Define the need for a team. Do you actually need a team? Teams are at their best facing challenges one person alone can’t master. An effective common purpose provides a clear, compelling, motivating reason for a team. Unless your objective demands a collective response, it’s probably not worth the effort and expense of building a team.
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Make your common purpose compelling by making it personal and shared. The poster says ‘There is no I in team’ but in fact a powerful way of delivering high performance is not quashing self-interest but aligning it with the team’s interest. It is far more productive to focus on ‘the right thing for me is also the right thing for we’.
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Move hearts as well as minds. Inspire your team with a vivid picture of a better future. Connect the team’s work to an exciting, meaningful outcome and a result that’s worthwhile to them. It doesn’t have to mean anything to anyone else. It only needs to matter to your team.
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Inject a sense of urgency. Action trumps inertia when the alternative is worse. Turn your team’s attention to the peril and the price of doing nothing. Make the most of a crisis by harnessing the focusing power of urgency to propel them into purposeful action. Build momentum through early successes that demonstrate progress is possible.
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Go beyond business as usual. Shifting gears to become a higher performing team requires the energy and excitement of a real challenge. An adventure where success is not guaranteed will mobilize your team to act differently. Becoming better will not happen by doing the same things in the same way.
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Teams need a shared roadmap: a realistic appraisal of where they are, clarity on what success looks like, and a common path to that success. Asking each member to write down the team’s objectives soon reveals whether your team is on the same page – or even on the same planet.
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Agree your definition of victory. If everyone in your team shares the same specific understanding of what success looks like, when you shout ‘Go’ everyone will move in the same direction towards the same target. In sports winning and losing is usually clear-cut. The challenge for all teams is targeting the same level of clarity.
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Take a robust view of reality by taking off your rose-tinted glasses. Form a brutally honest assessment of what is working and what isn’t. Confronting the pain early enough to be able to do something about it is far better than attempting to recover from failure when it’s too late.
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Build the plan for your team together. Doing itas a team will help you get the most out of your team. You can draw on their diverse experiences, expertise and perspectives to build accuracy and robustness. In addition, involving the team engages them and fosters commitment to the purpose and plan.
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Keep focused and keep flexible. It’s like sailing: the team’s common purpose is the north star, the fixed point for navigating. To reach the destination the team needs to tack continuously to make progress. You cannot fight the winds of changing circumstances; you need to adapt and work with them.
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Constant communication of the common purpose sustains momentum over the inevitable bumps in the road. Forget mouse mats with inspirational slogans. This is all about making purpose a vibrant, continuous conversation amongst team members. Reinforce the message of common purpose and remind the team about it as often as possible.
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Team leaders go first and last. As team leader you are the architect of the team. You start with primary responsibility for all tasks of building and managing your team to deliver results. As well as going first you also remain fully, finally accountable for whether your team wins or loses. The buck stops with you.
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Leaders flex their leadership style according to circumstances. Rather than having one preferred or dominant style, you need to be able to shift the way you lead between the four core styles of leadership to suit the current situation and the individuals on your team: Controlling, Coaching, Consulting and Collaborating.
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Control. At the beginning of a team’s life or your tenure as the team leader, when you do not yet have the insight into the team’s capabilities, the right approach is to exert authority and control. It is far easier to start tighten and loosen control as needed.
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Coach. Where team members are more skilled, shift to guiding the team, giving critical advice at key moments. While coaching your whole team, remember you are first and foremost coaching people. Tailor your approach to each individual and their particular needs; find an approach that works for them.
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Consult. Have the confidence to recognize when and where you might not have the right answer. If you believe your team may know best, invite discussion and ask the right questions. You are looking to support your team and encourage them to take greater responsibility for future action.
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Collaborate. When the team is performing effectively, effective team leaders know when to get out of the way and hand over the remote control to the team. In this style of leadership, you will increasingly be collaborating as a first amongst equals in a web of mutual accountability.
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Create a team of leaders. Developing leaders across the team is developing a better team. The strongest teams are those in which more members inspire, support, challenge and hold each other accountable. Yet even in teams full of capable leaders you remain ultimately accountable. A leader’s work is never done.
