Does it ever feel like your team are pulling in different directions? It’s time to find your common purpose….

Nearly every one of us will spend time as part of a small group focused on achieving a shared goal. In fact, there are very few areas of human endeavour where teamwork does not play a fundamental role - teamwork is everywhere.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent emergency relief operation in Haiti saw thousands of individual acts of humanity saving lives and restoring dignity.

But beyond this, when organised in the right way and amplified through teamwork, the Red Cross turns these individual acts into rapid and complete transformation of an entire affected community.

Forging and communicating common purpose is a key role in teams – to connect the dots and develop a clear line of sight between individual motivations and collective action so that when you shout go, people do not spin off in different directions, but move forward together - following the same North Star.

Take the sweet old lady who I met working in a Red Cross shop in Wimbledon, London near where my children are at school. When asked what she enjoyed about her job she replied that it was a sense of making a difference.

She believed that every item she collected or sold - no matter how big or small - helped save lives and relieve suffering.  She felt she belonged, that she made an important contribution to something much bigger than herself – she was part of not just a team but a community of purpose.

A clear and compelling common purpose is essential to attracting the right talent and getting them to want to do great work and to do it together as a team.

When the British Red Cross ramped up into immediate action in response to the devastating Haiti earthquake of January 2010, the team ranged from frontline disaster specialists on the ground in Haiti to volunteers in charity shops across the high streets of the UK.

Tens of thousands of staff, volunteers and supporters were mobilised into a community of purpose. The British Red Cross ensured there was a clear line of sight between the many individual actions and the movement's overall goals.

The volunteers in the shops were totally committed: they could see their work selling second-hand clothes in terms of relieving suffering and saving lives.

For most teams, there will be less of a visceral crisis to respond to, but there should still be a sense of meaning in their work.

For a team's purpose to be potent it needs to be compelling to its members. You need to inspire your team with a vivid picture of a better future, and help them see that inaction will be worse.

Your aim is to connect the team's work to an exciting, meaningful outcome, a result that everyone finds personally worthwhile.

Often, that means looking beyond day-to-day tasks towards the ultimate benefit of their work and whom it helps.

Creating a common purpose as compelling as that embodied by the Red Cross movement is a difficult task.

However, the takeaway lessons are the same for all teams:

• forge a clear and compelling common purpose
• make your cause shared and personal
• empower your team members - make them value their contribution

This article was written by Khoi Tu, as an extract from his book "Superteams: The Secrets of Stellar Performance from Seven Legendary Teams".

All of the proceeds from the book will be going to the British Red Cross

See Khoi Tu speak at the RSA or follow his story on Twitter @buildsuperteams