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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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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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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Design selection to mirror reality. If you want someone who can drive fast, put them in a car and grab your stopwatch. Creating selection tests as close to the challenges the team face is a sure way of separating good on paper from good in practice and great in 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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Clarify roles. To get the most out of your team make sure that each member has three levels of clarity about team roles: 1) what is expected of them and why it matters, 2) a practical understanding of the other team roles and 3) how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
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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 competence. Team members earn trust when they can show off their skills, demonstrate that they are masters of their task and prove their competence to contribute to the team’s purpose. You can turbocharge trust-building by focusing on quick wins that build teammates’ trust in each other’s capabilities.
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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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Earn trust by overcoming conflict and crisis. Surviving the inevitable conflict accelerates trust in a team, but facing a crisis before trust is firmly established can cause terminal damage to your team. You should invest early in building cohesion as trust tends to be scarce when you need it most.
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Encourage creative abrasion. Contrary to the myth of the harmonious team, your goal is not to build a team without conflict, but to channel conflict effectively. You need to harness the energy and creativity that comes from the combination of push and pull between the diverse members of your team.
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Guard against groupthink and your team becoming too cohesive. The conditions for ‘groupthink’ are the presence of a strong leader, a cohesive group and strong external pressures. All three characteristics are positive determinants of a team’s success, but overplayed and unleavened by conflict they can push your team towards the dark side.
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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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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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Be obsessive about improvement. The team spirit you should nurture is one of experimentation and excellence. This is an essential paradox of high performance, the need simultaneously to aim for excellence and acknowledge the importance of failure. Teams that aim to make no mistakes end up making nothing of consequence.
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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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Teams learn best by doing things together. Your team needs to rehearse the revised approach, again and again, until it becomes second nature. The fastest way of getting your team to adopt a new way of behaving is for them to experience directly the real benefits of the changed approach.
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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 ROLLING STONES
Creativity and consistency
‘The Rolling Stones is a vehicle that only works when we put it in motion.’
Ronnie Wood
Saturday, 18 February 2006, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
During the Rolling Stones’ Bigger Bang tour of 2005–7, for one night only, on the expanse of Rio’s Copacabana beach, one million fans gather to watch the Stones perform a free concert – one of the largest gigs the world has ever seen.
The stage, specially constructed and facing Sugar Loaf Mountain, is the height of a seven-storey building, with an aerial walkway giving the band direct access from their hotel just across the road.
Eight additional sound towers have been constructed along the length of the beach to cope with the size of the audience.
It is a show which marks one of the pinnacles of the band’s fifty-year career, and which sums up the extraordinary logistical and creative operation of the team around them which delivers high and above all consistent levels of performance night after night.
Extract from Superteams
This year the Rolling Stones celebrated their 50th anniversary, a great example of consistency in creativity. The story explores what has kept the band together performing at the highest level when most bands can barely make it through the first album.
When the drivers that have kept the Stones together for half a century are applicable even for teams not engaged in the music business.
All four of the current Stones continue to be strongly connected to their shared passion for music and committed to the goal of being, and remaining, ‘the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world’.
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When the drivers that have kept the Stones together for half a century are applicable even for teams not engaged in the music business.
All four of the current Stones continue to be strongly connected to their shared passion for music and committed to the goal of being, and remaining, ‘the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world’.
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In terms of delivering fame, money or the chance to play for so many people, no other endeavour they have undertaken separately has come close in enabling the band members to fill their own personal ambitions.
Being a member of the Rolling Stones ‘team’ continues to be the best way of achieving each individual’s goals.
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They operate like a family, sometimes squabbling, but always happy to see each other after a break: the band allow themselves the space between tours to breathe.
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Their wider family, a close-knit group of long-term, trusted associates – from tour personnel to business advisers – provide a sense of continuity and the support systems that allow Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie to get on stage and do what they do best night after night.
Being a member of the Rolling Stones ‘team’ continues to be the best way of achieving each individual’s goals.
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They operate like a family, sometimes squabbling, but always happy to see each other after a break: the band allow themselves the space between tours to breathe.
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Their wider family, a close-knit group of long-term, trusted associates – from tour personnel to business advisers – provide a sense of continuity and the support systems that allow Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie to get on stage and do what they do best night after night.
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
Dialogue is crucial to any effort to find a solution to conflict.’ Gerry Adams > To Northern Ireland Peace Process
‘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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