All leaders should know how to define strong teams. As you continue to refine your management competencies, you will begin to take on more responsibility. Often this means that instead of being an individual contributor, you are starting to lead a team. Unfortunately, many new managers struggle to transition from individual contributor to being a strong team leader. The higher up the corporate ladder you climb, the bigger the team may become too. Evolving your management skills means that you need to realize that you need to rely on the work of others, including teams, to get the job done for you to be successful.
What Defines A Strong Team?
While there are many different definitions of a team, I tend to believe that the following are a few crucial elements of all strong teams:
- A common goal or purpose
- Commonly agreed-upon approach
- An aligned set of performance goals
- Mutual accountability
A mistake I often see new leaders make is thinking that all team members should be the same. It’s important to build a diverse team that doesn’t look, act, or sound the same way. Like the world of sports, teams in business need to be comprised of different types of people. There should be varying degrees of experience, skills, and communication styles.
Business Teams And Sports Teams
Anyone who knows me knows that I love sports. I often think about the teams I lead or have worked with from a sports perspective. So it’s important to note that individuals play the game in both business and sports, but it is teams that win championships. Everyone needs to come together to achieve success. One person working as part of a team doesn’t accomplish as much as others combined. If you objectively look at the times you have been most successful, it’s happened because of many people coming together. Success is usually the result of people working together to meet a common goal.
3 E’s for Strong Team Members
To take your strong teams to the next level, you need to be the type of leader that can motivate and drive alignment on your way to success. To be the most effective, I recommend aiming to make sure that your team members each feel:
- Essential
- Equal
- Exceptional
Treating your team members as valued (essential) is vital to know both their purpose and impact every day. Striving to create a culture where no one feels disadvantaged (equal) is important to ensuring alignment. Making your team members also feel one-of-a-kind (exceptional) can be both motivating and inspirational too. Consistently exhibiting all three of these qualities with team members will lead to higher engagement and productivity.
A Great Team with a Bad Dream is a Nightmare
Unfortunately, sometimes team members can turn a winning team into a losing one through a lack of skill or poor attitude. As a leader, you must first prioritize the team’s interests, making changes for the greater good. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few … or the one.
When you have weak links on your team dragging down team performance or success, you have two options: train them or trade them. The weakest team members always are the biggest drain on a leader in terms of time, effort, and energy. The longer a weak link remains part of the team, everyone else will suffer. If you try everything you can in terms of training and coaching, and performance or attitude still doesn’t improve, moving someone along to a position or company better suited for them is the only option. Obviously, this can be difficult to make for any leader, so don’t take it lightly.
