What Have You NOT Done For Me Lately?

Me vs We

Every year hundreds of books are published, and millions of videos produced, all professing to make you more personally productive. But what if I told you that even the act of becoming more productive might be detrimental?

To illustrate why this is, here’s a quick sports story, which you will be familiar with if you watched the Netflix documentary, The Last Dance. That show tells the story of the Chicago Bulls in their glory days and, of course, their superstar player – Michael Jordan. In the series, the Bulls Coach Phil Jackson describes sitting down with Jordan and explaining that he needs Jordan to change the way he plays. He is basically asking his star player to take a step back in a way that is likely to negatively affect his own contribution to the score line, but increase the chances of the Bulls wining overall. Jordan eventually agrees, and the Bulls become a multi-championship winning team.

There are many examples and counter-examples of this in sport, and they all boil down to a simple fact. There are teams of great individuals and there are great teams. Only the latter become consistently remarkable.

The same principles apply to the workplace. Companies are often full of great individual contributors, but few have mastered the art of building elite teams.

So what does this mean if you want to be part of a great team, or even lead one?

Well, first as an individual, it probably means a change in mindset. You are going to have to become deeply invested in the goals the team is looking to drive – so much so that it overwhelms your personal desire to be effective. This will probably be very hard, as you’ve probably spent years figuring out how to do your best work, and a change to your method may well reduce your own productivity. But it’s possible to do, particularly if the goals of the team align well with your own personal values and goals.

Now to the team itself. If you are trying to build a great team, stop focusing, at least initially, on getting all “A-Players”. Instead, focus on three components – trust, generosity, and diversity of skills. Trust allows team members to share openly and naturally jump in to help each other problem solve. Generosity means that team members focus on achieving the overall goal, not who “scores” it. Finally, a diverse collection of skills, particularly soft skills, help ensure that you have a team that is adaptable enough to take on all challenges, no matter how things change.

As you focus on these components, remember how you manage the team on a day-to-day basis, how you reward team members and how you respond to challenges all impact how well the team can be sustained. Think how you celebrate wins, and how you deal with setbacks. Do you do all of that AS a team, or do you single out individuals?

Trust, generosity and diverse skills are attributes of every great sports team. Cultivate those elements and build your next great work team.