Beyond Family: Crafting a Culture of Performance and Winning

Your Team is not your family

In the journey towards creating high-performing teams, a common narrative has been the ideal of turning our teams into families. While well-intentioned, aiming to foster a familial atmosphere at work often introduces more challenges than benefits. Through extensive experience in team development, it has become evident that striving for a "work family" can hinder peak performance and results.

Let's explore why and redefine our approach to team building.

The Pitfalls of a "Family" Approach

1. Difficulty in Decision-Making: When team members are seen as a family, making tough decisions, such as letting someone go for underperformance, becomes significantly harder. This leniency can affect overall team performance.

2. Reduced Accountability: The familial comfort might lead to individuals not pushing themselves to their 100% potential, knowing that their place in the "family" offers unwarranted security.

3. Challenges with Departures: When someone leaves the "family," it often leaves a more profound sense of betrayal and loss, complicating team dynamics and morale.

Embracing a Winning Team Ethos

Instead of a family, our goal should be to cultivate an environment akin to celebrated sports teams like the Springboks and the All Blacks. These teams are epitomes of performance, where every member plays for each other within a framework of honour, accountability, and shared goals.

Here's what we can learn from them:

- Code of Honour: Just like in top sports teams, a clear code of honour and rules of engagement should guide team interactions. Breaking these rules means risking your place on the team, ensuring everyone is fully committed and accountable.

- Performance-Driven: Performance is key. If someone isn't delivering, they are respectfully replaced for the team's greater good, as seen in strategic player changes. This isn't personal; it's about achieving the collective goal.

- Continuous Improvement: Regularly evaluating team performance to identify the bottom 10% and making necessary changes keeps the team dynamic and driven.

The Golden Carrot: Celebrating Together

Success is sweeter when shared. As much as we drive performance and maintain high standards, celebrating our victories together is crucial. The end goal must be enticing enough for everyone to push through challenges, knowing the spoils of success await.

Measuring Your Team's Culture

Understanding where your team stands is the first step towards building a culture of performance and winning. I offer a TeamEQ assessment to measure your team's emotional culture and provide insights for improvement. If you're interested in taking your team to the next level, please reach out to me directly.

Together, let's build teams that are not just groups of people working together but a unified force driven by a shared purpose, ready to achieve greatness.

In Viking fidelity,

Cobus "Viking" Visser

[email protected]