It’s all about your team

Great insight by Bernard Desmidt  

Teams are the predominant unit of organisational performance. 

So, given high performing teams are so powerful, why are they still so rare?

In the work Bernard Desmidt does facilitating and coaching executive and leadership teams, four common pitfalls serve to compromise and undermine the power of teaming:

1. Teams lack a common purpose and clarity of direction – ““we’re mostly a group of leaders focused on doing our own thing”
2. Team meeting agendas don’t address collective performance objectives – “It’s all about each looking good and less about us achieving great work, together”
3. The prevalence of a collective ‘mood of resignation’ – “why bother, just another restructure, nothing will really change”
4. Breakdowns in the relational dynamics – “can’t trust a thing he says, all that matters to him is his own success, and bonus”

To make teaming your differentiator, he shares 4 strategies to building kickass teams - which will result in the exceptional performance and growth 

1. Agree the team’s purpose – agree the cause the team serves greater than itself. Why does the team exist? What is it for? Then live it!
2. Set an “outcomes focused” team meeting agenda – for each agenda item, specify what decisions are important be made and actions agreed and committed to.
3. Identify a mood that will best serve the team’s collective way-of-being – rather than show-up in a mood of frustration, resignation or anxiety, choose to collectively stay in a mood of ambition, possibility, curiosity and wonder.
4. Legitimise your own and each other’s concerns – make it safe to share and talk about what is of concern to each individual and the team, collectively.

Your team is your distinguishing competitive advantage - they will build your corporate culture  which  will make you win