Decoding Success for Winning Teams
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
Decoding Success for Winning Teams
Have you ever watched the TV show called Ted Lasso? It’s about an American Football coach (Ted) who moves to the UK to coach an English Soccer team and he knows very little about the country, the team, and the game of soccer. If you haven’t watched it, maybe consider putting it on your watch list. It’s a comedy at heart and it is packed with amazing tips for leaders of teams.
One of the first things Ted does when he joins the club is assess the team players and how the team interacts and works together. His initial assessment is they aren’t really working as a ‘team’ at all – more like a bunch of individual contributors – some heavily entrenched in their own game with little thought of the rest of the team. There’s grandstanding, some players are being isolated, and they are not really connected to a shared goal that they put above all else.
It’s a great show and demonstrates the need to understand and measure how our teams are performing BEFORE we try to put any solutions in place.
(Image by Pexels from Pixabay)
I do have a small issue with comparing our workplace teams to high-performance sports teams though, for the following reasons:
Sports teams get to practice 90% of the time for the 10% they are on the field. Workplace teams are ‘on the field’ 100% of the time.
Sports teams obsess over talent and have the opportunity for prospective players to attend boot camps; training camps; pre-season games; managers and coaches get to watch previous footage of games being played etc. In the workplace, we are often constrained by who is available at the time we need them and whether can we afford them.
Sports teams have really clear goals (win the World Cup) and have clear measures of success (win/loss scorecard). Work teams often suffer from poorly defined goals and metrics.
Sports teams have a lot more information about their competition and can adjust their game accordingly. Workplace team challenges are less clear and harder to anticipate.
However, it doesn’t mean that we can’t learn and borrow some of the best practices where it makes sense, but mindlessly applying sports comparisons to work teams is not particularly useful.
(Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay)
So what do we do?
What are some of the lessons we can take forward?
The first is to measure our current team’s performance against the components of what a winning team would look like. That way, we are dealing with current information, and we can start to plot our path to success.
I often find that most teams (there can be the odd exception) are not broken. Often they want to shift the dial and increase their level of impact and the results they want to achieve. The thing they struggle with is where do I start?
When we can measure our team with a well-validated diagnostic that is fit for this purpose, teams can come away having a clear road map for the work they will then do. When we are super busy (which we all are), it helps to have the way forward identified and clear.
So, in order to create a winning team with higher levels of performance, have more impact, and achieve results faster, here is my approach and recommendation:
Measure how your team is performing with a well-validated diagnostic that is fit for purpose (not all diagnostics are created equally).
Through a facilitated process of unpacking your teams’ results, the team gets clarity on how you are all performing against the components of a high-performing team.
Create a plan on how the team can work through all the components of a winning team, paying particular attention to the areas they may have scored lower.
Once a team has worked through this process and has incorporated new ways of working together, integrating new team members becomes easier, having robust conversations comes more naturally, and results are achieved faster with less friction.
Need some help?
If you would like to explore how you and your team could get quick insights around your performance and then create an action plan to shift the dial, then let’s chat.