The best teams aren't composed of carbon copies of each other.
They're composed of very different people.
Different team members have different knowledge, skills, and abilitiesânot to mention different tasks.
And to work together best, teams need to know how all those differences fit together.
Team members need to know how their experience and their assignments fit into the larger whole. They need to know who knows what, who is working on what, and when they're going to deliver it by.
They need to know who likes to work in solitude, and who likes a noisy room.
They need to know who prefers in-person discussions and who thinks it could all just be an email.
They need to know how best to communicate with others, and not just default to their favorite methods.
Teams work best when they understand how each individual works best.
#Teamwork #BestTeamEver
âAre we there yet?â
Last month I took a road trip with my family, and guess what question I heard more than any other?
Are. We. There. Yet?
My two boys wanted to know how long before we reached our destination and what it would be like when we got there.
You know what question I was NEVER asked?
âHow fast are we going?â
They didnât want to know the metrics behind our progress. They wanted to know about the end goal.
The people on your team think the same way. Leaders might obsess over the metrics, but they want to know the goalâŚthe purpose.
Metrics are essential for management, but metrics arenât meaning. Metrics donât motivate.
Purpose does.
The lesson for leaders isnât to ignore metrics (any more than I could ignore speed limits or fuel range while driving that car.) Instead, the lesson is to make metrics meaningful by talking about how those metrics bring us closer to our shared visionâŚour end goal.
You canât manage without metrics. But you canât motivate on numbers alone.
#Leadership #Motivation
(And by the way, we did eventually get there. Check out this awesome photo of New River Gorge.)
Trust on a team is not enough.
This is a common misconception leaders make.
Yes, teams need to trust each other.
And so, leaders signup for "teambuilding" activities or purchase personality tests to stimulate discussion.
And there's nothing wrong with these attempts. They're just insufficient.
Because trust is just the beginning of building psychological safety, the true driver of high-performing teams.
Psychological safety happens when team members feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks. What kind of interpersonal risks?
Speaking up when they disagree, or
Sharing "crazy" new ideas, or
Revealing a failure or mistake, or
Bringing their "whole self" to work.
But psychological safety works as a cycle, a flywheel.
You build trust on a team, which gets them to take interpersonal risks, and then when teammates respond respectfully, that's when you have a psychological safe team.
They listen even when they disagree, or
They hear the new idea out, or
They help extract lessons from failure, or
They accept people's authentic selves.
Trust-Risk-Respect
Teambuilding that grows trust is a great start, but training the team to respond with respect is the end goal.
#Leadership #Teamwork #PsychologicalSafety
Some of the most productive time for teams is time doing nothing at all.
That sounds counterintuitive but hear me out.
High-performing teams use free time wisely. They don't try to cram every ounce of productivity into a workday.
They know that downtime between meetings, or impromptu coffee runs create opportunities to discuss life outside of work. And in that time, people talk about hobbies, habits, family history, and share all sorts of lived experiences.
That sharing helps individuals find commonalities. And those commonalities strengthen bonds and turn into friendships.
It's no surprise that one of the best predictors of employee engagement is being able to say, "I have a friend at work."
High-performing teams know that friendship comes from commonalities, and commonalities come from free time.
How can you find more free time with your team?
#Teamwork #BestTeamEver
Purpose is personal.
We were designed to judge our impacted on the world based on who we see affected by our work.
In my time as a keynote speaker I've asked hundreds of people from stage if they can recite their company's mission statement. A few get close. Almost no one can recite it from memory.
But every single one of them can tell me about a time they felt their work made a difference...a time they felt like they wee truly making an impact.
The lesson for leaders is that it's not about making sure everyone knows the mission and vision.
It's about making sure everyone is aligned.
It's about helping individuals find their individual purpose.
It's about connecting that individual purpose to the organizational missions.
It's about linking why we do what we do to who is served by the work that we do.
