The Power of a Positive Team

Proven Principles and Practices that Make Great Teams Great

Jon Gordon

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119430599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

A book about teams to help teams become more positive, united and connected.

Worldwide bestseller— the author of The Energy Bus and The Power of Positive Leadership shares the proven principles and practices that build great teams - and provides practical tools to help teams overcome negativity and enhance their culture, communication, connection, commitment and performance.

Jon Gordon doesn't just research the keys to great teams, he has personally worked with some of the most successful teams on the planet and has a keen understanding of how and why they became great. In The Power of a Positive Team, Jon draws upon his unique team building experience as well as conversations with some of the greatest teams in history in order to provide an essential framework, filled with proven practices, to empower teams to work together more effectively and achieve superior results.

Utilizing examples from the writing team who created the hit show Billions, the National Champion Clemson Football team, the World Series contending Los Angeles Dodgers, The Miami Heat and the greatest beach volleyball team of all time to Navy SEAL's, Marching bands, Southwest Airlines, USC and UVA Tennis, Twitter, Apple and Ford, Jon shares innovative strategies to transform a group of individuals into a united, positive and powerful team.

Jon not only infuses this book with the latest research, compelling stories, and strategies to maintain optimism through adversity… he also shares his best practices to transform negativity, build trust (through his favorite team building exercises) and practical ways to have difficult conversations—all designed to make a team more positive, cohesive, stronger and better.

The Power of a Positive Team also provides a blueprint for addressing common pitfalls that cause teams to fail—including complaining, selfishness, inconsistency, complacency, unaccountability—while offering solutions to enhance a team's creativity, grit, innovation and growth.

This book is meant for teams to read together. It's written in such a way that if you and your team read it together, you will understand the obstacles you will face and what you must do to become a great team.If you read it together, stay positive together, and take action together you will accomplish amazing things TOGETHER.

Chapter 1
The Power of Positive

Positivity is more than a state of mind. It's a power that gives teams a competitive advantage in business, sports, creativity, and life.

I don't encourage teams to be positive just because it's more fun, enjoyable, and rewarding to be part of a positive team. I am passionate about creating positive teams because I know that positive teams are also more engaged and more likely to overcome all the forces against them and make a greater impact.

It's challenging to work toward a vision and create a positive future. It's difficult to launch new ideas, products, movies, missions, and organizations. It's not easy to pursue greatness and do what has never been done before. As a team you will face all kinds of adversity, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you and your team. There will be moments you want to give up. There will be days when your vision seems more like fantasy than reality. That's why becoming a positive team is so important. When I talk about positive teams, I am not talking about Pollyanna positivity, where you wear rose-colored glasses and ignore the reality of the situation. Positive teams are not about fake positivity. They are about real optimism, vision, purpose, and unity that make great teams great. Positive teams confront the reality of challenging situations and work together to overcome them.

Pessimistic teams don't become legendary. Negative teams talk about and create problems but they don't solve them. Throughout history we see that it's the positive teams that create the future and change the world. The future belongs to those who believe in it and work together with other positive people in order to create it.

I have witnessed the power of a positive team, and the research supports that positivity is a difference maker. Research by Manju Puri and David Robinson at Duke University found that optimistic people were more likely to succeed in business, sports, and politics. Relationship expert John Gottman's pioneering research found that marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a five-to-one ratio of positive to negative interactions; when the ratio approaches a one-to-one ratio, marriages are more likely to end in divorce.

The positive energy you share with your team is significant. According to organizational expert Wayne Baker, who works with fellow researcher Robert Cross, “the more you energize people in your workplace, the higher your work performance.” Baker says that this occurs because people want to be around you. You attract talent and people are more likely to devote discretionary time to your projects. They'll offer new ideas, information, and opportunities to you before others.”

When you have a group of people doing this on a team, you create a positive feedback loop that makes your team operate at a higher level. Many think that you have to choose between positivity and winning, but you don't. Positivity leads to winning. The research is clear. Positivity is more than a state of mind. It's a power that gives teams a competitive advantage in business, sports, creativity, and life.

Since there are many different types of teams, I made it a point to include various examples from business, education, sports, music, technology, and more. Please know that even though I share a number of examples of sports teams, I'm aware that not everyone is a sports fan. However, I want to make it clear that the reason why I share these examples is to demonstrate how these principles work in real life.

The great thing about sports teams is that you can observe the effectiveness of these principles over the course of a season. You can tell who has become a positive team and who hasn't. You can see it in person and on television. I've been fortunate to work with many sports teams, and they are great case studies. And since I've also worked with countless businesses and schools, I can assure you the same principles apply to every team and organization. If you are not a fan of sports, simply take the sports example and think about how it applies to your team. You will discover a number of great ideas to make your team better.

