Anatomy of a Complete Team

How A Rockstar Team Ticks!!

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships”. (Michael Jordan)

This statement holds true in the field of sports and business. In many corporate corridors we will see vision, mission and strategy being developed by CXO’s sitting on high table of command. Identifying roles and individuals who are supposed to drive the Annual Business Plans coming from best of experience and past record. But things and intents do nosedives. Target are not met. Strategy looks half baked. Revenues are hit and performance metrics are in Red. If we analyze deeper, we will find sometimes it is misplaced priorities & individuals who are trying to run the show instead of teams who could have played the knock out punch. Individual who are critically not self-aware about their limitation and teams who are not aligned and empowered enough to bring the cup back home.

A structure, process and intent sometime are gravely missing to build a team which can stand the test of time and market. ?A team which can take up challenges head on. As simple as it may sound but a team of avengers need serious effort in first identifying talents and then assembling them as a together through facets of

·????????Establishing Trust

·????????Administering Obligation

·????????Managing Friction

·????????Measuring Outcomes

·????????Continuous Learning

There are many more things that can be added among these. But to keep things sharp and focused these top 5 things will drive a high performing team and keep them ticking thick or thin of times.

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1.???Establishing Trust:

Trust is the safety net or bulwark on which individual can fall back and feel safe to be vulnerable while sharing their ideas and thoughts in respect to professional deliverables. A culture where ideas are not shot down basis personality, gender or profile, where biasness are not the crux of the team’s operating structure and where individual are not functioning basis hierarchy can be called a true high trusting team. A high trust culture creates a psychological safety net which can’t be measured but can only be felt. It goes a long way in employee’s engagement and retention in a team and in an organization bring longevity of the talent and a team.

How to drive this: Encourage open & Transparent communication, active hearing, and empathetic responses.

2.???Administering Obligation:

Every action which an individual or a team takes starts by first committing towards it. Commitment requires time, effort and energy and a monk like focus to drive things to closure. The key for setting right obligation starts with lot of transparent conversation day in day out among the leader and with the team focusing on bringing a clarity of desired and expected state of the result. Lack of obligation brings loss of motivation and interest in the task which prevents teams from achieving rewarding results.

How to drive this: Clearly communicate team goals and define individual team roles to achieve it.

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3.???Managing Friction:

Majority of times individuals and teams avoid difficult conversations as they believe more than the result it is the relationship which they want to focus on. This leads to issue which are burning at the back of the burner, behaviors which are not true and efforts which are unproductive in nature and leading to less to no desired results. This is one of the flaws of a team that have a low trust index among themselves. There is lack of healthy debates and ongoing constructive feedback which are business outcome focused. A team that cant talk honestly with each other cant stick for long.

How to drive this: Leaders should talk about ways how difficult conversation are handled. Encourage people to focus on ideas and less on personalities.

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4. ?Measuring Outcomes

Every team should be aware what is the end goal they are chasing or what is their north star. Individual interest can play spoilsport to achieve the team business focused goals. A strong metrics which is not designed to evaluate the short- and long-term business results of team’s performance deviate team focus on the outcome. The leader has to create a strong review mechanism which is focused on giving routine course correction as needed and designed to celebrate team’s achievement. Every individual member of the team should be clear on what is the business metrics the team is targeting to achieve and continuously keep a track of it.

How to drive this: Creating strong business review and encourage team to reflect on what worked well and what didn't

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5.???Continuous Learning

It is a common notion that learning is important for self-growth and for increasing individual’s productivity. But a high performing team focus on varied type of learning which is more hands on and on the job. Learning by doing is the intonation which links sustainable learning focus with growth-oriented business outcomes. It brings no good if you can’t apply you learning in achieving some kind of business objective outcomes. Blended learning initiatives can be designed which can focus on cycle of planning, doing, checking and acting closely linked to what business ABPs demands.

How to drive this: Focus a culture of continuous learning with impacts around business linked metrics

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Every decade business is now going through their economic cycle of highs and lows. As the global village of organization are becoming much compact and becoming much more closely linked to each other across geographies. High performing teams will always be super critical in building organizations which can survive and thrive in challenging business landscape.

?#highperformingteams