Daily Leadership Thought #118 – 8 Characteristics of a Winning Team

No one is ever successful alone.  Whether it is at home or at work you need other people to buy-in to and support your success.   You need to think of the people closest to you as part of a winning team that is committed to a common goal, which is each other’s success and happiness. This idea translates very easily into a work context but not always so easily at home.  However, there truly is no difference.  And, I would argue the most important team in anyone’s life is their family.

The keys to building a successful team are simple, straightforward, and time-tested:

1. Everyone needs to understand and agree to what success looks like and it should always be perceived as a mutual win-win objective;
2. The team needs to best leverage the strengths of its individual participants and mitigate their weaknesses;
3. Every member of the team needs to feel equally valued and important;
4. Performance discussions should take place in an open and transparent manner;
5. All teams inevitably deal with conflict and there needs to be a productive mechanism in place for addressing disagreements when they happen;
6. The foundation of any winning team is a sense of shared values around what is important and the culture that ultimately forms as a result of these beliefs;
7. Strong teams don’t shy away from challenge or adversity, but become stronger because of them;
8. The only constant for the team will be change. Definitions of success may change, people will change, roles will change, and circumstances will change.  High-performing teams embrace change and are adaptive, flexible, and understanding of each other when these changes happen.

I’ve always believed that your success and happiness in business and life are directly related to the people you spend the most time with.  If you begin to look at these people as part of a winning team you are building to live a happy and mutually beneficial existence, then more good things are likely to happen.

Related articles

• Success builds teams (magicofteams.wordpress.com)
• Got Glue? How Leaders Build Strong Teams (linked2leadership.com)
• Become A Leader Others Want To Follow (forbes.com)
• The Key to Changing Organizational Culture (forbes.com)
• 3 Habits of Highly Unsuccessful Businesses (inc.com)
• Employee Morale Booster: Fun Team-Building Ideas (amsterdamprinting.com)