If you want to succeed at the highest levels of almost any organization or career, you must employ leverage.  Understanding how leverage works within a team is the ultimate knowledge.  Building that team is critical to creating an atmosphere of winning.  While some sports are one-on-one, most involve a team.  You must employ the greatest skills of motivating others to their highest potential if you want to succeed as a team.  Michael Jordan, largely considered the greatest basketball player of our age, could not have succeeded without players and supporting staff around him that let him shine without requiring him to shoulder the entire load.  He played for the Chicago Bulls.  And, while the Bulls made the playoffs a few times with him carrying the entire load, they could not get past the “teams” that were in their way until they acquired the correct supporting staff.  When they did, they ran off 3 NBA Championships in a row.

The mental note to make here is that “Team work wins over Individuality every time.”

With that in mind, lets take a quick look at the parts of team work and how they fit into the puzzle.  This will be a quick overview with an in-depth look at each in their own section.

Team Goals is the starting point for any true team work to begin.  You must have a solid game plan that all team members can refer back to so that there is little if any ambiguity as to how they fit into the puzzle as well as how the team will accomplish the ultimate goals.

An underlying and often overlooked part of this is a common value-set.  The team needs to agree on the values that they will operate under.

The most obvious part of team-work is cooperation.  Cooperation is mandatory to achieve the highest levels of team work.

One player/team member cannot be on a different page as the rest of the team or the synchronization of the team loses its effectiveness.  The University of Kentucky Cheerleading team is consistently in the top 5 of the National Championships and has won multiple times.  If one of the cheerleaders is off, the whole team gets downgraded seriously.  Therefore, in this type of team, you truly are only as strong as your weakest link.

The USAF Thunderbirds are the epitome of trust.  If one of those team members loses focus during their flying exercises, someone loses a life.  Trust is not given in most cases, it is earned.  That is a little of a paradox for most teams as a new member needs to have the trust to accomplish what he or she needs to, but the teams still needs to operate.  This forces any good team to be together for some amount of time.  You can connect without establishing trust initially.

Finishing the job is one of the most important part of the team.  Completion is a skill that is learned one-on-one and transferred to a team. So, completion is a big part of building team work.

The quality of players you bring to the table also makes a huge difference in whether you win or lose in the situation.

One of the frustrating parts of some teams is wrong job assignments.  You must assign the right people to the right job.  You don’t send the introvert to the social mixer or the point guard to do all the rebounding.  Although they may accomplish some of the task a mis-assigned team member will not flourish in the wrong setting.
Lack of leadership is a huge issue with progressing as a team.  There needs to be vision and direction to accomplish all the things that we want to as a team.  The right leadership provides that as part of the process.

Another critical issue with team work is a lack of followers.  If everyone is trying to lead, you will be going in all directions instead of one direction.

Motivating the team properly is always a key component to team work.  Every team and individual on the team will take different motivation.  The leader who can figure out that motivation will master the end result.

And finally you must operate the team with integrity.  You may change paths or goals or any other thing, but you MUST operate with integrity or the team will lose conidence and flounder.

As we operate our teams, we must maintain these key elements to ensure that the team stays together and plays together well.  If you are a current team member, take these elements back to your team to help them succeed.

As always, your comments and thoughts are desired here.

Rob Wheeler