The Art of Team Building

The Art of Team Building

By George Carralejo

Team building is one of the most misunderstood aspects of successful organizations in business or sports. Too often, leaders think a collection of talented people will be enough to achieve success. When you are running an organization or leading a team, it’s imperative to remember the foundation of all success is built on the concept of team building. The ingredients of successful teams consist of: a strong culture, a realistic plan, strong leadership, and a talented workforce.

It was Peter Drucker who stated. “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” All great organizations start with building the right culture. The culture of the organization is established by the leader and encompasses the principles he exhibits and values. It’s my experience that the best organizations build their culture by empowering their talent around the idea of freedom and responsibility within a framework. This is the idea of disciplined entrepreneurship. The talent is encouraged to think for themselves, be creative, and therefore share a responsibility for the outcome. If you fill the organization with self-disciplined people, they will go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities.

Realistic plans are paramount to sustained success and team building. A leader must develop both strategy and tactics that give the organization its best chance for success. Many leaders don’t understand the difference between strategy – the long-term goals and the plans to achieve them; with the tactics – the detailed small steps that must take place to achieve the strategy. In organizations, the talent can always spot unrealistic, aimless plans and when the talent loses faith the goals of the organization will not be achieved. The legendary management guru, Tom Peters, discusses this in his book In Search of Excellence, where he writes – “Great organizations don’t jump in with both feet, the stick a toe in the water; if they fail, they terminate the plan quickly.”

Strong leadership is the third component of successful team building. It is the leader, and most importantly, their character that sets the foundation of the team. Talent follows excellent leadership and will adopt the leaders’ personality. When this occurs, the leader creates an environment where his values and expectations are in place even when he is not present. Successful teams follow leaders who adhere to the ‘mirror and window’ philosophy. Leaders that take responsibility for failures create an environment where the talent is willing to follow, and when the leader gives the credit to his team for all success, he will now have a loyalty that only the most successful team leaders experience. Great organizations are always led by a leader whose character defines the culture, is strategic enough to set realistic plans, and who understands that his team is the number one priority.

In great team building the talent knows that they come first. Building a talented workforce is the final piece to great team building. Jim Collins writes about this in his book, Good to Great, “First, get the right people on the bus, then worry about where the bus is going.” When determining the right people, the leader should place a greater weight on character attributes than on practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience. Those skills are teachable whereas dimensions like character, work ethic, dedication to fulfilling commitments and values are more ingrained. The right people are self-motivated and set a tone of intolerance for anything that gets in the way of winning.

Too many leaders make the mistake of setting goals and then hoping they get achieved. They promote people into positions by a process of ‘election over selection,’ this means they elect their friends instead of selecting the most qualified candidate for the job. This type of mindset never leads to sustained success. The most successful organizations will always keep team building as their focus. The leader will set a strong culture, he will make realistic plans, exhibit strong leadership and build the most talented workforce. As the legendary former Raider owner Al Davis used to say, “First you get great coaches, then you get great players. After you’ve done that, you’ll have a great organization; and then you tell them one thing, Just win baby.”

George Carralejo