Category: Leadership

Winning Teams: How is it that some teams continue to win while other teams continue to lose?  What are the things that winning teams do differently? Here are some traits for team success.

The power of winning teams exceeds the power of the individual members. ~ www.jaywren.com

Winning Teams: 5 Traits that Lead to Team Success

All teams must have a common purpose or a mission.  Furthermore, even though team members have diverse skills, great team members have common traits.

1. Team Members Own Their Mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes.  On winning teams, the members admit them and do not repeat them.

Additionally, members of winning teams quickly correct their mistakes and move the team along successfully.

2. Winning Team Members Know Their Job Description.

Members of winning teams know their job description.  They read it with their team leader.  They discuss the goals and responsibilities of their jobs openly with each other to collaborate effectively.

Furthermore, they are conscientious.  They know how to do their job, and they do it correctly.

3. On Winning Teams, Each Member Allows Others to Do Their Own Job.

Being a team player and helping other people occasionally is one thing.  However, on winning teams, each team member must let other members do their assigned work.  Like a team of horses, team members empower the team by allowing everyone to do their job.

4. The Most Talented Team Members Know When to Lighten Up.

Learning how to lighten up about the efforts of the team boosts morale.  Not everything that a team does is perfect.  Team members make mistakes.  Team efforts don’t’ always meet expectations.

Talented team members know to lighten up and not take team frustrations personally.

5. Winning Team Members Give Credit to the Team.

Team members deserve credit for their effort.  However, team members bond and become more powerful when they celebrate as a team.

Authenticity: Why are rebels so appealing?  Why are they so successful?

Authenticity – The First Step to Greatness

If you copy other people, you are an impersonator. When you remake the work of other people in ways that it becomes your own work, you are authentic. When authenticity leads you to break the rules and change the world, you are a rebel. With authenticity, rebels find greatness.
~ www.jaywren.com

Rebels Don’t Just Try to be Different.

Rebels don’t just try to be different.  They have the courage to develop what is great and unique in themselves.  Through the authenticity of what is true in them, they do original work that appeals to followers in any field: entertainment, consumer products, business leadership, and so on through all endeavors.

Therefore, do what rebels do.  Don’t try to be different. Try to be yourself.  Through your authenticity, you will find greatness.

Recognize Your Uniqueness

We tend to see greatness as coming from a common set of abilities.  People who have greater talent become more successful.
However, greatness takes many forms.  Your gifts for greatness are unique to you.

Michael Jordan is a historically great basketball player.  He has a competitive mentality that lead him to try to become equally great in baseball.  But baseball was not a sport where he had skills for greatness.  Rather, he was uniquely great in basketball.

However, everyone has a unique set of natural skills.  Focusing on developing the skills that come to you naturally enables you to become the most successful person you can be.  Assuming the courage to stick to develop your natural skills, sparks the authenticity of your natural greatness.

First, Seek Authenticity.

Copying other people makes you an impersonator.  However, building on the work of other people until it becomes true to your authenticity will free you to be an original, a rebel.

Great Teams: Why is it that some organizations always create great teams?  Additionally, why is it that other organizations never create great teams?

Creating the foundation for great teams is fundamental to the management of any organization. ~ www.jaywren.com

4 Traits that Form the Foundation of Great Teams

On every list that I read, Google, and on a broader scale, the parent company, Alphabet, is the number-one rated place to work.

This rating is not by accident.  Google gives services and support that include free food and on-site doctors.  The services make it easier for employees to stay at the Google offices during the work day.

However, Google has taken successful steps to do more than give conveniences to workers at the workplace.  The company has conducted studies to fine tune the composition and the management of teams.

Team Spirit

Team spirit or esprit de corps is the feeling of enthusiasm, commitment, and loyalty to the other members of a team.

Feeling team spirit binds your desire for success and the team’s desire for success.

Brawls in the office or between business competitors are not anything anyone welcomes.  However, an example of the power of team spirit becomes in in competitive sports.  It is this element that causes bench clearing outbursts to come to the defense of other team players.

In the office, team spirit brings the team together to overcome challenges and frustration.  The power of team spirit instills confidence from the support among team members.

When there is conflict in a team, esprit de corps enables teams to tackle problems without attacking each other.

