Building a Successful Team

Over my 25+ year career as a senior executive, consultant and coach, I've had extensive opportunity to be part of and lead many teams.  I've also had the privilege of assisting others build great teams or navigate the challenges of dysfunctional team environments.  I continue to have opportunities to diagnose and work with teams not performing at their optimal levels and continue to distill lessons from my own leadership experience to impart to them.  In doing so, I've particularly reflected back on what I still consider the best team that I have ever worked with which dates back almost 15 years.

When I first entered the picture as the new CEO of this particular organization it was experiencing more than a bit of stress - the organization itself was relatively new, it was experiencing the effects of significant budget cuts and service reductions, it had relatively poor standing with its public, the board itself was split along a number of different lines, and the past CEO - seemingly well-liked by the management team - had been let go.  Needless to say this wasn't an inviting environment and starting point upon which to commence my new leadership role.  By the end of my tenure though we had earned accolades and awards at a provincial level, had great relationships with our staff and unions, and performed at a level all out of proportion to our size.  We became the benchmark for other organizations like us - and many times our size.  What accounted for that success?  For me it had to be our level of teamwork, key elements of which I will describe below.

One of the first things I did was to take the management team back to ground zero.  Why were we here as an organization and what were we supposed to be focused on delivering?  We didn't have the luxury of building the mission, vision and values of the organization from scratch - the board had already done that to the perceived exclusion of the management team.  So I took them through each element of and, in some cases, each word of these statements and looked to develop better understanding for ourselves as to what worked in guiding our strategic and operational goals and activities.  This "reverse engineering" of our organization's mission, vision and values took time but it was time well spent.  At this point forward the management team owned these directions and goals.  We were all on the same page.

The team also created an environment in which all points of view were afforded an opportunity to be heard AND ACTED UPON.  I believe I led the way in this regard but all team members took probably what for them was significant risk in trusting that this new CEO meant what he said in seeking their input, information and guidance on a variety of initiatives.  I'm sure that for many "traditional" leaders looking in or experiencing some of my team meetings they would have described them as chaotic.  That might have been true, but I do like to think of it as organized chaos and that there was method to my madness.  I believe I was able to demonstrate that the answers to any question and challenge did not come from any one source no matter how authoritative.  The result was that we came to better solutions that everybody then bought into and supported.

Related to this organized chaos, was that this team had good, open communication which sometimes meant that our passions were freely expressed and differences of opinion were on the table.  We didn't agree for the sake of agreeing and we were prepared to challenge each other on a regular basis.  In our team, one was well advised to leave their ego at the door as it wouldn't long survive! We didn't suppress conflict or engage in conflict simply to be difficult.  We engaged in conflict precisely because we were passionate about our shared goals and were committed to being the best we could be as an organization in service of our clients and staff.  In this regard we also respected each other as professionals and for the experience we brought to the table.  We trusted each other.

We also set high expectations for ourselves, our team and each other. This equated to plenty of additional hours and taking on more than one set of duties to see something through.  This was true of all of us - including myself.  We undertook such effort not because it was demanded of us or mandated.  We did so because we were passionate about the work we were doing and we were committed to the team as a whole.  We didn't want to let each other down.  In a similar vein, we also took the time to support each other as needed.  Overall we were a very young team - on average I'm guessing that our management team's average age was 30 - but we did have some "veterans" on our team too.  Regardless, all of us seemed to recognize that we had opportunity to learn and develop and we gave freely of ourselves to others to strengthen them and our overall success.

Finally it is clear that while we worked excessively we did so because we truly enjoyed each others company.  We worked hard and played equally as hard.  Many of us have maintained contact and friendships throughout the intervening years.  I am exceedingly pleased when I do have the chance to meet again with some of my former team that they still describe our time together as the best experience of their career.  Sometimes it seems like that may have just been fortuitous but I also recount how challenged we were at the beginning of our time together.  I know that our success only came from a commitment to common goals, the courage and willingness to challenge each other and the status quo, and a passionate commitment to each other.

I believe a powerful team can be created with these "lessons" in mind.  It takes guidance from a leader to be sure but it also requires courage on the part of the leader to let the team develop its own path.  A strong and powerful team does not develop in the shadow of a leader but rather because a leader has the courage to let the light of the team and its members shine.
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Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
Executive Coach/Consultant
BreakPoint Solutions
gregh@breakpoint.solutions
780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.