I was sitting in a jazz bar the other day, waiting for the band to come onto stage. The lights dimmed, the MC made his introductions and the band emerged – four men and one woman.
Although I consider myself to be pretty good on equality and diversity issues, I initially assumed that the woman was the vocalist – until she walked past the microphone and sat behind the drum kit.
Are you making any assumptions about your employees’ competences?
One of my clients has an administrator who has such excellent interpersonal skills that they are far better at motivating people to close out non-conformities than the compliance manager is.
At another client’s, one of the engineers is a talented pen and ink artist – an ideal skill for enlivening internal communications.
Do any of your colleagues have hidden talents? Could someone unexpected turn out to be an ideal member of your environmental management team?