TEAM WORK

Nothing of significance was ever achieved by an individual acting alone. Even Albert Einstein, the scientist, who revolutionized the world with his theory of relativity didn’t work in a vacuum. Of the debt he owed others for his work, Einstein once remarked “many a times a day I realize how much my outer inner life is built upon the labours of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received”.

The highest act of leadership in business is the ability to bring together a group of high performance individuals and concentrate their time, attention, and abilities on the achievement of your corporate or organizational goal. The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler or CEO is to look at the men he has around him.

A concerted action is the key to the principle of synergy. In its simplest form synergy means the total output of a group of people is vastly greater than the output of those same individual working separately. In other words, two (2) plus two (2) does not equal four but rather six or eight or ten. “One is too small a number to achieve greatness”.

In business today, all work is done by a team, your ability to function as leader, is a critical factor in determining how far you go and how fast you get there. The most valuable people in organization are people who are tagged as good team players

It takes no brains or special talent to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. But it takes real brain and ability to find and deploy the right person to do the job instead. This is where you must focus. Individuals play the game, but teams win championship.

Great manager are great because they have started or developed staff to hold forth critical positions in their organizations. Great generals are great because they have excellent officers at every line of command. No one does it alone. Everyone needs help of other talented people.

SIX KEYS OF PEAK PERFORMANCE TEAM

·         SHARED GOALS

Goals are agreed and deliberated upon by all team members.

-       Clarity is essential – the greater the clarity/participation as regards the goals the greater the level of commitment to it.

-       Attainable- realistic and achievable

-       Decisive - goal must be significant and must make a worthy contribution to achievement of higher corporate objective of the organization

-       Specific - measurable

-       Time bounded - specific deadline along the lines of achievement

-       Must be rewarded

 

·         SHARE VALUES

Top performing Team has shared values- goals are discussed back and forth and agreed upon.

·         SHARED PLANS

Responsibility/role of each unit to the desired goal is clearly stated

·         LEADERSHIP OF ACTION

The leader of the Team must be a leader that gets things done no matter the odds.

·         CONTINUOUS EVALUATION OF RESULTS

What gets measured gets done.  360 degrees feedback from customer, stakeholders, peers, and subordinates etc is necessary periodically.

·         OPENNESS AND CONTINUOUS COMMUNICATION

Openness, honesty, trusts, and straight talk is key to top performing Teams.

OTHER QUALITIES OF A TEAM PLAYER

 

Enlargers

Adding value to the Team.  Purpose of life is not to win but to add value to others and share.  A Team player completes others, not compete with others.  A Team player makes people look good.

 

Who are you?  Are you a subtractor or a multiplier?  Do you subtract energy from or add energy to the team?  Enlargers add value, they see value in others, they take initiative, they are not bench warmers, they dictate the pace.  Who are you?

 

Committed

Team players are committed; they tie their personal value to organization values.

 

Collaborate

Team players let go their personal ego to cooperate and collaborate for the overall goal of the Team.  They are larger hearted people.

 

Disciplined

Self-discipline is doing what you really do not want to do, but you just have to do it because of the responsibility you have.  The secret of a man’s success is the daily things we get done that determines what one becomes one day.  Discipline has three (3) critical components:  Discipline of thinking, Discipline of emotions and Discipline of getting thing done (action).

 

Self discipline allows you to do the following:

 

-        make goal and achieve them

-        Character – strong

-        Time:  you can’t save time, you can only spend it differently.  That choice is self discipline.

-        Health:  Your body is your Temple.  Treat it well.

-        Money:  Never worry about money.

-        Courage:  Courage to overcome fear and act on your dream.

-        Responsibility for your life

 

Unity of purpose/ownership of purpose by the Team

Save goal, save purpose, vision, etc, all in tandem with

personal goals of members.  To make it strong, the vision must

be clearly stated, inspiring, continuously communicated and

repeated always.

         

Diversity in skills

Enable Team to their full potential.

 

No one does it alone. Everything you accomplish in life requires the active cooperation of other people. The more capable you are of getting along with other people, the happier and more successful you will be, both at work and at home. If a team is to reach its potentials, each player must be willing to subordinate his personal goals to the goal of the Team.

Truly, excellent men and women have developed a wonderful ability to get along well with great number of other different people. They have high level of self confidence and self esteem. They like and respect themselves, and as a result, they like and respect others. They work in harmony with others towards common and mutually agreed upon goals.       

They are excellent Team players. They focus on contribution. They are considered to be among the most valuable people in the company and in their social circles.

Practice this principle of concerted action in all you do. You will end up developing a large harmonious relationship across all spheres of life, you are then able to multiple yourself and your abilities times all the people you know and who knows you. You become unstoppable.

 

Culled from “Victory” by Brain Tracy.