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The ideal team member has a strong but not a big ego, with the confidence to flourish amid the give and take in a team. They are masters of their own role but also inspire, challenge and cajole the best from others. They act as multipliers of their teammates’ performance.
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Excellence is a habit. No team becomes better without practice. The most powerful process for teams to become better is to identify the most important areas where they need to collaborate, define a shared approach to working together and then practise it over and over until it becomes second nature.
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Ensure the team is as level as possible: to avoid unnecessary layers, deliver agile responses to changing events and allow a freer flow of information, ideas and feedback. But don’t discount the benefits of having a final authority to cut through the Gordian knots which teams can tie themselves into.
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Be flexible within a framework. Team structure will give you the platform for your team’s performance. But note Keith Richards’ view of a song: as a coathanger he can hang a different shirt on every time he plays. Structure should form the basis, not the barrier, to improvisation and teamwork.
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Control the controllables. So much in a team’s environment is beyond their control. Focus their energy on those elements they can affect, no matter how small. Being obsessive and detailed in preparation, improving tiny aspects here and there, has a cumulative impact that can add up to a winning edge.
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Focus on resources that are fit for purpose. Time, information, the right equipment and financial capital – resources are always in short supply. Prioritize, ruthlessly, the resources vital to your team’s progress. Shed any excess baggage. If in doubt, investing in the right people and their resourcefulness is the most effective way to secure the assets needed to succeed.
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Build bridges beyond the team. Reaching out to other individuals and organizations is an important source of support and resources your team may not possess. Identifying who to engage with and building productive relationships is a team task. Speaking with one voice will enable your team to maximize its influence.
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Earn trust through reliability. Team members earn trust when they deliver on their promises. That can be as simple as turning up on time. Your own ability to remain consistent and reliable under pressure and through testing times will be the biggest determinant of how much your team trusts you.
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Earn trust by showing you care and that you have your teammates’ best interests at heart. Backing them up when they need help, going the extra mile to support them and showing your appreciation for their efforts are trust-building behaviours, especially if done equally across the team rather than only with a favoured few.
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Earn trust by trusting. Trust is reciprocal: trusting your teammates is a powerful way of earning their trust. Being able to be vulnerable in front of teammates, admitting mistakes or asking for help can make it much easier for others to follow your lead and create a climate of openness.
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Earn trust by spending quality time together. We trust people we know well. Getting to know each other is a tried-and-tested route to team-building. Having fun together needs to be natural: you cannot force it, but you can create the conditions where you can relax and enjoy each other’s company.
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Neutralize fears. Fight or flight is the first instinctive response to any potential threat of loss, whether actual or perceived. When your team is set against itself and divided by internal conflict you have first to defuse fears and reassure both sides before you can begin to move forward together.
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Eyes on the prize. Clear, compelling common purpose ensures your team is committed to what really matters. Your objective should be to find a win-win-win solution, satisfying each side of the conflict and the team as a whole. Underlining common purpose ensures a focus on your shared goal and the need to work together.
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Keep things civil. The difference between a plan being branded ‘ill-conceived’ and a teammate being called ‘stupid’ is what separates teams that work from teams that don’t. Conflict about ideas are productive and conflict that is personal is destructive. Like a boxing referee, you should remind your team to keep the fight clean.
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Keep talking and, even better, keep listening. Balance how much you advocate your position with listening and inquiry, to better understand others’ perspectives. You need to actively encourage different opinions and allow them to be heard and understood, even if those opinions are uncomfortable and ones that you disagree with.
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Be fair and share. Few things divide faster than a leader who is constantly favouring a subset of the team. But while everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, you should also ensure the facts are shared. You can often settle difficult discussions more quickly by letting the data speak for itself.
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Commitment not consensus. Consensus is powerful, but getting everyone to agree can take an age to achieve. To build commitment it can help if you clearly differentiate between discussion and decisions. You are more likely to get your team to disagree yet still commit if they feel they have been heard and understood.
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Build the case for change. Your team will be driven by both hope and fear. Your common purpose should provide an inexorable pull and will motivate the team to change for the better. Drawing out the fear and loathing that resides in crisis, failures and losing to competitors can also motivate your team into action.
