Red Flag Rules and Replays: Game-Changing Practices to Elevate Team Performance

In the heat of a high-stakes championship game, a coach throws a red flag onto the football field. Play pauses. The team does not dwell on mistakes or look to place blame; they want to check everyone is aligned and playing by the agreed-upon rules.?

Now let us imagine that same commitment to shared accountability in your team. That is the essence of Red Flag Rules & Replays, a game-changing high-return practice borrowed from the world of sports that can help any organization move from a culture of leadership to one of teamship. In today's volatile and complex business environment, the traditional top-down leadership model is no longer enough. The challenges are too great, the pace of change too swift, for any single leader to have all the answers--or the time to deliver them. To thrive, organizations need to tap into collective intelligence and finally extract all the value from the interdependencies in their teams. They need to make the shift from leadership to teamship.?

From Leadership to Teamship

Teamship is about more than just cooperation when convenient to do so. It is a fundamentally different way of operating, with hierarchy taking a backseat to shared ownership, peer-to-peer decision-making, and accountability. In Teamship, the team takes responsibility for driving results and navigating challenges, rather than relying on a single leader to call all the shots. At the heart of this shift lies a set of behaviors called Co-elevation: the behaviors that enable teams to challenge, support, and uplift one another in pursuit of shared success. When teams embrace Co-elevation behaviors, they move from merely working together to actively pushing each other to reach new heights.

The Shift to Co-Elevation?

Co-elevating teams replace the old, limiting behaviors of conflict avoidance, silos, and self-interest with new, empowering habits:

• They engage in candid, constructive dialogue, even when uncomfortable because they know that is how the best ideas emerge.
• They proactively seek out and embrace diverse perspectives, recognizing that collective intelligence trumps individual expertise.
• They prioritize "we" over "me," making decisions and taking actions based on what is best for the team and the mission, not just their own interests.
• They hold themselves and each other accountable to their shared commitments, knowing that they rise or fall together.

Our research over 20 years shows that this shift to Co-elevation behaviors is the defining characteristic of the world's highest-performing teams. In our diagnostic assessments, teams with high Co-elevation scores demonstrate 79 percent more candor, 46 percent more collaboration, and 44 percent more accountability than their counterparts.?

Forging a New Social Contract

Making Co-elevation a reality in your team requires more than just individual behavior change. It demands a fundamental shift in the team's social contract--the often-unspoken agreements that govern how members interact, make decisions, and work together.

Rewriting this social contract starts with an open, honest discussion about the team's current state. Using a diagnostic tool, teams assess their behaviors against key Co-elevation indicators. For example:

• All team members are willing to directly challenge one another, even when it is risky to do so, or the topic is outside their 'swim lane' or area of expertise.
• All team members actively hold each other accountable for one another's commitments and outcomes.
• All team members respect and value what every other member of this team contributes.
• All team members have established caring, trusting, and supportive relationships with all other members of this team.
• All team members feel responsible to lift one another's energy.

The diagnostic poses statements like these across critical dimensions, asking team members to score their agreement on a scale from Strongly Disagree?to Strongly Agree. This provides a quantitative benchmark of where the team stands today. More important, it sparks candid conversations about strengths to build on and growth opportunities to target.

Armed with this shared understanding, the team can then come together to explicitly define their new social contract--their Red Flag Rules.?These Rules might include:

• We speak courageously.
• We are truly committed to one another.
• We lift each other up.
• We co-create broadly to innovate boldly.
• We leverage technology to elevate our collaboration.

Critically, these Rules are not imposed from above but co-created by the team. This process of collective authorship builds shared ownership and accountability from the start.

Keeping the Momentum with Red Flag Replays

But a new contract is just the beginning. To truly ingrain these Co-elevation behaviors, teams need a structured way to reinforce and recommit to them regularly. That is where Red Flag Replays come in. It is the first in a series of High Return Practices that help turn new behaviors into habits.

In a Red Flag Replay, the team comes together consistently--typically monthly--to review their performance against their Rules. They celebrate examples of the Rules in action, identify instances where they fell short, and recommit to their Co-elevation aspirations going forward. It is a chance to learn, adapt, and continually elevate the team's game. And just as in sports, this regular practice of intentional reflection and realignment is what separates the good from the truly great.?

Over time, as teams embed the rhythm of Rules and Replays, something powerful happens. Co-elevation shifts from an abstract concept to an ingrained habit. The team develops a shared language and accountability for how they work together. They become more than the sum of their parts, able to tackle even the toughest challenges with agility, resilience, and shared resolve.

A Game-Changer for Teams

In a world of relentless change and complexity, teams cannot afford to leave their performance to chance. They need proven practices for unleashing their collective potential--and Red Flag Rules & Replays offer just that.

By forging a new social contract grounded in Co-elevation behaviors, and religiously embedding that contract through regular Replays, teams can fundamentally transform how they work together and the results they achieve.

So, if you are ready to take your team to the next level, it is time to throw your own red flag. Diagnose your current state, define your Rules, commit to your Replays--and step into the game-changing world of Teamship. Your breakthrough awaits.