Engagement

There are two points at which great teams engage.  One point of engagement is in the work.  Team players engage to collaborate on the work of the team.  At the second point, team players engage each other for feedback and contributions to projects.

Great teams have members who engage with their work and with other members of the team.

Trust

When team members trust each other, they don’t focus on the negatives of personality.  Instead they focus on helping each other achieve successful results for the team.

For example, Jim doesn’t like Bob.  Every time Bob says something, Jim says something critical of Bob.  Therefore, Jim does not trust Bob.  He feels unsafe around Bob.  Bob may shut down and stop helping the team. Furthermore, he may retaliate against his team member, Jim.

However, when team member build trust, they feel safe and support each other.

Love of Purpose and Working Hard

One of the characteristics and great teams is love of purpose.  Another is working hard as a team.  New England Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, is famous for signing veteran role players who become successful main players for the Patriots.  I remember one interview in which a sports reporter asked Coach Belichick how he managed to find so many players who were minor players across the league and yet became major players for his team.

His response was that he looked for players who loved football and who worked hard.

The most valuable assets of any company walk out the door at the end of the day.  Ensuring that those assets return the next day is the obligation of all managers. ~ www.jaywren.com

Reduce Turnover with These Powerful Steps.

With these steps, you will reduce turnover and increase the value of your employees.

Match Jobs with Job Skills.

Matching skills and tasks increases employee self-esteem and job satisfaction.  Furthermore, matching skills with tasks increases the success of the company.

Make Leadership Available.

Regular feedback helps employees adjust and focus. People who feel support from leadership have more confidence. Additionally, the presence of supportive leadership increases the bond between leaders and team members.

Resolve Problems Quickly.

Quickly resolving problems reduces stress.  Furthermore, it accelerates the progress of the work.

On the other hand, letting problems drift along reduces the progress of the team’s work.

Set Clear Goals and Deadlines.

Employees must know the goal of the project.  Knowing what they are trying to do allows employees to solve problems effectively.  Furthermore, it reduces stress from uncertainty.

Before the project starts, set milestones. These milestones keep teams on track with a sequence of deadlines.  Setting milestones ends procrastination.

When goals and deadlines are clear, employees become more engaged in their work.

Train and Retrain.

Encouraging employees to complete scheduled training increases their value to the company.

Additionally, reviewing skills development increases a sense of value to the company.

People who grow in skills in a world of evolving technologies carry the company through changes over the long-term.

Keep Commitments.

Never make promises.  Don’t promise pay raises or promotions.  Things change.  Pay raises and promotions don’t always happen as scheduled.

However, make commitments you can keep.  If you schedule time to meet with employees, keep that commitment.  Additionally, if you make a commitment to support an employee, keep that commitment.

Show Employees That You Value Them.

Make employees know that you value them.  Show value for their time.  Express your interest in their health and their family.

Feeling valued increases loyalty.

Synergy: How do companies create teams that produce greater results together than the total results of the team members working separately?

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” ~ Aristotle

Collaboration and Synergy

Synergy is the process of combining the efforts of individuals or organizations to produce greater results together than the total the combined results from working alone.

For example, let’s say that companies X, Y, and Z earn a total of $5 million working separately.  However, by merging their efforts, these three companies earn $10 million dollars working together.

“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

Firsthand Experience

There are multiple reasons why synergy is so effective.  One of the reasons is that synergy fills in the gaps of knowledge among individuals or among individual organizations.

A simple example is my experience in teaming up with other recruiters to share work. Together, we each made more money by combining our resources than each of us would have made working alone.  I had recruiting contracts and job applicants.  The other firms had different recruiting contracts and different job applicants.

By working with each other, we could accelerate filling jobs by helping each other find job applicants for our recruiting contracts.

Synergy in Project Teams

In most companies, departments work separately to do their jobs.  Sales planning does sales planning.  Marketing does marketing.  Manufacturing does manufacturing.

But some projects require knowledge from each of these departments.  Collaboration empowers teams from separate departments to produce greater results by filling in the knowledge gaps.

 Synergy in Working with Specialists

Collaborating with specialists helps people focus on what they do best. For example, writers know how to write.  Some writers can do a reasonable job of editing their own work.  Also, most writers can figure out how to copyright their material.  However, writers can produce far more material by just writing and having experts handle the other tasks in publishing a book.