Positive teams don't happen by accident. They happen when team members invest their time and energy to create a positive culture; work toward a shared vision with a greater purpose; work together with optimism and belief and overcome the negativity that too often sabotages teams and organizations. Positive teams take on the battle, overcome the negativity, face the adversity, and keep moving forward. They communicate, connect, commit, and encourage each other. They build relationships and trust that makes them stronger.

Positive teams commit to the mission and to each other. Instead of serving themselves, they serve one another. They care more about their effort, work, and teammates than they do about all the distractions vying for their attention. People on positive teams have a lot of belief in each other, a lot of love for each other, and a lot of desire to accomplish something great together. They pursue excellence and always strive to get better and make their team better. They lose their ego in the service of their team and find an uncommon collective greatness in the process. Because they care more, they do more, invest more, commit more, and accomplish more.

Chapter 2
Positive Teams Create Positive Cultures

Behind every great team is a strong culture; great leadership; and passionate, committed people.

There's a reason why all great teams have a great culture. It's because culture is the living and breathing essence of what a team believes, values, and does. Team culture is the written and unwritten rules that say how a team communicates, connects, thinks, works, and acts.

Culture isn't just one thing. It's everything. Culture drives expectations and beliefs. Expectations and beliefs drive behaviors. Behaviors drive habits. And habits create the future.

When Apple was just the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak), they knew the culture they wanted to create. They would be the culture that challenged the status quo. Everything they did, including hiring people, running campaigns, and creating products, was influenced by this culture. Even now, the culture continues to influence everything they do and the way they do it. It's why Apple is famous for its maxim, “Culture beats strategy.” You have to have the right strategy, of course, but it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy is successful.

Your most important job as a team is to create a culture—and not just any culture. You must create a positive culture that energizes and encourages each other, fosters connected relationships and great teamwork, empowers and enables your team to learn and grow, and provides an opportunity for you to do your best work.

Create Your Culture

When I was a sophomore on the Cornell lacrosse team we were ranked ninth in the country. I was the starting face-off midfielder and we played a tough game against West Point that went into sudden-death overtime, which means the first team to score wins. I remember standing at the face-off circle in the middle of the field thinking, If I lose this face-off we will likely lose the game. I need to win it.

I lost the face-off and, the next thing I knew, my opponent was running down the field along the sideline with the ball. I was so mad that I ran as fast as I could and somehow caught up and hit him really hard and the ball fell out of his stick. I picked it up before he did and, as he pushed me out of bounds, I jumped in the air and threw the ball behind my back to my friend and teammate, John Busse, who caught the ball with one hand and threw it to our other teammate, Joe Lando, who scored the game winner for us.

Please know I'm not telling you this to impress you with my athletic ability. It was my one and only great play in college. I'm telling you this because we won so many close games that year. But during my senior year, we lost a lot of close games. We even had a chance to beat Princeton, who won the national championship, in overtime but couldn't pull it off.

Looking back, I can see that the clear difference between my sophomore year and my senior year was our team culture. We had lost the championship culture that had been created. As Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens says, “Your culture is not just your tradition. It's the people in the locker room who carry it on.” Unfortunately, my fellow teammates and I didn't create or carry on the culture of our older teammates before us.

I wish I had been the leader then that I am now but, unfortunately, I wasn't. I didn't know how important culture was to the success of a team. I didn't know you could lose your culture. I didn't know that culture and performance could change so quickly. I now know that building a great team begins with creating a great a culture. I know that, as a team, you are always creating your culture. You are creating culture every moment of every day by what you think, say, and do. It doesn't matter what your culture was like yesterday or last year. What matters is what you are doing to create it today.

Culture Is Dynamic, Not Static

People often look to leadership when it comes to the culture of an organization and team—and they should. Leaders have a huge influence on the culture. They set the tone and decide what the team values and stands for, but it's important to note that your culture is brought to life and created by everyone on your team.

You and your team members have a huge influence on your culture and the culture you create. It's not just about what your manager, school principal, boss, coach, or supervisor says and does. It's also about what you say and do. If you are a part of a negative culture, don't see yourself as a victim and by-product of it. Instead get together with your team and create a positive culture to replace it.

Culture is not static; it's dynamic. You can change it by what you say. You can elevate it by what you think. You can improve it by what you share. You can transform it by what you do. You can be a positive team that creates a positive culture right now.

Make Your Bus Great

People often ask me what to do if they are part of an organization with a negative culture but desire to have a positive culture in their department or team. I tell them what I shared in my book, The Energy Bus.

You may not be driving the big bus but you can make your own bus great. Create the culture of your team and show the rest of the organization what a positive team looks like.

Over the years I've had many teams do this and report to me that their team inspired other teams. In some cases, the positive team became the model for the entire organization, and transformed it as a result.

Never doubt the impact that a positive team can have on its organi...