I love the quote from H.E. Luccock, a rather unknown Methodist Bishop, who said: “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.”
To me, that says it all about teamwork.
That quote, along with what Michael Jordan says: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships” really does highlight the importance of getting the team members to work together.
It also demonstrates how important it is that leaders recognise that hiring the brightest and the best is all very well, but success will not be ours unless we can make them work as a team.
I have for so long been fascinated about why some teams work and why others don’t and I believe it is so succinctly explained by Elaine Yew from consultancy firm, Egon Zehnder.
Elaine boils it down to 6 critical competencies that the team must develop. Truthfully, I have borrowed much from Elaine’s studies in my own work.
The 6 competencies are:
- Balance: Do the team understand how important it is to have a diversity of skills and strengths and is prepared to embrace them?
- Alignment: Does the team fully understand the team goals, and not just their own, and are focused on delivery of team goals?
- Energy: How ambitious the team is and how willing are they to put the effort in to achieve the agreed goals?
- Resilience: How tough and resilient will this team be when the stress and strains of the business come to bear – as they will?
- Efficiency: Does the team really understand the need to take full advantage of all the resources available to them to diligently deliver on objectives?
- Openness: Is there a spirit of openness and honesty in the team? Can team members challenge each other without fear of reprisal?
Of course, since teams are made up of people, there is no such thing as the perfect mix. But the team that does not strive to embrace and develop these competencies will never achieve what they are capable of.
In my experience, the successful teams that I have worked with, do work hard to achieve competency across all of them. The fact that they recognise the need for all of them, is a good starting place.
Free Strategy Call for High Performing Leaders
Becoming a high performance leader is critical to your success. Successful leaders have teams that over-deliver on their objectives and become stars in their organisation. High performing leaders build careers that take them to the top! Due to time constraints, I only offer 2 free 45 minute sessions each week. These sessions will give you tips and strategies you can put into action straight away to become that high performing leader. Go to www.johnmurphyinternational.com/call to schedule that session.