It’s All About The Team

You can learn a ton from extremes. When it comes to teams I’ve been on highly dysfunctional ones, with the opportunity to learn what causes failure. Fortunately I’ve also been on incredible teams observing the inner workings of a successful culture.

With Veterans Day, the Marine Corps Birthday, and PushPress hiring several new team members I’ve been in deep thought about teams. Here are a few key thoughts when building your team or changing your culture to one of success.

  1. Establish a mission hierarchy:

    Mission Why - this ensures everyone on the team is there for the right reasons. At KS Athletic Club it’s ‘to enable the individuals in our city to live a healthy and physically capable life so they can maximize personal fulfillment’.
    Mission Importance - How critical is this to your persona and the company? Every team member should be aligned on how important the initiative is, or you’ll have some people not fully bought in which will haunt you later.
    Mission How - Mission How is to align the way in which the team will accomplish the ‘Why’. It’s quite easy for teams to debate this one at all phases of the journey. How do we start? Should we pivot? Invest more? When ‘How’ is tough to agree on, remember that at your core you agree on ‘Why’ and ‘Importance’.
    Mission Effort - is everyone on the same page in regards to level of effort this is going to take? Really this should be part of ‘How’ but I’ve seen too many lopsided efforts and resentment build amongst teams to assume this will be discussed so I broke this one out as a separate category. Understanding and discussing the culture of your team’s efforts is critical to success.

  2. Make it personal:

    Anytime I’ve been truly committed to a team and their mission it was personal for not only myself but for the other team members. I wanted to see them succeed. I wanted them to hit their sales targets and make a big bonus to put into their kids’ college fund. I wanted them to realize their dreams. I can’t speak for them but it felt like they wanted the same for me. This makes it very easy to cover for each other, stay late in the office to help each other, and generally operate as a unit. The minute I quit caring about the people on my left and right is the minute I let them drown and we get out of alignment in effort or how.

  3. Communicate without ego:

    The worst teams don’t communicate or stop short of revealing their true thoughts and feelings. This builds resentment, and can introduce paralyzing uncertainty. The best teams take feedback without feeling hurt, look for areas of improvement in each other and communicate that effectively. They are upfront with their feelings on subjects whether that’s frustration or celebration. This is easy when you’ve ‘Made it Personal’ because the feedback always comes from a place of love and wanting to see your teammates succeed.

What are some red flags to watch for when building a high performing team? My main one is EGO as it can manifest in countless ways and become detrimental to success. The hero that can do it all and is fueled by saving the day likely won’t give credit to other team members and celebrate their successes. Ego can also bring the mentality of needing to be right about everything. Pretty hard to take feedback when you’re already perfect! An undercover trait of ego is the person that thinks they can do it all. This may actually come from a desire to help, but can easily become over confidence in one’s abilities or workload which causes the team to mis-step.

Whether you’re just starting your team or already forging ahead on your mission, check your team members to make sure they’re aligned on each of the above. Successful cultures don’t happen by accident, they are intentionally put into place and kept in check by re-visiting and course correcting on the journey.