The question over the history on mankind is, what has made some leaders great? There is a clear answer to that. We all can learn those skills. What is preventing us from doing that, is something a bit surprising. It is our will to be successful. In the rush of becoming successful, we easily forget, that no one becomes successful alone. Even Usain Bolt would not have reached the results without the team. We see the outcome of the teams work, often not the teams work. This article is based on the speech of Jukka Jalonen. How did he make the ”worst team ever” to World Champion. The first thing to understand is, that he didn’t want to win the World Championship. He wanted the team to win it! And then he focused on getting the team there. One step at a time.
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As I have understood from Jukka Jalonen, there were some key elements that made the outcome possible. The first one was setting the goal. You know, vision for the future. Setting the goal is not one man’s task, it was (and you should do it too) done by the entire team! It was the teams goal. That builds and creates a lot of things, all applicable to every organization. There is higher commitment. More positive climate. Much higher team cohesion. The next thing is to lay out the roadmap. What are the key steps, what achieving them requires? How does the team improve teams competences? This is also vital, to understand that teams competences are more important than single individual competences. And teams competences can be upgraded much faster than those of individuals.
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No team is just about success, every team makes mistakes, every leader makes mistakes. And there should be mistakes. There are two main reasons for that. The primary reason is, that when the leader makes visible that even he/she makes mistakes, then making a mistake will not become a threat. Emotional state of being afraid of something leads to failure. When mistakes are seen as learning points, then there is constant development (like happened with the ice hockey team). The secondary reason, yet equally important, is that the team builds up resilience. How fast, if at all, you recover after a bad moment, that is what really matters. When you make a mistake, fail in something, the team remembers, that what really is important is not the failure, but getting back on the agreed track. Recovery!
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When the team shares to goal, a mistake is not negative, but actually gives the person energy to work harder to make up for ”letting the team down”. And the team spirit builds the thought ”how can I help my mate to succeed?”. It is not any of the three people – ”me-myself-I” – that is important. What is important is we and us! This is the culture that Jukka Jalonen built. That is the culture of every winning team!
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You might think ”it was easy for Jukka, as he got to pick up the team”. You are right, and wrong. Yes, if you need to work with a team, that has been put together by someone else, you might have challenging members in your team. There the work becomes even more important. As you really work through the steps, those challenging people either find a place in the team, or they leave the team. I know, it is not politically correct to say, but not everyone fits in every team. This doesn’t mean, that they would be bad people, or that you would be a bad one. It just means that this is not a match ”made in heaven”. Having said that, I must say, that in 9 / 10 such situations in business, I have learnt that those challenging people will be great assets, they just need to be heard and their points need to be discussed.
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So, what are the elements of building winning team? They are:
1. engage everyone in goal setting and development 2. know your people as persons 3. acknowledge that mistakes are nothing more than points of learning 4. nurture the culture of learning, positivity and joy of doing 5. make sure that you are one of the team 6. build resilience skills 7. dare to laugh and have fun, dare to be laughed at 8. communicate over and over again. To do those, there is one thing to understand, you need to know yourself well, so that you don’t get in the way of success!
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If you feel, that you would like to take the fast track to master those, or would love some support in delivering those, get in touch. Lets have a little talk! |
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