T-E-A-M, Team, Team, Team!

It’s important to know the difference between a true team and a bunch of individuals calling themselves a team.

If you look only through the scope of sports, every group of individuals wearing the same jersey is called a team. It is easy to see who’s on your team, because they are wearing the same uniform as you. The term team, in the workplace, is a commonly used term, too. I’ve been on lots of teams: development teams, cross functional teams, trade show teams, operational improvement teams, party planning teams. Some worked very well together, others…not so much. I went back and thought about those teams, and why they worked or didn’t work.

United Under a Clearly Defined & Communicated Goal

When I think about work teams, a rowing team always comes to mind. Everyone is rowing the same direction at the same pace. It works because everyone is on the same page as to where they are going, who is responsible for what, and the pace they need to row at to get to the shared end goal. It’s the same thing for business teams. If the direction is not clearly defined, you could have people rowing in all different directions. If the responsibilities are not clearly communicated, you don’t know whose job it is to steer or to just row. And, if everyone is not aligned on the deadlines or the sense of urgency for the goals to be achieved, everyone is going at their own speed. Some are sprinting, some are out for a Sunday stroll. When putting a team together, these expectations and responsibilities have to be known and understood by every team member. And every team member has to be committed to them.

Your Main Priority is the Team First, Individual Second

The team needs to understand the following: We win together or we lose together. If individuals on the team measure their success by whether or not they did their job—even if the team still doesn’t achieve its goals as a whole—the team dynamic doesn’t work. As a sports fan, I get so frustrated with players who seem happy that they had a good game from a stats perspective, despite the team losing. In the workplace, that situation frustrates me even more.  Anyone who says “that’s not my job” or “that’s someone else’s responsibility” to a request for help, should not be on the team. Every member of a successful team not only needs to be able to meet their responsibilities, but be willing to help out if another team member needs help. In franchise development, there were times when I was in the role of player/coach. I managed the sales team while still having sales targets of my own. And any time a member of the sales team needed help with a candidate, with closing a deal, or working through an issue, I always made that the priority over my own sales goals. I knew if I was helping the team to hit its sales goals, even at my own personal cost, we were going to win overall.

Need to Have a Willingness to Make Adjustments

Part of the reason you put a team together is that you are trying to tackle a large objective—one that is not reasonable for one person to accomplish alone; one that may not have ever been accomplished before; or one that needs people from different areas of expertise to meet the goal. You put your plans in place, you delegate out everyone else’s responsibilities, and, together, you go after it. However, it’s still not an automatic road to success. Obstacles are going to come up. Issues will arise. You need to build a method into your team dynamics for making adjustments. This can be a weekly meeting where you review a progress tracker to make sure the timeline will be met. This could be a grading scale on where each team member is at on their objectives. For example, setting a scale of one through five—five being ahead of schedule, three being in jeopardy, and anything below that requires a team conversation and plan of action to move it to a four or five. A team’s ability to make adjustments is more about recognizing when something’s not working and having a plan to address it, rather than simply covering your eyes and ears and bulldozing forward.

Being part of a team is a way that your organization tells you they need you, that shows your talents are valued, and makes it clear that you can be an important part of the solution. It can be as rewarding as anything you ever do as an individual. But it can also be the most frustrating thing if everyone is not rowing in the same direction at the same pace, working for themselves instead of the team, or lacking the ability to make adjustments along the way.  By incorporating these ideals into your team structure and plan, your team is better positioned to not only win, but to do it in a way that strengthens the organization and individuals as a whole.