Seven Essentials of Team Building

A Team is defined as an group organized to work together. And truth is that unless you are a hermit, at some level, you work with others to accomplish goals - both personal and business. The others in your group might be employees, friends, family, suppliers, or even customers. But no matter who they are, if you share a mission or vision then you are a Team. It doesn't matter if that team is formalized on paper, just a verbal agreement, or even a passing relationship, the success of the vision almost always depends on everyone working together - as a single entity.

Unfortunately, just because you put a group of people together in a tight confined space doesn't mean that they will in fact work together. Working together requires, at some level, Team Building.

Throughout my career in both the Military and as a Business Coach, I have found that there are Seven Essentials of Team Building that when present help the team work better and make the combined effort of each member more than just the sum of the individual team members. Unfortunately though, when any or all of those elements are absent, teams become little more than a group of individuals sometimes working together - sometimes not.

The Seven Essentials of Team Building are:

1. Write out the purpose of the Team - The purpose or shared vision of a team is why the team exists in the first place. It is the glue that binds the members of the team and motivates them from the outset. The more each member believes in the vision, the stronger the glue. And whether your team is new or years old, it is important to invite every member of the team to either participate in the development of the vision or agree to it.

2. Create a culture of Trust - Without a doubt, the most important element in any group of people working together is that they trust each other. I'm not talking trust that they will do their job - that's important. But what's really important is that everyone on the team must trust enough that they feel they can voice their opinions without retribution or embarrassment.

3. Set Team Goals - Ones that every one agrees with - Moving forward is about knowing what's important and not important, and getting everyone to agree. This is all about creating goals. It's about defining the rules of the game of your business - knowing how to keep score and what winning looks like. If you don't know the rules, it's not much fun.

4. Gain Commitment to Goals - Everyone's Commitment - Once you have goals - it's time to gain commitment to those goals. That sounds simple, but real commitment means the willingness to be held accountable. In order to increase the level of commitment from each team member towards the goals, make sure that they have an opportunity to share in the process of creating the goals. That doesn't mean they have to be involved in the process at every stage, but they should feel that their voice was heard in the developmental process.

5. Hold Each Other Accountable - Don't count on the Leader - Goals mean nothing if they aren't met. And the only way they are going to be met, is if there is accountability within the team. Too often, the only one that is holding anyone accountable on the team is the leader - but the most effective teams create a culture of accountability where everyone is responsible to the team - not the leader to fulfill their commitments and generate the desired results.

6. Build A Reward System - Don't be afraid to build into the team culture, a reward system that promotes the behaviors and social norms that are important to the team. In many ways, your Team Reward system is built-in accountability, that works independent of other forms of individual accountability.

7. Maintain Integrity within the Team - Integrity is defined as either a steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code, a state of being unimpaired; soundness, or a condition of being whole or undivided; completeness. All of these definitions tie directly to what matters here the most - making sure that every member of the team puts the team first, before their own needs - by not breaking the bounds of trust.

These 7 Essentials are designed to give you the beginning tools to take your team from just showing up and working together - to generating success. As you go about your day, look at the teams in your life (your family, your office, your friends, all the employees, or just the volleyball team at the YMCA) and ask yourself how well each of your teams actually works.

If you want to know more about how to implement any or all of these Essentials in your team,
feel free to contact me at coach.jj@impossiblefutures.com.

Start Building Trust Within Your Team

If you were to ask most people sitting around a table if they trusted the people they work with, most would say yes - at least publicly. The funny thing is that most people believe their answer - or at least want to believe it. But I have found that when pressed a bit further on the issue, there is really very little trust in any team.

But I'm not talking about trusting someone will do what is asked of them or trusting that they are competent at their job. I am talking about trusting someone enough to be ourselves around them - to volunteer ideas and opinions without the fear of ridicule or retribution - to not be betrayed for being who we are.

Now take that one step further - how well do you really trust your friends and family? How much do you trust that they will listen to you and accept you, and embrace your differences as much as your similarities? It's as important to find the answer to this question as it is to answer any other question in your life. Because if you don't trust them to support who you are, they you are probably denying yourself right now.

