Six KEEYYSS to a Winning team
Selecting the right people is just the beginning of building a successful team for your business.
However, you cannot simply expect that your team alone will transform your business and take
it to its next level of performance.
It is equally important to have the following six elements in place:
1. Strong leadership
A former coach of a Football Team, said "Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and
gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control."
Strong leadership requires creating a working environment that encourages the cooperation of your
team members. By encouraging and inspiring them, they in turn will inspire and encourage the
customers.
The goal of strong leadership is to maximize the "discretionary effort" that team members provide to
meet team or company goals. That's the extra effort people provide, if they want to. Too often
employees will do just what they have to do in order to get by.
In his best-selling business book "Good to Great," author Jim Collins identifies common leadership
elements that top performing organizations have in place to allow them to tap into this wealth of
discretionary effort.
The most important element is what Collins calls "Level 5 leadership." While these leaders have the
ability to motivate their teams to pursue a clear and compelling vision and generate higher
performance, they also demonstrate a unique blend of personal humility and professionalism as they
lead from the front to create the discretionary effort from all team members.
Another im-portant element is the "the window and the mirror" concept to both protect and energize
the leader's team. When things were going well, Level 5 leaders look out the
"window" and credit their team for the success; when things are going poorly
they look in the "mirror" and take the responsibility for poor performance.
2. Common goals
Teams need to understand what their common business goals are and those goals need to supersede
all individual goals. Sports teams provide an excellent example of this concept. If the team
understands that a common goal is to win the championship, then it will be easier for all team
members to focus and concentrate on the team goal. If one or more team members are focused on
individual goals, such as winning the scoring title, the performance of the entire team can be
negatively affected.
Business is similar in this respect. If the salesperson is just focused on bringing in orders regardless
of the cost to produce and ship that order, the common goal of maximizing profit will be at risk. As
people do what they are recognized and rewarded for, it is critical that the recognition and reward
structure for individuals and for teams is consistent with the company's common goals.
Setting common goals for the business starts with the owner's vision. This must be regarded as the
central aim and leaders must enlist the support of all team members to inspire them to do the things
that they have to do.
3. Rules of the game
Employees also need to understand the rules that govern the way the owner conducts the business.
The rules must be written down and available to them. If the owner doesn't provide employees with
the "rules of the game" they will go outside the boundaries.
Setting the rules of the game will include specifying company culture and values as well as ensuring
that individual roles and responsibilities are defined with positional contracts, and operations and
procedures manuals. Without providing defined rules including the company's culture, the owner or
manager will need to rely on policing to run the business. Also, if the owner doesn't establish the
culture, the employees will create a de facto culture that may not be to the owner's liking or in the
best interests of the company.
4. Action plan
Another key element for a winning team is a strong action plan that is spelt out in clear and
unambiguous terms to all members of the team. While the common goals referred to above identify
what the owner and the business want to do, the action plan identifies how the goals will be
achieved. A good action plan will assign ownership of tasks, identify what resources are required, set
timelines for when tasks should be completed, and provide measurement details of the current status
of the tasks over the defined time periods.
5. Support risk-taking
Business is all about risk and reward. To make the business grow, a leader must be willing to support
prudent risk-taking by the team. If the owner doesn't allow risk-taking, the business will lag behind
market leaders. The level of risk-taking is usually related to the company's culture.
6. 100 percent inclusion and involvement
The art of inclusion is driven by communication to all members of
the team. By providing 100 percent inclusion the owner can then
require 100 percent involvement as an expectation of the
organization's culture. This will lead to trust and a comfort level
by the owner to delegate responsibilities.