Team

“A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.” – John Wooden

One of the things that gets mentioned a lot in leadership seminars and workshops is the importance of teams. Do you have a highly effective team? Do you do a good job of leading your team? Does your team achieve their goals? All good stuff.

But what does any of that really mean? What does it really mean to have an effective team? How do we know when that’s happening? How do we make it happen?

I could write for weeks to try and cover all of that, but I’m just going to pick out one small but important piece. If you’re leading a group of people, what does it mean for them to be an effective team? I don’t have all the answers, but here’s what that means to me.

First, it means that your people are all doing things they’re really good at. You (and they) understand what their strengths are and where those can be used, and then they spend most of their time doing those things. Similarly, everyone understands what their weaknesses are and does whatever they can to avoid them. I once heard a football coach say that calling plays was easy: “Figure out what you’re good at, and do lots of that. Figure out what you’re not good at, and don’t do that.” The same thing applies to your team.

Second, it means that the things your people are really good at, the strengths you’re having them focus on, are making the whole organization better. Are those really meaningful & useful strengths? Do they really have an impact? Example: I once worked for an organization who had an employee who said that his biggest strength was that he was great at grilling hamburgers (no joke). And he was. The problem was, you can only have so many company picnics. Shortly thereafter, he was gone.

That’s a silly example, but the point is this: everybody has strengths, but some people’s strengths don’t fit in the organization. Too often we let people limp along doing things they’re not very good at because the things they are good at don’t really help us, but we don’t want to fire them. You’re not doing them any favors by letting them be mediocre to poor at their jobs. You’re not doing the organization any favors either.

Think about your team, and where each team member’s strengths lie. Are those team members being used to their fullest? Is ‘their fullest’ something that makes your team great? If the answer to either of those questions is “no”, then you have some work to do.