What makes a team click?
by Fred Roed on 01/12/06 at 10:45 am
4 comments
Recently I asked myself what’s the most important business lesson I’ve learned running World Wide Creative SA. After some thought, I now believe it is the understanding of what makes a team click.
Until recently, I believed that ‘team’ was merely about bringing complementary skills to the party – I viewed it like the different positions in sport. Looking back on it now, I reckon that this was misguided. Varying skills are definitely important, and it’s why one would write a job spec for a new position, but there is something far more important.
Look at how a sports team can be the best team in the world on paper, but can fall apart on the field. History is littered with great examples: Portugal getting beaten by Greece in the 2004 football European Cup. The ‘Galacticos’ of Real Madrid, made up of some the world’s finest footballers, falling to many lesser-known teams. The various US basketball ‘Dream Teams’ in the Olympic Games getting drilled by smaller, poorer states.
The element that makes a team achieve great things is the relationship between the members. In any friendship, marriage, partnership or collaboration, a good understanding of relationship is critical to not only the longevity of the team, but the effectiveness of the team. More than college degrees or years of experience, we need to fall back on some old favourites:
- Honour
- Respect
- Humour
- Humility
- Honesty
After personally witnessing how one person can ruin the effectiveness of a team (by messing with the relationships between the other members) I also reckon that the ability to facilitate strong relationships is a massive asset in good leadership. In other words, if you can get your team to relate well with each other, they will be able to punch way, way, way above their weight.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Shane
Dec 1st, 2006
Great post Fred, love your work!
If you can just find another word for “Respect’ starting with ‘H’ – you’ll have the 5 H’s to highly effective teams!!
Fred
Dec 1st, 2006
If you say it with a Mexican accent it sounds a little like ‘hhhespect’. What do you think?
Karin
Dec 2nd, 2006
Take your pick
Homage
Heed
Heedfulness
Hail
High Regard
Hold in Esteem
Hauteur
http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/respect
Anna Farmery
Dec 5th, 2006
One thing that I always find amazing is that in business you spend months bringing a team together and yet if you look at how quickly the individual competitors come together for the European Ryder Cup..competitors one day, allies the next. The reason a very clear goal that they all believe in….