Does Your Team Work?

For us fans of team sports, isn't it exciting to see our favorite teams blend their individual talents and abilities and achieve success as a unified team? The good news is that our teams in the business world can also achieve success. One key to making that happen is teamwork.

What is teamwork? I like Andrew Carnegie's definition: "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision—the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."

How can we develop stronger teamwork? Let me share 10 rules for high-performance teamwork, adapted from John J. Murphy's book Pulling Together:

1. Put the Team First. In the middle of every high-performance team is a common purpose—a sense of vision and mission that unites and inspires each individual team member. Make sure you solicit participation from the team when developing the common purpose, remembering the principle that "change imposed is change opposed" and Ken Blanchard's quote: "None of us is as smart as all of us."

Alexander Graham Bell summarizes well when he says, "All winning teams are goal oriented. Teams like these win consistently because everyone connected with them concentrates on specific objectives. They go about their business with blinders on; nothing will distract them from achieving their aims.

2. Communicate Openly and Candidly. High-performing teams are empowered teams, and information is a great source of power. Sharing the team's key performance metrics, indicators and ongoing status is crucial. Ask yourself: "What do team members need to know on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to manage performance?" Tools such as balanced scorecards, dashboards, work review meetings and one-on-one coaching sessions can be helpful.

3. Be Part of the Solution, Not the Problem. There is no substitute for personal ownership, responsibility and self control. These are traits that we can model—and intentionally encourage in our team members. Also, recognize that problems will arise—and they may be blessings in disguise if we learn and grow from them. As philosopher René Descartes notes: "Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

4. Commit to Excellence. One of my sayings is that "we can choose to be mediocre—or we can choose to strive for excellence. The choice is ours." The reality is that if we don't intentionally choose to strive for excellence the default choice is to settle for being mediocre. I resonate with Mario Andretti when he says, "Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek."

5. Promote an Atmosphere of Respect. One way to show we really respect someone is to actively listen to them and then respond appropriately. "Almost all employees, if they see that they will be listened to, and they have adequate information, will be able to find ways to improve their own performance and the performance of their workgroup," remarks James O'Toole.

Showing respect also includes positive encouragement and expressing our appreciation and approval. I like Charles Schwab's quote: "I have never seen a man who could do real work except under the stimulus of encouragement and enthusiasm and the approval of the people for whom he was working.

6. Ask and Encourage the Right Questions. The art of questioning is an important management skill—challenging people to think, to probe, to investigate, to challenge assumptions and to seek answers. John Chancellor illustrates the importance of this skill when he says, "If you take a close look at the most successful people in life, you'll find that their strength is not in having the right answers, but in asking the right questions."

7. Use a Rational Problem-solving Process. Albert Einstein supports the need for rational, thoughtful problem-solving processes when he says, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
There are a number of rational problem-solving processes to choose from. One such approach is to follow these steps:

• Gather data.
• Review facts.
• Define the problem and desired end-state.
• Ask questions. Identify alternative solutions.
• Evaluate each alternative.
• Select the "best" alternative.
• Implement the chosen alternative.
• Evaluate effectiveness of the solution. Make changes, if necessary.

9. Promote Interdependent Thinking. The key here is to promote "we" thinking, not "me" thinking. Vince Lombardi encourages us to "build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and of strength to be derived by unity." Having talented team members is important—but Michael Jordan puts it into perspective when he says, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships." Phil Jackson adds, "The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.

10. Pull the Weeds. Most people on a team are willing to play by the rules and be a value-added team member. But the reality is that sometimes we may have a team member that is either not capable or is unwilling to meet expectations—even after we have tried to remedy the situation. We are then faced with the choice of allowing the "weed" to remain and hold back the team's success, or to remove the weed so the rest of the team can grow. Voltaire says, "We must cultivate our garden," and that applies to the teams we lead.

Let me close with a quote from soccer great Mia Hamm: "I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team. I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion."