Interesting, How Teams Work!

Teams are collective wholes.  There is no “I” in team.  At Park Plaza/Stapley Center Great American Title we’re a  living demonstration of a real squad!

WOW! July was a hectic month for us.  

In order to really understand the meaning behind my above statement you really need to understand what we prepared for. We prepared for vacations!

Park Plaza had two Escrow Officers on vacation July 9th through July 20th. Stapley had staff out from July 1st through July 10th and I was in Alaska July 2nd to July 17th. Beginning July 31st we have our second group leaving on vacation. Meaning, that for most of the month of August, we’re short staffed every day. That is our back story.  

Yes, we knew people were going to be away and we worked long and hard to keep our reputation of delivering on time, every time.

Interesting, as I recently read an article by:  Jonathan Farrington  the CEO of Top Sales Associates and Chairman of The Sales Corporation -  www.jonathanfarrington.com

Mr. Farrington said: “The principle of working together with your team should underpin how you operate. Managing people doesn't just mean acting as overseer, to see that they get their work done satisfactorily. It means involving people throughout the team in a creative role, to ensure that together you are all able to succeed.”  

So involving people in the whole process is how we get things done. We work together.  

However, it’s hard to prepare for the unexpected, and the unexpected is what happened on Monday. We had out of the blue illnesses and accidents!  As our doors opened one of our support staff simply needed to go home, she was too sick to stay. Really it was not a big deal after all. For the first time this month we were all here---

Then it happened. Another staff member needed to leave due to a medical emergency, and another associate had a scheduled doctor appointment. So we quickly went from a full staff to 80% capacity---now  we might be in trouble if you considered what we needed to balance.  

There were buyers, sellers, lenders, processors, underwriters, funders, closing departments, real estate agents, transaction coordinators, Real Estate Brokers…packages to get signed, files to send down for recording, correspondence to complete, parcels for delivery…the list goes on and on.

As I have said in the past, “our job  is to simply be the catcher - we are a combination of a psychiatrist, mind reader, attorney, and an inadvertent “Dear Abby”, a marriage counselor, messenger, graphologist, and peacemaker - we don’t make any of the decisions.”

So here’s what happened: we all simply accepted the day as a “wonderful learning opportunity”. Together we worked as one collective whole.  Kind of like the Carolyn-ism,  “This is what we do, not who we are”.  

Thank you, Lexi, Barbara, Bernadette, Carrie, Corina, Erika, Karen, Karla,  Jane, Marissa, Leslie, Marc, Monica,  and  MJ.  

You guys ROCK and you’re great to work with!!!