Building a Gold-Medal Team: Essential Qualities for Success"
Though one person may serve as the designated leader, often the leadership role rotates among its members according to the current project. The leader willingly relinquishes his or her role, and team members do not greedily grab for it. The team entity is too valuable to permit a power struggle, so effective teams recognize that the success of a team supersedes individual success; individuals win or lose as a team.
Achieving Superior Results: Recognizing the Immense Value of a Team
Teams rivet themselves to the vision more easily than individuals working alone. With regular accountability and collaboration, teams can more clearly assess potential hindrances and trajectories of decisions, observing how an action done on the front lines of the organization either reinforces or sabotages the company vision.
Building a Powerful Team: Foundational Characteristics
Perhaps one of the best examples of true teamwork is conveyed by Thomas Quick as he describes a surgical team, headed by a surgeon. The team includes surgical assistants, nurses, anesthetist, and technician. Each function is specialized and highly skilled, and each person knows that his or her success is dependent on the other members of the team. All are committed to one objective—the well being of the patient.
Strategically Choosing Your Inner Circle: Why This Matters
The inner circle of the leader (the team within the team) and other chosen team members should possess a heart of integrity. An effective leader must not overlook character shortfalls despite impressive credentials of experience, personality, or education.
First Class Skills: Enhancing One’s Own Leadership
While supervision and management are of great importance, the actual building of a team is the paramount task of executive leaders. Kouzes and Posner emphasize building a team to accomplish the work at hand: “A one-word test for differentiating between leaders and managers that came through loud and clear in case studies was the use of we instead of I.
The Leader’s Priorities: The Building Blocks of Compounding Power
Effective leaders look ahead and provoke change. The very factors that produced today’s success can lead to tomorrow’s failure. Therefore, a leader must be able to embrace change and move with the currents of advancements and culture. As an agent of change, the leader sets a fire so that staff members see the flames with their own eyes and smell the smoke with their own nostrils. They personalize it.
Exponential Leadership: It Starts on the Inside
With solid character emitting from the heart of a leader, other virtues naturally emanate, exemplifying the standards for the team. Effective leaders and their staff members can be compared to a ship’s captain and the crew: even though it is essential that the ship’s captain have some vision of what lies beyond the horizon, it is also important that the crew understand the standards by which their performance will be assessed as they sail toward it.
Compounding Impact: The Divine Origins of Teamwork
While often overlooked and undervalued, God’s social nature reveals key components of successful team-mindedness and activity. Executive leaders who consider and explore these observations can better display these insights within their own teams through collaboration, partnerships, and team-mindedness. This trickles throughout the whole organizational population, leaving positive effects inside and outside the company.
Independence Day: Leaders Declare Their Values Through Action
Have you as a leader been forced to make a critical decision that would not only impact your life, but the lives of those you serve? If not, the time will surely come for you. Your mental fortitude will be tested. The team that you’ve surrounded yourself with will face pressure to deviate. Pressures will surround you from all sides. Yet will you hold to your conviction?
Infusing Team-Mindedness to Compound Cohesion
The quality of relationships among the executive leadership team is a primary factor in developing effective teams throughout the whole organization. Researchers Hersey and Blanchard indicate that the most significant factors in the productivity of an organization pertain to the interpersonal relationships therein. These relationships are foundational to the success of effective teams. This is a linchpin for all leaders.
Overcoming the Leadership Vacuum: Harnessing the Compounding Power of Teamwork
The success of organizations depends on strong, visionary leadership. Companies can compensate for the absence of certain skills and resources but cannot overcome the absence of effective leadership. This leads to a high level of frustration among leaders and team members. What causes this dilemma? The leaders’ skill sets are weighted toward other areas. Consequently, a massive leadership vacuum develops.
Building a Culture of Remebrance
What does remembrance accomplish in an organization? For one, it helps us to appreciate the present. We remember the struggles, the sacrifices, the humble origins, the story that led us to this moment. Does your team know the stories or the people who preceded them?
5 Lessons at Augusta National
I have had the great pleasure of playing several rounds of golf at Augusta National, a truly spectacular experience - the beauty of nature, the pressure to make the best shot, the weight of knowing renowned players have played on the same green, the variety of challenges of each hole. As I reflect on these experiences, here are five lessons that translate to great leadership!
The Barrier of Stewardship
Staffing is your most valuable resource and, at the same time, can be the most difficult component to navigate. Maybe you’re at a place where you need to hire for a specialized position that you don’t have in-house, or perhaps you can’t utilize volunteers to accomplish tasks to the degree you desire. Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats is critical for organizational growth!
The Barrier of Staff
Staffing is your most valuable resource and, at the same time, can be the most difficult component to navigate. Maybe you’re at a place where you need to hire for a specialized position that you don’t have in-house, or perhaps you can’t utilize volunteers to accomplish tasks to the degree you desire. Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats is critical for organizational growth!
The Barrier of Structure: Part 2
If you are regularly working on tasks well past normal working hours, you could have a structure problem. Give careful thought to your work-life balance. What would the ideal work-life balance look like for you in a week? Strive to build an organization that can function well without you.
The Barrier of Structure: Part 1
Do you expect your departments to grow? Will current facilities and technology suffice? If expansion is in your future, then a strategic plan must be developed to assess what structures are needed to pave the way for growth.
The Barrier of Systems
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “This is how we’ve always done it…” Would that be acceptable to you? Would you press into those routines to assess if they could be refined, to cut any excess, to add greater accountability, or possibly renovate entirely? If we’re honest, our teams and procedures could use some system assessment.
Self-Leadership: Part 2
Many describe their identity by what they do. “I am a [profession/title].” If this is your first natural response, then consider a vital truth—what you can achieve, your past success, and your current title are not your identity. What you DO is merely a vocation or hobby, but who you ARE is much more significant. This is an important distinction.
SELF-LEADERSHIP: PART 1
When I am involved in leadership coaching, the initial question I like to ask is, “Who are you?” This question speaks to our identity – how we see ourselves. I usually get some interesting responses. The question and answer are key if we are going to be all that we were made to become.