Ten Keys to a Winning Team

A team is not a bunch of people merely tied together organizationally. Instead, it is a group of individuals working together purposely as a result of motivation and mutually beneficial goals.

One of the best views of teams comes from the world of team sports. In sports, the motivation and mutual goal is usually winning the championship.

Since I was blessed to be a point guard on both a high school and collegiate championship basketball team, I’ll use basketball to illustrate what I consider to be the keys to a winning team:

1. Having a good coach (knowing how to spot talent, utilize each player’s strength, create a winning environment & set short-term and long term goals)

2. Focusing on the ultimate goal in front of them (winning the championship)

3. Being coachable (working on a shortcoming the coach points out to you)

4. Desiring to get better (working hard at practices between games and during the off season)

5. Holding each other accountable for their performance without being overly critical (telling a teammate his foul shooting needs to improve)

6. Helping each other to improve (a great foul shooter giving tips and/or encouragement to a struggling teammate)

7. Willing to put the good of the team ahead of personal goals (pass up your own jump shot for a teammate’s dunk)

8. Accepting their role on the team (somebody has to be willing to rebound more than they shoot)

9. Having each other’s back in the event of a problem or error (hustling back after a teammate’s turnover to prevent the opponent from scoring on a fast break)

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10. Celebrating milestones (going out together after being the team’s biggest competitor)

Two quotes of relevance:

“Everybody on a championship team doesn’t get publicity, but everyone can say he’s a champion.”
Magic Johnson, former NBA superstar and winner of 5 NBA championships

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
Michael Jordan, former NBA superstar and winner of 6 NBA championships

 

 

Posted in Teams & Teambuilding

The Power of Delegation

One of the most powerful tools in a manager’s “tool box” is delegation. Why is delegation so powerful? It:

1. Allows you to spend your individual time & energy on tasks adding the most value—but

remember there is a big difference between delegating & dumping

2. Distributes work among team members so it can be achieved more efficiently

3. Increases productivity

4. Increases team members’ commitment to their team & the organization

5. Develops team members

Why then do some managers fail to delegate? Here are the most common reasons:

1. Insecurity about themselves

2. Lack of confidence in others

3. Failure to have trained others

4. Personal enjoyment of the task

5. A mindset of “no one can do it as well as me”

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How do you ensure successful delegation? Here are the key steps:

1. Carefully determine what can be delegated & to whom

2. Explain the task in appropriate detail, including why it is important

3. Clearly define what is the desired result/deliverable, with a specific completion/due date

4. Agree on follow-up steps, including completion milestones if the delegation involves a task that

will take more than a small amount of time

  • Give assistance when needed–based on requested by the individual or observed by you

5. Recognize the individual upon successful completion

Posted in Organizational & People Development

A Leader’s Vision

A leader should have great vision–and I am not talking about eyesight. A leader must be able to see:

  • Before others see – seeing not just the present but also into the future; being able to anticipate the next round of challenges & opportunities
  • More than others see – seeing the hidden issues; seeing untapped potential; seeing what others do not see

A leader’s vision:

  • Starts from within
  • Draws upon her/his past experiences, including both successes & failures
  • Paints the picture with great clarity so followers cannot just “catch the vision”, but can also “run with the vision”

If the vision by the leader is very clear, it will:

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  • Provide direction, serving as a road map for the future
  • Breed passion, causing the organization/your team to catch your enthusiasm & want to join the journey
  • Creates meaning, which enables a better understanding about how what each employee does each day fits into the proverbial “big picture”
  • Develops unity, with everyone driving toward the same outcome

A great example of the power of a leader’s vision can be seen in America’s achieving of President John F. Kennedy’s dream of putting a man on the moon.

  • This dream came to fruition in part on February 20, 1962 when astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.
  • It came to full fruition on July 20, 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon, famously saying, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’.

 

Posted in Strategy, Management & Leadership

Some Key Roles of a Leader

Some of the key roles of a leader include:

 1. Establish a clear vision & common purpose

  • This serves to create direction, passion, meaning & unity, each of which is immensely powerful, but together have almost limitless power.

