One of the most important skills of a true leader is the ability to create strong and effective teams. The reason for this is simple and can be summed up in the well known acronym: TEAM – Together Each Achieves More. What this means is that there is a synergy that happens when a true team performs.
I like to think of this as the difference between arithmetic and geometry. People who work together in groups are arithmetic. If there are five people in the group, then the combined productivity is five units – if you are lucky and they all pull their weight. But with a team of five people you have geometric power: it’s not 1+1+1+1+1=5, but 1x2x3x4x5=120 units! As history demonstrates, with twelve people in a real team – and with condition One met: see below – it’s possible to conquer the world!!
Of course, those who are in successful relationships – typically but not exclusively marriage – will know that two people who bond together in love and work together to support each other are also likely to produce extraordinary results in their lives together. Then add children as part of the team and – wow!
There are several aspects to successful teamwork, which includes understanding motivational profiles, and also team skill contributions. But overarching these personal and operational issues, there are four simple things, or conditions that need to be addressed.
Condition One: the team has to have a clear remit, or mission. It is effectively what in military terms is called the Principle of the Objective. What are we trying to do? When I referred to Twelve people conquering the world I had in mind the Twelve disciples of Jesus: whatever else may or may not be true about the story, one thing is certain: twelve people shared an astonishingly clear mission – to spread the message, the gospel, and enable all peoples across the world to hear and respond to it. The results of that are with us today. Thus, if we are leading a team the question we should be asking again and again is: is the mission clear? And we might add, what we are about to attempt needs to be clear, and that is helped by knowing WHY.
Condition Two: interdependency – the understanding that each person's gifts and abilities are needed to achieve the objective. The corollary of this is that it is entirely possible to have redundant team members – their membership of the team is not essential to the outcome. This is bad. Public sectors generally are full of this bloat. Have you checked recently the relevance of your team members to achieving the objective? Too many, or too few, or just about right?
Condition Three: there needs to be a belief that working as a team actually does produce better results than allowing individuality free rein. This is a big belief that must never be taken for granted. On our training courses we like to experientially demonstrate this. It is far too easy to imagine that believing is the same as thinking; it is not. Believing always has a feeling component, and too much team development is arid and intellectual – in short, the sort of thing you learn to do from a book. Developing strong beliefs counters this.
Finally, Condition Four: successful teams are accountable; this is really part of the remit. Great teams understand they are players in the bigger picture; the person who has been in a great team is always aware of that – that something bigger than them is being achieved, which is why it feels so great. Who are your teams accountable to? It is too easy for groups to become self-perpetuating fiefdoms.
If you can review your own team and tick all four Conditions as met, then chances are, you are performing at a high level, and leading extremely well. Let’s hope so!
The Mapping Motivation Series 