Build Your Best Team in 2019

Ed Ruggero

At the risk of bringing up bad memories of grammar drills, I’d like to point out that the verb in this title is in the imperative form. It’s an instruction or, if you prefer, an order. Good teams don’t build themselves. Teams take care and feeding and a deliberate plan. Two things I sometimes see lacking when I engage clients around development are 1) a lack of specificity in what they want to achieve, and 2) no plan for closing the gap between the team they have and the one they want. 

Some examples:

“We need to be more agile in the face of rapid change.” This is a good start, but it’s still the view from thirty-five thousand feet. While most can agree this is a good goal, how we achieve it is not clear.

One tool for achieving agility is the leader’s intent, which we define as “a clear picture of the desired end-state.” If the team knows the ultimate goal—the end state—we can adjust the plan, reallocate resources and change milestones while keeping that end goal in sight. Amid rapid change it’s good to remember that executing a particular plan (which may have been overcome by events) isn’t the goal. The goal is to get to that end-state. How we do that is now up for discussion.

“We need to be more creative.” Being creative generally means finding new ways to attack challenges, old or new. The critical question then becomes, “How do we help people become more creative?”

We do that by identifying the working conditions that promote creativity. Have we let people know that we expect them to look for original solutions? Have we provided the time and tools? Do we keep a lid on egos and unhealthy, win-at-all-costs competition?

“We need to build our bench strength.” Often clients have not successfully identified future needs, both in terms of people to be replaced due to normal attrition and in terms of what additional skill sets the team will need as a business evolves over time.

Organizations need a process and a plan for leader development. The process need not be elaborate, but the leader should identify the steps that will expand a member’s skills and prepare her for additional responsibility. (See Where to Find the Leaders You Need.) There are lots of viable approaches. Here’s one:

1.        Selection: identify people who want to be leaders and who have demonstrated the potential to grow.

2.        Challenge: We learn when we’re outside our comfort zone. Challenge people with incrementally more difficult tasks.

3.        Assessment: Feedback is a gift.

4.        Coaching: This is the personal touch. Help people articulate what happened and why and how things might go better next time. Resist the urge to say, “This is how I would have done it.”

5.        Underwrite failure: If you’re really challenging people, they won’t always succeed. It‘s the leader’s job to make sure a failure doesn't sink the whole organization. Chances are good that if no one is failing, no one is trying anything new.

Have an individual development plan for each team member (or have individuals create and maintain their own). Where am I today? What are my goals and the intermediate steps to get there?

Build your best team by investing in their development. They’ll thank you for it.

We address these topics and more in our Gettysburg Leadership Experience. Open enrollment programs are available for 2019, and groups of ten or more choose their dates and have a private engagement.