Real Dream Teams

Seven Practices Used by World-Class Team Leaders to Achieve Extraordinary Results

Robert Fisher, Bo Thomas

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781574440065
• eBook ISBN: 9781000162134
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Want to achieve spectacular success in your personal and business life? Looking for ways to mold and capture superior teamwork, cohesion, and bone-deep dedication? Put Real Dream Teams on your list of must reads. From the headlines used to describe groups such as the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team, to Hollywood production moguls, to attorneys clashing in major criminal cases, we have all heard the phrase "dream teams" used and misused. Real Dream Teams is a book that focuses on extraordinary efforts by conditioned winners who have achieved outstanding results through what the authors call "synergistic group dynamics." Let Real Dream Teams point you in the direction of becoming a more effective team leader and team member. Read of team efforts and extraordinary practices and results as demonstrated by recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Medal of Honor, national championships, and best-in-industry awards. Take tips from those who have achieved their membership in Real Dream Teams:

“IS WHAT YOU’RE DOING IMPORTANT?”

PRACTICE #1: COMMITMENT TO A CLEAR MISSION

Extraordinary results begin with somebody’s dream. Before a true mission can exist, someone must have a dream, and the dream must be shared and embraced by the team members. We all have dreams for our families, for ourselves, and for the organizations we lead. However, what seems to separate the twelve real dream team leaders from most people is their level of aspiration, the scope of their dreams, and the tenacity with which they hold on to their dreams—they just don’t give up!

Henry Ford dreamed of an automobile for every American. Donald Petersen dreamed of a quality automobile for every American. We were eager to learn what Ford Motor Company had done under Petersen’s leadership in the early 1980s to make “Quality Job One” at Ford, especially after the negative reputation that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s. “What did you do to turn Ford around?” we asked Petersen. Before the question was completed, he was reaching for his inside coat pocket from which he produced a laminated card containing a statement of Ford’s mission and values—the seeds of the Ford revolution. His dream had been captured in these statements and set in motion on a long weekend retreat several years before. He told us it had taken more than five years to develop a “critical mass” of believers who shared his dream at Ford.

The leaders of great teams seem to have the ability to create a sense of mission for the teams they lead. This leadership ability is sometimes treated as an almost mystical quality that is only available to heroes and superhumans—but that simply is not the case. This ability can be captured by “regular” parents, managers, spouses, community leaders, and in other team situations; it yields a powerful tool for achieving extraordinary results.

The leaders of real dream teams seem to have at least four characteristics that enable them to bring out the best efforts in people. First, they seem to have a sense of vision which allows them to view things differently than most people. This visionary ability is characterized by a “mountain-top” view, a futuristic/long-term view, and a strong belief in the importance of “the cause.” Their mountain-top view allows them to see the forest rather than just the trees; they see the complexity of issues and seek out and solve the intricate relationships among systems. H.L. Mencken once said that “for every problem there is a solution that is simple, direct, and wrong!” These effective leaders avoid overly simplistic solutions that don’t work. They seek out difficult challenges and then stick with it until the job is done. John F. Kennedy’s classic visionary challenge contained in his inaugural address is an example of the desire and ability to look at problems from a different perspective: “Some people see things as they are and ask why? Others see things as they should be and ask why not?”

While visionary thinking is the beginning of team greatness, it is not enough by itself. Leaders must have the ability to communicate the vision to others. Martin Luther King had a vision of how things could and should be; his “I Have a Dream” speech is widely regarded as one of the most powerful, influential communication events. In that speech, he described his dream:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia that the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character….This is our hope….

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

King drew the picture; he communicated the vision. As a consequence, millions of people who had little hope of things ever getting any better gained hope. When the leader has a great vision and communicates it, thereby generating hope, a mission is created. For a mission to truly drive a cause or an organization, there must be hope.

