Three Simple Steps to a Great Team

We all want teams that work together productively, even when we’re not there.  How to you achieve this goal?

Here are my three simple steps to having a ‘dream team’.

1.    Design

This is the most important step and probably the step that is most overlooked. Have you notice that when a national sporting team loses a championship, the selectors are among the first to be blamed.  That’s just one example of how important it is to get this step right!

To have an effective business, we need an effective team (or teams).  Without it you’ll waste a lot of time and money and as Michael Gerber said “If your business depends on you, you don’t have a business, you have a job.  And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!”

We know the design is important.  We know we need to do it.  But where do we start?  I advise my clients to start with just one question:  What would it take for my team to be complete?

You may already have a team in place or you might not have started your team yet.  It doesn’t matter – you still must reflect on this question, in the context of what you want your team to achieve.

What would your ideal team look like?  Get it down in detail, including skills, beliefs, values, attitudes, potential, work preferences and relationships.      

 2.    Combine

The second step is to take the results of your design process and analyse how this relates to your current team.  In the case of a new team, you now have a blueprint for recruiting the right team members.  

In the words of Jim Collins in ‘Good to Great’: “If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great”.

This step is where you can triumph or where it can all start to fall apart.  If you don’t get the right mix – or you don’t put in the effort that’s necessary to get a team working smoothly together, you’re sure to run into issues.  
Problems with your team might manifest in underperformance or subtle signs such as poor timekeeping and complaints about management and co-workers.

When issues arise, a common response is to book the team for some team-building activity or a retreat.  Your typical team-building challenge is great for getting out of the office and having some fun together.  Will it solve your team issues in the long term?  Probably not!

Instead, I recommend examining the individual strengths of your team members and analysing how you can combine and use those strengths to greater effect.  It’s much easier to build on existing strengths within the team than to try to create something new in an artificial situation.

An experienced coach can help you with the analysis and this vital step of combining.

3.    Refine

This step is all about lifting your team to the next level of performance.

You will know you are at the optimum level of teamwork when everyone on the team experiences the ‘CEO of Teamwork’:  Challenge, Enjoyment and Opportunity.  If you don’t aim to provide these things, it’s likely that your team members will find other employers and/or other managers who do.

Let’s say you already have a good team in place.  How do you know what to do to make a difference?  A good starting point would be to ask yourself to what extent the work in your team offers the individual members challenge, enjoyment and opportunity.

If your reflection identifies any gaps, try asking the team how they think teamwork could be improved.  If you use an anonymous survey with targeted questions, you will be surprised at how much useful information you’ll gain.  (Consider using a coach or consultant to do the survey for you.)

With each of these steps, once you have the information you need, the most important thing is to use it to develop an action plan that will lead you and the team closer to being a ‘dream team’.