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Five essentials to building great teams.
October 2008
Volume VI, Issue 5
YOUR GUIDE TO SECURING THE POWER OF PERSUASION
COACHING SERVICES TO IMPROVE PUBLIC SPEAKING, PRESENTATION & COMMUNICATION SKILLS
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Lessons from the Olympic
Games: How to Build
a
Great Team
"The main ingredient of success is the rest of the team."
- John Wooden
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Building a great team is a significant challenge, and every organization faces this reality
each day. Assembling the correct people and putting them in places where they can and will
succeed is a task that every business leader, manager, director and supervisor must take
seriously.
On August 26, 2008, I returned home from the experience of a lifetime – the Olympic Games – and
it’s time to write about it and share some of what I learned with you. Olympic Sailing is a major
part of my life. Over the last four years, I have served as Chairman of the Olympic Sailing Program.
This role is strategic and requires that I assemble and manage a team of about 25 people, and that team
leads a program of about 100 athletes. We are responsible for funding and managing a multimillion-dollar
budget and are tasked by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) with putting the best possible national
sailing team on the water. We answer to multiple masters – USOC, our corporate sponsors, our private
donors, and the Board of Directors at US Sailing.
In addition to my role as Chairman, I was asked to serve in a second role as Team Leader
for the Olympic Sailing Team at the 2008 Games. The role of Team Leader is very different
from the role of Chairman. It is far more tactical and less strategic. It is about removing
barriers to performance during competition and getting through the many daily challenges
inherent in the modern Olympic experience.
Serving in these dual roles of Chairman and Team Leader has given me a unique perspective
to look closely at the long- and short-term challenges of leadership and team building.
In the next few issues of The
Beacon I will address a range of issues on team building, performance enhancement,
and team communication, and I will also be sharing lessons and anecdotes from my Olympic
experiences.
Leading an Olympic Sailing Team is not easy. In China, our Team consisted of 18 athletes
across 11 events, with 20 support staff serving in a variety of roles. It was a large team,
filled with goal-oriented elite athletes and service-oriented but equally goal-oriented
staff. There were few “wallflowers” on this team, and a number of high-powered
personalities. The athletes each had their own goals for the Games, and our success as
a team would be graded exclusively on their individual performances across the 11 events.
Unlike other sports such as gymnastics, sailing has no “team” competition
based on the combined performances in individual events. And building a team culture among
people who are focusing almost exclusively on their own goals is about as tough as it gets.
Team building takes on many different forms, but The Latimer Group has a list of questions
we ask when first examining any team-building situation:
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1. |
Are you building a team of full-time staff, volunteers, or some
combination thereof?
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2. |
Are you building a team of people who will succeed and fail together or, rather,
a group of individual performers whose potential successes are less dependent on each
other?
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3. |
What is the environment in which you are building this team? Is it a positive one?
Or are you turning around a problem situation?
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4. |
Have you inherited your team, or are you building from the ground up? |
These are not the only questions that need asking,
but they are some of the more important ones.
And different answers to these questions will
lead to different team-building strategies. However,
over the course of my time with the 2008 Olympic
Sailing Team, a few things became obvious to
me, and seem to apply to almost all team-building
situations.
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1. |
Great team building starts at the top of the team. Each member
of the team listens to the words and watches the behavior of the team’s leadership.
And whether they realize it or not, the members of the team will mimic that behavior.
The words and the actions of the team’s leader need to be consistent. If the
leader talks the talk about being a “team” but does not walk the walk,
team members will follow suit. I always advise budding team leaders to ask themselves
what behaviors they want to see on their team… and then make sure they model
those behaviors themselves.
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2. |
Great team building requires a common goal. Teams come together
for common goals, and if there are not clearly identified, understood and shared goals,
the concept of “team” will be nothing more than empty language. The team
needs to have a reason for being and a common cause to work on together. This starts
with the leadership setting the goals. Perhaps you consult with others while you identify
these goals, but at the end of the day, if you are at the top of the organizational
chart, the goal setting is your responsibility.
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3. |
Great team building requires trust and open communication. If you
and I can’t trust each other, then our ability to work together will suffer.
But how do we bring the idea of trust to life? Little things go a long way. Great team
building requires that we do a few obvious things. Great teams have a culture
where confidences are respected, where criticism is lodged privately and not intended
to embarrass, and where the lines of communication are open in all directions. In other
words, building a good team culture is no different than building a great relationship
with another person. Trust and open communication are essential.
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4. |
Great team building is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. It
is a natural human reaction to focus attention on the positives, nurture our winners,
and celebrate the successes. However, in a team of human beings, any member who feels
ignored or distanced from the team can quickly become a cancer that can destroy the
health of the rest of the group. I’m a big believer in focusing resources
where they can provide the greatest ROI. However, certain team situations demand that
you address the weaker parts of the team equation. Teams are composed of human beings,
all of whom have feelings, and all of whom can communicate negativity to other human
beings. Team leaders cannot afford to ignore anyone on the team. Everyone needs some
attention. Everyone needs some love.
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5. |
Great team building requires that people must want to be on the team. This
last entry on the list is really the sum total of the previous four. Talented and successful
people have plenty of options when it comes to how they spend their time and how they
quench their competitive thirst. If you are going to build a great team, you need to
find great talent. And great talent gravitates towards great team situations. The team
leader needs to create an environment that will attract top talent. |
Teams are nothing more than a collection of people. Each one of us is different, and
because of that fact, every collection of people will be unique. So it is very difficult
to create hard and fast, step-by-step rules for building great teams.
However, regardless of the situation, I do believe that each of these five rules apply.
Great teams are no accident. Great teams can be created, and they can be duplicated. But
it takes a great deal of thought and care to build a group of individuals into a functional
team.
I’ve been home for just a few weeks and am just now starting to catch my breath with
my feet back on the familiar ground of Wallingford, CT. My Olympic experience was both
exhilarating and exhausting… it was indeed the experience of a lifetime. I have
plenty more thoughts to share still floating around inside my head, and I’ll do my
best to get those thoughts out and on paper for you in the coming weeks and months.
Dean M. Brenner
President |
Marni H. Lane
Media Specialist |
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© 2008 The Latimer Group. All Rights Reserved.
Dean M. Brenner -
The Latimer Group: 203.265.4344.
Feedback or comments: dmbrenner@thelatimergroup.com.
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