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Don’t play the blame game. Whenever you conduct a robust and rigorous review you need to guard against your team playing the blame game. Fear of being blamed and shamed in front of their colleagues can force team members to hide problems – untreated, these can often come back bigger and with much more damaging consequences.
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Design the future together. The most powerful source of developing and executing new ideas and approaches for improving your team is . . . your team. Involving them ensures any change is not just theoretical but practicable. Getting your team to generate ideas also increases its ownership of the changes.
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Focus on the few vital areas of collaboration. Identify areas of teamwork with the greatest potential for change and choreograph how the team will now interact, reshaping role clarity with a scalpel rather than an axe. Aim for a series of targeted improvements, the effects of which can be isolated and measured, minimizing the scope for collateral damage.
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Excellence is a habit. Weave new behaviours into the fabric of the team by recognizing them through rewards and crafting team stories that celebrate collective achievements. Over time and through repeated rehearsal and success, the shared approach will become a habit, a part of the team culture, ‘the way we do things around here’.
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THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS
Courage and choreography
‘Dialogue is crucial to any effort to find a solution to conflict.’
Gerry Adams
Good Friday, 10 April 1998, Stormont, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Just over one year after Tony Blair has come to power as British Prime Minister, he is within touching distance of a celebrated triumph: an accord between the bitterly divided factions within Northern Ireland.
To reach this point he has orchestrated a team composed of implacable enemies who, initially, will not even talk together face to face.
With the courageous help of many parties, notably Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the parties involved have inched forward, painfully and painstakingly, towards an agreement. Extract from Superteams
In 1997 newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair had a vision of peace for Northern Ireland. The odds were stacked against him. Old hands in government and the press said there was too much history, too much bitterness, too many resentments to overturn.
But Blair remained undeterred. He saw a chance for success and grasped it, never relinquishing the momentum throughout long years of negotiation. The choreography required was delicate in the extreme.
First he had to neutralize the fears of both nationalists and unionists, and be seen to favour neither side. Then the participants had to be humanized, the likes of Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, Ken McGinnis and Martin McGuinness persuaded to view each other as colleagues rather than bogeymen and devils.
Some of that was achieved through the niceties of civilised human behaviour, some through the humour and human instincts of a Mo Mowlam.
The choice of venue for discussions and even, ultimately, the very shape of the power-sharing executive’s table, came into play.
Only then could the two sides work in harmony towards the common goal: peace. As Desmond Tutu observed, ‘Forgiving is not forgetting, but remembering and not using your right to hit back’.
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But Blair remained undeterred. He saw a chance for success and grasped it, never relinquishing the momentum throughout long years of negotiation. The choreography required was delicate in the extreme.
First he had to neutralize the fears of both nationalists and unionists, and be seen to favour neither side. Then the participants had to be humanized, the likes of Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, Ken McGinnis and Martin McGuinness persuaded to view each other as colleagues rather than bogeymen and devils.
Some of that was achieved through the niceties of civilised human behaviour, some through the humour and human instincts of a Mo Mowlam.
The choice of venue for discussions and even, ultimately, the very shape of the power-sharing executive’s table, came into play.
Only then could the two sides work in harmony towards the common goal: peace. As Desmond Tutu observed, ‘Forgiving is not forgetting, but remembering and not using your right to hit back’.
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There was so much trust between us. We all had slightly different talents and there was immense respect for what each person brought to the collaboration. It doesn’t matter whose idea it is. We use the one that makes the movie better.’ John Lasseter > To Pixar
I didn’t hit a shot out there. My players all played magnificently, all twelve of them.’ Colin Montgomerie > To Ryder Cup team
‘“Who dares wins” is a way of life. It is living and breathing this motto that makes the SAS the best at what they do.’ Andy McNab > To SAS
‘Good enough is never going to be good enough. It sounds dramatic, but what we are doing in those early days is saving lives, and you are never ever going to be good enough.’ Mike Goodhand, Head of International Logistics, British Red Cross > To Red Cross
The Rolling Stones is a vehicle that only works when we put it in motion.’ Ronnie Wood > To Rolling Stones
‘Ferrari is the myth of Formula 1. The tradition, the soul, the passion.’ Ayrton Senna > To Ferrari F1
YOUR AGENDA FOR BUILDING
A BETTER TEAM
A BETTER TEAM
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