1. Strong Leadership
One of the important goals of strong leadership is to maximize the “discretionary effort” that team members provide to meet team or company goals. This is the extra effort people can provide, if they want to. We often see employees and team members who will do just what they have to in order to get by. On the other hand we have all seen (or been) those team members who will go to extraordinary ends to get the job done.
In his best selling business book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins identified that top performing organizations have common leadership elements that allow them to tap into this wealth of discretionary effort.
The first, and perhaps most important, is that the organizations all benefited from what Jim calls “Level 5 leadership”. While these leaders have the ability to engage and motivate their teams to pursue a clear and compelling vision and generate higher performance, they also demonstrate a unique blend of personal humility and professional will. While Level 5 leaders have significant ambition, their ambition is first and foremost for their teams and organization rather than for their own personal goals.
These top leaders also utilized “the window and the mirror” concept to both protect and energize their teams. When things were going well, the Level 5 leader would look out the “window” and credit their team for the success, while when things were going poorly they would look in the “mirror” and take the responsibility for poor performance.
2. Common Goal
Teams need to understand what their common goal is and it needs to supersede all individual goals. Sports teams often provide an excellent example of this concept. If the team understands that their common goal is to win a championship, then it will be easier for all team members to focus and concentrate on the team goal. If one or more team members are focused on individual goals, such as winning the scoring title, the performance of the entire team can be affected.
Business is similar in this respect. If the salesperson is just focused on bringing in orders, regardless of the cost to produce and ship that order, because that is what drives their commission, the common goal of maximizing profit will be at risk.
As people do what they are recognized and rewarded for, it is critical that the recognition and reward structure for teams are consistent with the common goal they are working towards.
3. Rules of the Game
Teams also need to understand the rules that govern the way you conduct business. This would include defining company culture and values as well as ensuring that individual roles and responsibilities are defined. At Action we have 14 Points of Culture that define our rules of the game, and when a new coach joins the organization they can get up to speed very quickly in terms of how they need to interact and conduct themselves, both externally with clients and internally with fellow coaches and management.
It is important to ensure not only that you have the right people on the team, but that you also have them in the right roles. As Jim Collins observed in his book “Good to Great” the right people will be more self-motivated by their inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great.
4. Action Plan
Another key element for a winning team is a strong Action plan. While the common goal identifies what they want to do, the Action plan identifies how they will do it. A good Action plan will assign ownership of tasks, identify what resources are required, when tasks should be completed and detail the current status of the task.
5. Support Risk Taking
Business is all about risk and reward. In order to grow as a team and therefore grow as a business, a leader must be willing to support prudent risk taking by the team. The team’s responsibility is to analyze and clearly identify the risk/reward relationship, along with a plan to mitigate the risk wherever possible. If the risk/reward relationship is viable, the leader’s role is to ensure the team’s analysis and assumptions are valid, and do whatever possible to make sure they have the time and resources to succeed.
6. 100% Involvement & Inclusion
Most likely we have all participated on either work or sports teams where the whole team was not involved or included. It may have been that certain members gave less than a 100% effort or the talents of all team members were not utilized appropriately. This handicaps a team’s performance and makes it difficult, if not impossible to truly create a winning team.
A winning team is dependent upon all members understanding their goal, their role and performing it to the best of their ability within the rules of the game. It is also dependent upon the leader’s ability to tap into the wealth of discretionary effort that is available as well as providing the support and the resources the team needs to succeed.
For a free assessment of your team, and to learn more about how South Florida Business Coaching will work for you, contact John Layzell at johnlayzell@actioncoach.com or 305-899-9963.
John Layzell