The third characteristic these leaders possess is the ability to empower and involve others in achieving the mission. They recognize that they cannot achieve the mission alone. They fully utilize the resources of the team. They listen to and build up others. They share power, and in the process they actually become more powerful. They take their dreams and organize them into reality, so they are able to come true. Sam Walton’s dream of building the most successful retail company in the world only became reality as a result of organizing and implementing his dream. He built a team of outstanding people who were empowered by sharing his vision. Through their commitment and effort, Wal-Mart grew from one small store in rural Arkansas to the world’s largest retailer in less than thirty years.

The fourth mission-related characteristic that these people personify is especially difficult to label. Is it dedication, discipline, faith, self-motivation, or commitment? It is probably all of the above. As we interviewed these leaders and listened to them describe their greatest team experiences, it became clear that these men and women are different! They know why they exist, they know what they’re doing, and, most of all, they communicate an unwavering, uncompromising commitment to achieving a mission which is capable of inspiring others to do their best. John Wooden, Don Tyson, Sybil Mobley, Jody Conradt, Lou Whittaker, and all the others exude a dedication and commitment that cause the uncommitted to feel uncomfortable, perhaps even a bit embarrassed, in their presence.

Nowhere did we see a greater dedication and commitment to the mission than in the life of Gertrude Elion. We asked Dr. Elion, now in her seventies, to think back over her life and tell us if she had any regrets about the way she had lived her life to this point. This great woman, who has been single for her entire life, thought for a second and then simply said, “children.” We followed up, asking her to clarify this comment. As her eyes glistened, she went on to explain:

I love children. I would have loved to have had children of my own—a daughter or son. But I just couldn’t do it—my work was so important—I decided that I couldn’t do both. I decided that the best way for me to show my love for children was through finding a treatment or cure for this terrible disease. So I never took the time to be married and to have children. But I would have loved to have had children.

Can you imagine that level of commitment? Most of us probably cannot. While we are not advocating that everyone give up their families so they can focus on nothing but their work, we present this story as an example of the level of commitment we encountered in visiting with these real dream team leaders.

Creating A Clear Sense Of Mission

Whether you review the ideas of the great ancient philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates or ask a modern-day philosopher at a liberal arts university, you are likely to get the same response if you ask them to identify the most important question a man or woman confronts in life. They will probably tell you that the big question in life is “Why do I exist?” Individuals who have confronted, wrestled with, and answered this question to their own satisfaction typically exhibit high levels of motivation, self-confidence, and a strong sense of direction. They know where they are going! Stephen Covey, in his widely read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, clearly underscores the effectiveness of having a personal mission or “beginning with the end in mind.” The message is to focus your energy on the important stuff!

The great management philosophers tell us that this same question—why do we exist?—is the most important question teams answer—or don’t answer. Peter Drucker, perhaps the most widely respected management philosopher of this century, has observed that while nothing may seem simpler or more obvious than the “why” question, “managerial neglect of this question is the most important single cause of organization frustration and failure.” In his experience, “when the concept of an organization’s business [or reason for being] is not thought through and spelled out clearly, the enterprise lacks a solid foundation for establishing realistic objectives, strategies, plans, and work assignments” (Drucker, 1973, p. 77).

A shared common goal as a powerful builder of group cohesion has always emerged from group dynamics research. The figure below depicts the lack of a common sense of direction that exists in many groups. The large arrow represents the general direction desired by the team’s leadership. The small arrows represent the efforts of the individuals who constitute the team. While some of the team members are going in the desired direction, some are directing their work at an angle to the optimum and some are even pulling against the team’s mission.

People sometimes deliberately pull against the team or organization because the organizational goals may not be compatible with their individual goals. In a few cases, people may become so embittered toward the leader or others that they want the organization to fail. More often, however, the problem is not one of people deliberately working against one another and the organization. Instead, the lack of concerted effort is a natural by-product of team members simply not knowing the overall direction of the team and how they can contribute to its success. A basic assumption of the application of team concepts is the assumption of good intentions. That is, most people in the organization go to work every day with high internal motivation, wanting to win, and looking for the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the success of the team. It then becomes a key leadership/management responsibility to identify a clear sense of direction and to facilitate the alignment of personal goals with the organization’s general mission. The figure below suggests the synergistic increase in power that occurs when this process is managed properly.

