THE SECRET TO GREAT TEAMS

It’s not a secret, but more like a secret sauce with a few essential ingredients.  If your goal is to help a team grow from good to great, this is for you.  The answer is not high pay, abundant resources, or hiring certain personality types.  Instead, over time as you hire, train, coach, and manage performance, be mindful about how you support these three key ingredients.  

Purpose Over Paycheck

Sure, money is important, but it’s only a minimal foundation for building a high performing team.  Purpose is far more essential.  That’s a feeling that the work matters because it serves worthy causes and helps you feel connected to something special.  It comes from quality role alignment, clear goals and expectations, positive supportive relationships, and an appreciation of the impact created by the team. 

Chemistry Over Talent

Strong talent is essential, but not enough.  A lot of talent never lives up to its potential.  Chemistry is about knowing how to work together effectively to harness and leverage talent.  That means people know and respect each other’s roles, are willing and able to help others when needed, and have a healthy respect for everyone’s unique abilities and how to use them to achieve shared goals.    

Belief in Possibilities

Great teams know that more is always possible.  They see current standards and the status quo as places to begin, not limits to what’s possible.  They feel safe enough to speak up, take smart risks, and fail and learn something new.  For great teams, creativity and innovation aren’t ideals, they are energizing lived values.  

Great clients, employee superstars, and superior market positions come and go.  The shifting of situational factors will force typical teams to fall, and many go down for the count.  Great teams endure.  They add a little persistence and perspective on top of the three qualities above and continue evolving and creating.  

What about your team?  How would they react to these ideas?  Don’t guess – make this a topic for at your next team discussion.  Check the defensiveness and remember that growth often begins where comfort ends.  Good luck!

TODD’S TIPS

Dealing with Uncomfortable Moments at Work

They did something or said something that bothers you.  It could be your boss, a colleague, or a client.  Should you speak up?  Maybe.  If the thing in question is a clear pattern of behavior or offends strongly, then of course.  But you can’t fight every fight.  The best reactions to milder situations include:

Ignore it.  Don’t react.  Pretend it did not happen.  Move on.  You are in no way offensive, but have nonetheless sent a small message.  Sometimes actions do speak louder than words.

Remove yourself.  Remember something that you have to attend to, now:  that call, the client stopping by, the signature that has been requested, etc.  Whether it is five minutes or much longer, the timing of your departure makes a statement. 

Reframe to redirect.  Act like they are not serious.  For example, they might say, “Hey, we should…” (followed by some unacceptable suggestion).  You reply, “You’re funny.  Of course we can’t do that.  Have we considered…”  Try this more than once and they usually get the hint.  

WHAT AM I UP TO?

Busy, busy, busy!  I have four new courses almost out of post-production and I’m writing scripts for the next five courses.  I just delivered my second TEDx talk (The Paradox of Creativity, video out soon).  I’ve been lucky to deliver talks recently for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business LEAD program, the amazing team at Glint, and a top sales team at LinkedIn, with plenty of upcoming events.  More information coming soon about my new online coaching community which should go live this summer.  FYI – if you enjoyed the content in this newsletter, you might want to check out my library of courses on LinkedIn Learning (https://bit.ly/3vQfsTl).

Stay safe, go learn something, maybe help someone, or at least do something interesting!

FYI, here are all of my links in one place:  https://linktr.ee/drdewett.

See you next time!

#leadership #alwaysbelearning #careers #growth #teams #success #purpose #productivity