2. Have “bifocal vision”

  • This means being able to stay on top up of the present, while seeing around the bend to the future.

3. Make certain that people know what is expected of them in their role & how that fits in with the organization as a whole.

  • Do not assume that everyone knows this.

4. Foster teamwork

  • Not only within your team, but also with other teams within the company
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5. Create an environment that encourages continuous improvement

  • o Continuous improvement helps us to stay ahead of the competition.

6. Hold people accountable for their performance

  • This isn’t always pleasant, but it is always the right thing.

7. Celebrate success

  • As leaders, we too often fail to do this even though we know how important it is & how it positively reinforces great performance.

 

Posted in Strategy, Management & Leadership

Inspirational Leadership

Inspiring is an important part of leadership. As leaders, we each have our own distinct personality & our own style. However, leaders who effectively inspire their employees have the following four traits in common:

1. ATTITUDE OF SERVICE

  • Showing a willingness to serve others.
  • This requires putting our position/title aside.

2. ATTENTIVENESS

  • Caring about the desires & needs of those they lead.
  • People don’t care as much about how much their leaders know as they do about how much their leaders care about them.

3. AVAILABILITY

  • Investing time in those that they lead.
  • Nothing communicates that to a person that you value them more than the gift of your time.

4. AUTHENTICITY

  • Being genuine and real.
  • Followers need to know they can trust their leader, & to gain trust, a leader’s words & actions must be consistent.

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You may want to consider the following way to assess how your leadership measures up on each of these four traits:

1. Evaluate yourself on a 1 (you never demonstrate the trait) to 10 (you always demonstrate the trait)

2. Total your score for the four traits.

  • If your score in any one trait is less than 8, develop an action plan on how to improve in this area.
  • If you score is 8 or above for any trait, keep doing what you are doing—and do even more of it.

3. Re-assess yourself in 3 to 6 months.

If you are willing to be very vulnerable, you may want to consider ascertaining feedback from your staff. However, if you do so, keep the following in mind. You need to:

1. Be confident that your staff has a high trust factor with you; otherwise, you will not receive candid feedback.

2. Explain the purpose of your wanting their feedback is so that you can seek to become a better leader and therefore their candid feedback is absolutely vital.

3. Accept the feedback you receive with no defensiveness.

4. Have them see in a positive way that your actions reflect the feedback you received.

Posted in Strategy, Management & Leadership

RE-VISITING YOUR OBJECTIVES

With the beginning of each new year, it is an opportunity to re-visit the company, divisional, departmental & individual objectives that had previously been established. Hopefully, these objectives were set in the latter part of the prior year.

Without doing a re-visit, you increase the risk that this critical step in the organizational planning and performance management processes may lead to outcomes less than or different than you had planned.

Set let’s review what you will want to ensure:

1. The objectives are specific and include a measurement (or set of measurements) defining what is to be achieved. This should include what level of success is associated with different outcomes.

  • A simple way to do this is to assign three success levels (& associated reward levels), such as:

(1) Maximum
(2) Moderate/Medium
(3) Minimum

2. You have established achievable objectives, which means they:

  • Are those that someone or a team can realistically accomplish within the time frame that is set
  • Need to challenge (thus, the term “stretch goals”)–but not so difficult so as to be unattainable or to cause frustration in being unable to be achieved

3. The objectives are realistic, which means they take into account the resources needed to accomplish them, including:

  • Staff
  • Skill Set
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  • Supervisory support, including coaching in the form guidance & direction

4. The objectives have a time frame, which:

  • Should take into account unanticipated activities or shifting of priorities
  • Can easily be connected to the specific measurement of success when the completion date has some flexibility.
    • For example, if completed by March 1 = maximum; by March 15 = moderate or medium; by March 31 = minimum.

In conclusion, re-visit your objectives to verify that they are “SMART” objectives:

S Specific
M Measurable
A Achievable
R Realistic
T Time-oriented

 

Posted in Strategy, Management & Leadership