Are you the team’s salt?

If you’ve ever cooked, then you know that salt is your best friend.  

It brings out the flavor in the dish. You can add salt to correct a dish that is both bitter and sweet. You can almost never add too much salt to a dish (unless of course you actually throw the entire box into your food).

If you want something that truly tastes amazing, then you need to add some salt. It avoids food from tasting too bland. Bland is terrible for food.

But when you’re in today’s work environment, bland is precisely what you get.

The modern workplace tries to encourage diversity. But the people in charge, want diversity in skin color. Or diversity in gender. Not diversity in thought.

And so you get a team that thinks similarly. There is even a name for it: Groupthink. The team is essentially bland; like food without salt. There’s no flavor to the team.

Now the real question is: do you act as salt and lift the team? Do you enhance the team by supporting them when they need help? With your experiences, do you enhance the team with different viewpoints? In other words…

Are you the team’s salt?