How many of us are actually willing to say that we don't understand something to our peers, family members, friends, or teammates? Or that we disagree with something really popular? How about admitting that you made a mistake? Ask for help? Or the most difficult for many of us, hold a someone else accountable for something they either did or failed to do and not have it blow up in our face? This is the trust that I'm talking about. This is the trust that is the foundation of a solid team - a solid partnership, whether it be business or personal.

Funny thing is that most of us, think / expect this "trust" to be present at the most critical time - without any investment into it. We think that just because there is a crisis going on, people will tell us the truth and give us their best. But building trust among teammates / partners doesn't only occur during a crisis. It happens every minute of every day, in the way we conduct ourselves doing out daily activities. It happens in the way we "walk our talk" each and every day.

So here is a tip that you can start practicing today. If you are on a team (whether you are the leader or not) and want to build more trust amongst your team members, stop and ask yourself, "Am I modeling the behavior I want others to emulate?" In nearly every case I know or have seen, I find the answer to be no. That's not to say that it doesn't happen, but if you look honestly at yourself, most people live the mantra, "Do as I say, not as I do."

If you haven't been emulating the behavior you want, STOP right there. Over the course of the next month, show some vulnerability to your team mates. Tell them when you don't know the answer to a problem or that you don't understand what they are doing. Be honest with yourself about the mistakes that you made, the commitments that you haven't followed up on, and the accountabilities that you've missed - and share them with your team. Odds are, they already know (though they may act surprised), because others are usually more keenly aware of our foibles than we are. It's our lack of honest self evaluation that gets in the way of our credibility as a member of the team. And by admitting your vulnerabilities (by becoming trustworthy), your team members will gain new respect for you and more importantly will become more willing to be vulnerable as well.

And here is the key to creating change on your team - don't focus on the results of your behavior right away. This would be a fatal mistake. It may feel like the vulnerability is a sign of weakness - that your weakness is only going to cause you more harm than good. But revel in the process - reward yourself for doing, because the results will come - they always do!

Change is hard - people will not immediately trust that this new attitude is real, so they will resist. They will resist for two reasons: one because they won't believe its real, the second because they are afraid of changing themselves. But as you continue to "walk your talk", you will begin to have people open up to you more and more. They will begin to trust you. And shortly thereafter, they will begin to trust others as well. And you will have created a virus (a good virus) that will spread throughout your entire team. You will have become the moral leader of the team, even if you may (or may not) be the formal leader.

And you will have made your team stronger and more capable than they have ever been before.

On A Team, No One Person Is More Important Than Any Other

For over 15 years, I spent a lot of my time, alone in the cockpit of an FA-18 (including over 40 missions in Afghanistan immediately following 9/11). There is nothing better for the ego of a true "Type A" personality than to think that success (or failure) all comes down to him - and no one else.

This is what I thought for the first couple of years of my career. That is until I opened my eyes and faced reality that nothing I did was entirely about me. It was about a team of thousands working together to achieve something bigger than anyone person could do alone. From the Sailor that loaded the bombs on the airplane to the one that launched me into the sky. From the cooks who served us all breakfast to those that ran the engines in the bowels of the ship keeping ship steaming forward - no matter what. Everyone on the team contributed directly to the effort. Everyone was needed to put that bomb on target, at the precise time. And it was this realization that although I could have "personal" success, if it didn't also contribute to team success - to the Vision of the unit, it was worthless.

Sure, I might have been the one who delivered the explosive package to the doorstep of our enemy - and the one who "got the glory". But I was only the last link in a long supply / manufacturing chain that delivered the will of the People of the United States. And chains aren't made up of one link. What good would that be, regardless of how big that one link is? It has no flexibility. And any great stress to a single link will break much easier than when that link is supported by other links.

So a good chain is made up of hundreds, if not thousands of links, each contributing the overall strength of the chain. That's Teamwork. If any link in the chain breaks, the whole chain fails.

Personal success is a wonderful thing, but true greatness of purpose comes from being part of something bigger than yourself.

It doesn't matter whether you are the first link in the chain, leading the way or the last link - at the lowest level of an organization. Every link matters - just as much as the next. The key is to build a strong chain and make sure that if you see one link beginning to absorb more of the stress than the rest - support it. Because remember if that one link fails - so does the whole chain - and so do YOU.