What Great Teams Do Great

How Ordinary People Accomplish the Extraordinary

David Wheatley, John Barrett, Christi Barrett

• Publisher: Humanergy, Inc.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781646630295
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Or not. Human beings are wired to form connections, but that doesn’t mean that they are naturally equipped for teamwork. Too many people find that working with others makes them miserable, wastes their time and makes them feel like kicking the dog at the end of the day. What Great Teams Do Great is a practical guide to activating the power of choice and the right team processes that create excitement, shared mission, trust and collaboration to achieve bold objectives (and have fun along the way).

CHAPTER 1: TEAMS

TEAMWORK, THOUGH IT’S BANTERED about as if we all understand it the same way, is actually a rather imprecise term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of a team is “a number of persons associated together in work or activity.” The definition may be simple, but it is deceptively difficult to bring complex humans together to accomplish common goals.

Teamwork is often taken for granted. We don’t formally learn about teamwork best practices in school or in most work environments. So much of what we know about teamwork is based on motivational posters (Remember the flock of birds in formation or the rowing team?) or quotations like, “There is no I in team.” (By the way, there are a bunch of Is in every team we’ve ever seen.)

What is the nature of teams? Like the venerable Merriam-Webster Dictionary, we define a team as any group with a shared purpose. Teams can be transient and disband as projects are completed. Some teams exist and evolve over long periods of time. Teams can have names and mission statements and complex structures. A team can also be just two people who need to get something done together.

Regardless of the composition, longevity or formality, teams become necessary when it would be impossible to work alone and achieve the same result. And since so much of what must be done requires more than one brain, understanding teams and helping them function at their peak is of the utmost importance.

WHAT IS TEAMWORK?

Teamwork is how people accomplish their purpose(s) together. Even the most casual teams must collaborate, cooperate and coordinate their work. With varying degrees of success, teams organize and focus thinking and creativity. The glue that keeps a team together is mutual responsibility for success, and an understanding by the team’s members that they couldn’t be successful if they chose to go it alone.

But how do teams achieve high performance? What are the “secret sauces” that are the difference makers? What elevates teams to greatness?

The purpose of this book is to pull back the curtain to find out what great teams do great. How do they come together, stay together and achieve outstanding results?

We’ll share this story of greatness without the classic inspirational narrative. (Sorry, no fish or cheese or parables or fables.) You’ll also find a lack of generals, CEOs and big-name folks—the people who are typically profiled in leadership and teamwork books. With all due respect to these distinguished individuals, this book is about ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things together. We weave in real-life examples of how people come together, get things done, enjoy the process and even surprise themselves at what they accomplish.

WONDER IF THIS BOOK REALLY APPLIES TO YOU?

“I’m not a team leader.”

Whether you’re a team leader or a member of the team with no formal leadership role, every person can step up to make the best of a team’s potential become reality. All great teams recognize that every single person can choose to be a leader.

“My team isn’t associated with a paid job.”

While most teams we reference function within a company, volunteer groups can also benefit from improving team functioning. If you’re thrown together with a small group to accomplish a task without pay, you too will find this book helpful in understanding the essential practices that lead to success.

“My team has been in existence for a long (or short) time.”

The practical strategies in this book will help you build a new team or improve the performance of one that’s ongoing. These recommended methods will include behaviors and tools you can use at any stage of your team’s development, whether newly formed or with years of experience working together.

“My team is awesome already.”

There certainly are great teams operating today. (Lucky you, if that is your current team experience!) The challenge is to stay great, and that takes ongoing work. Let’s be clear that great doesn’t mean perfect. The perfect team is a myth. And, unfortunately, if you think you’ve “arrived” as a group, you’ve begun the slow (or not-so-slow) decline into team dysfunction. It’s just too easy to slip into bad practices. Gravity isn’t working in any team’s favor, so great teams routinely examine what’s going well and what needs improvement. Even great teams must consistently work to stay great.

THE ROOTS OF THESE IDEAS

These tools and processes are based on how teams really function. While we are well-versed in research and theory, What Great Teams Do Great (WGTDG) grew out of team practice and how people really operate as part of a group. Specifically, WGTDG is based on our collective experiences working with teams over the past twenty-five years. We are indebted to the many people who shared their team experiences with us—the good, the bad, the ugly . . . and the great!

We share some of their stories in Chapter 7, and because we value their privacy, we have changed many of the identifying details of the teams we profile. In some cases, two or more team examples are blended together to better illustrate the best practices of What Great Teams Do Great.

CHAPTER 2: LEADERSHIP, TEAMWORK AND CHOICE

WHAT MAKES YOU A LEADER?

In the past, leadership was associated with a particular position, title or rank within the organization. There were leaders and there were followers, and the line between those two categories was perceived to be solid. You were a leader or you were a follower.

Today, leadership is recognized to be a lot more fluid and dynamic. In the context of teamwork, it isn’t just the identified team leader who exercises leadership. Every team member can act as a leader. Indeed, leadership can be exercised by individuals with no direct authority, simply by the power of a choice.

Being a successful manager or positional leader does take significant experience, mentoring, coaching and training. Yet even in formal roles, being a true leader requires more than the right title, knowledge or even skill.

Leadership requires the right mindset and skills. And leadership is more than good intentions or attitude. It is about doing. Whether you are a team leader or a team member, leadership is conveyed through the choices you make at every moment of every day.

LEADERSHIP CHOICES

Choices can be easy to spot when there is an emergency. A firefighter rushes into a burning building, in spite of the danger. A business owner responds quickly to drastic market changes that might otherwise doom the company.

Choosing to act like a leader isn’t always dramatic. The majority of leadership choices are a habitual way of behaving, something that people engage in as a matter of routine. In emergencies and daily routine, people fall back on what is comfortable most of the time. That’s why our daily choices don’t feel like conscious decisions.

Humans are creatures of habit. We simply don’t stop to consider that there may be another way of being. And yet there is. In this simple fact lies great possibility—the opportunity to tune in and choose a different behavior from the one that is on autopilot.

Take the example of a maintenance worker, Margot, who sees a peer struggling to complete a task. Margot is busy already. She can walk by, saying to herself, “Not my problem.” Or Margot can stop, ask a question or offer help. Noticing a team member’s dilemma and getting involved in a helpful way is a choice to act like a leader, even when it’s not required.

Regardless of the role or the specific situation, being a leader means stepping up and taking ownership for who we are, what we do and what matters most. It means being aware of choice points and not just going with the flow. It means stepping away from the automatic mode from stimulus (“He insulted me”) to response ...