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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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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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 leadership is its own task. Leadership in teams covers three core responsibilities: 1) delivering team objectives, 2) building a cohesive and effective team; 3) managing and developing individual team member performance. The three are separate but related. As a team leader you need to juggle these three balls, and not drop any one of them.
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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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Aim to build a team of the ‘best twelve’ not the ‘twelve best’. Great players are necessary for victory, but a constellation of stars will still lose against a star team. Chemistry matters. Target a balance between the cohesion of like-minded teammates and the creative abrasion that comes from diversity.
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Focus on those who fit your team’s purpose. Finding the right talent for your team is not a popularity contest about who has the most friends. Selection is the laser focus of separating the talent you need from everyone else. An effective common purpose will attract the talent you need and repel those who lack the right stuff.
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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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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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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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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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EUROPEAN RYDER CUP TEAM 2010
Captain and comrades
‘I didn’t hit a shot out there. My players all played magnificently, all twelve of them.’
Colin Montgomerie
3.22 p.m, Monday, 4 October 2010, seventeenth green, Celtic Manor course, Wales.
On the rain-delayed final day of the Ryder Cup, in the last and deciding singles match of the competition, Hunter Mahan misses a par-saving putt from just off the green and concedes the hole, and the match, to Graeme McDowell.
With a handshake, McDowell, the recently crowned US Open champion, secures a wafer-thin 14½ to 13½ victory for Europe over the United States. The European captain, Colin Montgomerie, is in tears: he can’t even watch the final putt, but the roar from the home crowd tells him everything he needs to know.
Monty, dubbed ‘Captain Fantastic’ and ‘Mr Montyvator’, has not yet won a major himself, despite his talent, but finds sweet compensation by recapturing the Ryder Cup for Europe.
Stung by criticism of his selection of Padraig Harrington as a wild-card pick, he’d said, ‘Judge my choices after the Cup’s over’. He and his team have triumphed in the most dramatic fashion. Extract from Superteams
A Ryder Cup team is an extraordinary team.
Every two years twenty-four of the world’s most necessarily self-centred and individual sportsmen, the best golfers in America and Europe, have to learn to operate as a team.
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It is an alien concept to all of them, used to engaging in mano a mano combat all year round: Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest golfer ever, has never mastered it, and has a miserable Ryder Cup record.
Every two years twenty-four of the world’s most necessarily self-centred and individual sportsmen, the best golfers in America and Europe, have to learn to operate as a team.
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It is an alien concept to all of them, used to engaging in mano a mano combat all year round: Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest golfer ever, has never mastered it, and has a miserable Ryder Cup record.
The European victory in 2010 was a masterclass by the captain, Colin Montgomerie, in marshalling the 12 inidivduals – he himself had to master man management skills under the scrutiny of the world’s media.
He did it through meticulous preparation, building on the groundwork of Tony Jacklin in the 1980s, but adding his own approach.
Alongside great attention to the detail of uniforms, accommodation, even the waterproof quality of the European golf-bags (vital during a rain-soaked weekend), he engendered both a relaxed team spirit and a passion fuelled by the then ailing Seve Ballesteros.
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When it came down to the crunch and to the wire, Europe prevailed. The legacy of Montgomerie’s approach laid the foundations for the more emotional heroics of Medinah in 2012.
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
‘“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
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
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