responding to change" and may be "search for it".

After evaluating yourself, do the NLP H.W to change behaviors.

First step is to stand outside the 'creative state' and think of a time when you were acting creatively according to your own standards. You should refresh everything you saw, heard and felt while reliving that experience.



After you have created 'creative' states follow these steps:

1. Stand in the state that represents 'behavior' and think of a behavior that you would like to change. Make sure that you already have a representation of the behavior in one of the three senses.
2. Move to the 'intent' state, and then ask the question, 'What is the intent, of the behavior?'. Once you get a sense of the intent for the behavior move into the 'creative state'.
3. Ask yourself 'how else can I fulfill the intent for the behavior?'. When you get plenty of alternatives behaviors you can go back to the state for 'intent'.
4. Review the alternatives and select the best three options. Step back into the state for 'behavior'.
5. Test out each of the three options one at a time by imagining using each new behaviour in the original situation. Check if there are any objections to any of the selected options. If so, step back into the state for 'intent' and repeat the entire process, until all objections are satisfied.