How to Build a Successful Team
“If you want to go somewhere fast, go alone. If you want to go somewhere far, go together”
What defines a ‘successful team’? Is it a record at the end of the season, the amount of obstacles needed to overcome to win, or perhaps the number of trophies in a trophy case? To find out that answer, we have to first establish what the word success means.
The dictionary’s definition of success is “the accomplishment of an aim or goal.” Now there may be many different factors that shape a person’s perception of success; but this reading will reveal how to create a “successful” team by using 6 characteristics; Belief, Leadership, Attitude, Effort, Consistency, and Desire.
Every great team starts with someone who has a tremendous amount of BELIEF. Not only in themselves but in the others around them. You hear the common saying “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Contrary to that, true belief is the exact opposite; believing in something so much that you are willing to put in the work before you see the prize in front of you.
That may sound easy for one person, but the challenge lies in surrounding yourself with a group of people who are willing to work towards one common goal. At Performance Course, the goal for our athletes is STATE CHAMPS! A successful team always starts with the end goal in mind, and then forms a plan on how to get there. That way everyone knows exactly what to work towards! However, none of that matters if at first, you don’t believe.
The next characteristic is LEADERSHIP. “The speed of the team is the speed of the leader.” Despite the several ways someone can be or become a leader, it’s one of the toughest roles to fill whenever it comes to building a team. Simply due to the demands it requires.
A great leader is someone who knows their “why.” Once they discover that, they move and walk with a purpose; always on a mission to make sure everyone stays on course! They hold themselves to a high standard at all times.
If you can’t first lead yourself, how can you expect to lead others around you? We attract who we are, not who we want to become. Therefore, in order to hold others accountable to a high standard, you have to first BE the standard.
A leader is also a great communicator, not just vocally or by barking orders around, but in how they listen and have compassion for others. Last but not least, they inspire! Winston Churchill put it best when he said “Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell, in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
Attitude and effort are up next, and they go hand in hand because they are the only two characteristics that you can control at all times. Life is full of unpredictable circumstances that seem to never come at convenient times. So it’s not a matter of if, but when adversity strikes, how will you respond?
A huge determining factor of that response is in your ATTITUDE. It is quite alarming how fast a positive or negative attitude can easily make or break a team. A negative attitude can turn a bad morning into a bad day, a slipup into a landslide, or a loss into a losing streak. On the other hand, a positive attitude is seeing every moment or situation as an opportunity. Even after a mistake is made a person, or better yet a team with a positive attitude can turn it around, learn from it, and move on to the next play. Once you see everything as an opportunity instead of an obligation, it shifts your mentality from “I don’t have to do this, I GET to do this.”
EFFORT can’t be coached, can’t be taught, or even measured with the naked eye. Only you know what your absolute best effort is! One of the best ways it can be described, however, is with the analogy of spending money.
Imagine you were given $10,000 when you woke up in the morning. With that money only one rule applies; whatever you do not spend by the end of the day has to be given back. How much of that $10,000 would you spend? All of it, most of it, or some of it?
The same exact thing is true when it comes to your effort. Any effort that you do not give today can’t be used for the tasks this day presents or rolled over into the next day. Ask any person or player who has ever been in a situation where they lost something significant that came down to the wire. 9 times out of 10 they will tell you that they wished they would’ve put in just a little bit more effort in that particular moment. May that be a reminder to us that you want a team full of people that are willing to give their best effort and ‘spend it all’, regardless of the circumstances.
CONSISTENCY is the mark of a champion! To do something over and over again without thinking about it is simply a habit. To do something correctly over and over again is simply uncommon. This characteristic is also among one of the toughest to accomplish in your day-to-day life and even more so when it comes to having a team of people be consistent.
Martha Beck once stated, “The way we do anything is the way we do everything.” Simple words yet they hold so much truth and meaning. Whether it’s literally showing up every day or being consistent with your actions; either way it can make a huge impact. For example, let’s say you have to walk up 100 flights of stairs. What can seem like such a long and daunting task can still be overcome by just focusing on “the next step.” The worst thing you can do is look up at how far you need to go, instead just look at the step right in front of you and eventually you will make it to the top. For a team it’s not about going 16–0 it’s about going 1–0 sixteen different times.
Lastly, to wrap it all together, that leaves us with DESIRE or the “want-to” factor. There aren’t many, if any at all, great accomplishments achieved without a sense of desire. If you truly have the desire for something, you will find a way to make it happen.
Nobody else can want your goals for you. Not your friends, family, coaches, teachers, etc. The desire to be the best comes from within yourself. To translate that in the team setting is like building a fire. You want to build that stack of wood as stable and as high as possible in order to provide warmth for those around you. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat. How big are you willing to build your fire for those around you?