This sense of oneness, or pulling together and knowing where you are going, is the opposite of the frustration that is expressed in the 1970s film Bonnie and Clyde. Toward the end of their exploits and shortly before their violent deaths, a disenchanted Bonnie tells her partner Clyde, “I always thought we was going somewhere, but I guess we was just going.”

While the other characteristics of great teams have the potential to contribute significantly to achieving this oneness phenomenon, none has greater potential than the establishment of a clear sense of direction through a common mission. This, of course, is not a new idea. Henri Fayol, one of the founders of contemporary management thought, wrote about it in 1916. In Administration industriell et generate (General and Industrial Management), he described what he called the “unity of management” principles. According to Fayol, there should be one manager and one plan for all operations which have the same object in view. The manager’s job is to see that all efforts are directed toward the same end.

Fayol’s idea is simple but powerful, especially if one goes beyond such typical management phrases as common direction or common goal and focuses instead on the more dynamic, competitive term mission. The managers and real dream team leaders we interviewed weren’t just working toward a shared sense of direction. They were on a mission!

Sybil Mobley isn’t just trying to make the Florida A&M School of Business better. She has a clearly defined mission to change for the better the lives of the young men and women whom she views as her responsibility. One need only ask the people who were around her as she built the school’s great program and faculty—she was on a crusade to achieve a mission.

Lou Whittaker was doing more than leading a team in the common direction of the top of Mt. Everest. As they endured incredible hardship, camping for months in small tents, facing unbearable weather, and existing in a rarefied atmosphere that creates almost constant pain, these men and women actually put their lives at risk as a matter of routine. They knew too well from their past experience that the consequence of one small mistake could be instant death for themselves or their teammates. But they endured the hardship, they accepted the pain, and they took the risks. Why? Because they were on a mission that would take them to the top of the world.

When we talked with General Brady about his experience in rescuing the wounded in Vietnam, he said that a sense of mission was critical in enabling him and his people to take the risks they needed to take.

…dedication to our fighting troops, to save their lives. That was the mission…we were very close knit because every tough mission was a great victory for us. It was like winning the championship because you went out, things were very, very tense, people were nervous, always a lot of confusion, people hurt, and how in the heck are we going to do this, and how are we going to get through these obstacles. And then all of a sudden it’s over and you’ve got to get him back, and then he’s in the hospital, and they’re all in the hospital. Then you just take a big sigh of relief!

Brady went on to talk about how a strong sense of mission works to pull diverse people together:

You’ll find people…who can be as strange bedfellows as you’ll ever want to meet. They can be weird in many ways but when it comes to the mission…they are all focused. They don’t take themselves seriously and they don’t take most other things seriously, unless it’s time for that mission. They are fanatics when it comes to mission.

Nothing has more potential to pull a team together than the development of, and the focus on, a common mission. People can be fanatics about the mission. In working with a variety of groups, we have observed teams that exhibit varying levels of cohesion. Some are able to endure tremendous hardship without complaining. Others seem to whine and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Real Dream Team Leaders
• “Is What You’re Doing Important?” Practice #1: Commitment To A Clear Mission
• “A Turtle on a FenceposT” Practice #2: Mutual Support, Respect, And Encouragement
• “None of Us Is As Good As All of Us” Practice #3: Clearly Defined And Accepted Roles
• “Let’s Win Championships” Practice #4: Win–Win Cooperation
• “Whose Rope Are You Willing to Hook Into?” Practice #5: Individual Competency
• “Just Getting Together and Talking” Practice #6: Empowering Communication
• “Respect Without Fear” Practice #7: Winning Attitude
• From Seven Concepts to Seven Practices: Putting Teamwork Into Action
• Bibliography