Peacocks in Cages

Over the past few years, our team at HUG has been asked repeatedly to chime in on teambuilding and how to recruit and retain talent. It seems like this subject is coming up more now than ever before. Putting together an awesome team and creating a culture of success around them is a bit of an art form. There are numerous books on the subject, however the reality is that not a lot of textbook knowledge can show you how to make the math 1+1=5. You as the leader have to go DO IT and see what works and what doesn’t.

The start to the new football season has some of this element tied to it. Especially for young quarterbacks in the NFL. Sports talk shows ramble on about which quarterbacks are “busts” and which ones have the chance to make it big. Of course most of the pontificators in the media never played the position so they are often times guessing what they think will happen. Again, putting a great team together is more art than science, and the quarterbacks that don’t get the right situation around them are likely to fail.

Recently we were watching one of our favorite television shows and one of the primary actors used a saying I hadn’t heard before. He said, “Even peacocks get put in cages sometimes.” He was referring to one of the show’s characters that was a highly functioning genius that was put into a really bad situation. This situation caused some chaos that led to some pretty big mistakes. However, when that peacock was released from the “cage” and put into the right situation, they flourished.

Which leads us to this week’s big idea…..

When searching for talent, don’t just look for the high performers that you can readily see are great at what they do. Look for that peacock that may be in the wrong situation and free them from their cage. Surround them with a winning culture and watch them thrive.

Not every team is made up of all #1 draft picks. Sure you need some of those. You also need some more affordable players to round out your roster. Players that have a high ceiling that potentially nobody else can see but you.

Look for the peacocks, empower them, and let them spread their wings.