#Leadership #Teamwork #Motivation
âWhen was the last time someone on your team disagreed with you, publicly?â
This is the question I ask leaders most often before working with their team.
Thereâs a misconception about conflict on teams. We tend to think lack of conflict signals a team in agreement.
But the opposite is true.
Lack of conflict is a sign of a dysfunctional team. Lack of conflict happens either because everyone on the team thinks alike or because people who do disagree are too afraid to do so.
Task-focused conflict is the sign of a high-performing team. When people feel safe to disagree and debate the merits of different ideas, more perspectives are included and the chances of finding the best solution are higher.
And leaders set the tone for how the team experiences conflict. When leaders react positively to disagreement and conflicting ideas, they model the behavior the team should follow. They teach the whole team to leverage respectful conflict to find better ideas.
And better ideas make better teams.
#Teamwork #BestTeamEver
Talent is overrated.
That's not to say talent isn't important. Talent matters.
But it doesn't matter as much as you think.
I've worked with so many leaders attempting to turn around their team but adding new star performers to the roster. And all of them are surprised when it doesn't work.
It doesn't work because talent doesn't directly result in performance. Talent is potential, but talent needs to be harnessed and directed to yield high performance. Talent is like fuel. Gasoline is latent energy. Put that gasoline into an engine and you unlock that energy.
The engine of talent is team culture.
Decades of research points to team cultureâthe collective values, beliefs, behaviors, and ways of working memberâs shareâas having an outsized effect on the results a team and an individual achieves.
That's why talent doesn't make the team. The team makes the talent.
#Leadership #Teamwork #BestTeamEver
Help is not a four letter word.
Okay. Obviously, it is in terms of spelling.
But at work, we treat it like a "word that shall not be uttered."
We worry asking for help will make us look like we're failing.
We worry asking for help will make us look incompetent.
We worry asking for help will burden our coworkers.
We worry asking for help will sacrifice our independence.
We worry asking for help will make expose us as impostors.
But high-performing teams only work when we help each other.
The most difficult problems, the most strenuous situations, require more than one mind and more than one person's effort.
And that means one person needs to step up and ask for help.
Help doesn't make you a failure. Help makes you human.
#Teamwork #BestTeamEver
Trust isnât given. Trust isnât earned. Trust is reciprocated.
Specifically, when we feel someone is placing their trust in us, weâre more likely to trust them in returnâkicking off a cycle of trust-building between two people.
For leaders, this is why itâs so important to be vulnerable with your team. Share your thoughts, doubts, and even failures (to the level youâre comfortable and allowed to).
When youâre vulnerable with your team, they feel trusted. And theyâll trust you more in return.
#leadership #teamwork #psychologicalsafety
Don't share praise. Give it all away.
I was speaking at an event last week to a room full of leaders. As is often the case, the CEO of the company spoke before me and shared that gem of wisdom (check the comments for who).
He simply said, "Don't share praise. Give it all away."
When the team does a great job, great leaders don't take the credit.
In fact, they don't even say "we did a great job."
Instead, they put all the focus - all the praise - squarely on the team.
The inverse is also true. Great leaders don't share blame, they take it on themselves.
This isn't about who was really responsible for what. It's not about assigning the perfect weight of responsibility to each individual.
It's about being seen. It's about letting your people know their contribution is value. It's about letting people know they matter.
Don't share praise. Give it all away.
Tag a leader who does any amazing job appreciating their team.
#Leadership #Teamwork
One of the worldâs leading business thinkers, David Burkusâ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever.
He is the best-selling author of four books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USAToday, Fast Company, the Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. Since 2017, Burkus has been ranked as one of the worldâs top business thought leaders by organizations like Thinkers50, Global Gurus, and LeadersHum. As a sought-after international speaker, his TED Talk has been viewed over 2 million times. Heâs worked with leaders from organizations across all industries including Google, Stryker, Fidelity, Viacom, and even the US Naval Academy.