Achieving Superior Results: Recognizing the Immense Value of a Team

Effective leaders value the team entity and work to enhance it. Exponential leadership primes its teams to unleash their compounding power. Such teams achieve superior results and amplify personal strengths while compensating for weaknesses. Team members commit themselves more fully to the shared vision while the leader invests time and energy in developing each individual. The value of an effective team cannot be overstated! I wonder how well your team displays the following.

Produce Superior Results

It may be obvious, but teams produce greater results than via individual efforts. They outperform an individual’s solitary actions in larger organizational groupings, especially when performance requires multiple skills, judgments, and experiences. A team inevitably gets better results than a collection of individuals operating within confined job roles and responsibilities.

Glenn Varney, in Building Productive Teams, recognizes that while “many American managers receive powerful rewards for making decisions on their own, the results of extensive research…indicate that collective decision making is a more productive process than individual decision making.” He further states that the quality of collective decisions and the success of the team increase substantially when they are reached through team efforts.

This improved quality of decision making through teamwork happens because of synergy that compounds effort. Team members combine their best abilities to create a cooperative output that exceeds individual potential.

Additionally, the synergy that takes place in the arena of teamwork greatly affects creativity. It cultivates a rich soil where innovative thoughts sprout freely and frequently as team members till the soil and water the garden of ideas. Each one builds on another’s contribution. Most creative ideas are hatched in a group environment as the result of judgment-free brainstorming and freedom from bureaucratic constraints—chain of command, rules, paperwork. Isolation and routine are poor incubators for creativity. A good proposal becomes a great proposal through the efforts of the team rather than just one individual in a corner office.

Amplify Strengths and Overcome Weaknesses

Highly effective team leaders create environments for teams to enhance one another, building upon each other’s gifts. They realize that a project’s success requires multiple talents—more than one person possesses. Leaders create ample space for individuals to perform at their highest level of capability, publicly valuing each contribution. When team members approach their portion of work, they give their best. The emphasis on team strength makes weaknesses irrelevant, while compounding strengths and productivity. Teammates recognize individual shortfalls, accept them, and fill in deficits with their efforts quietly and with grace, understanding that a time may occur when they need the same deference. Successful teams know how to shine the spotlight on strengths and overcome weaknesses.

Develop People

Effective team culture facilitates the development of their human capital, recognizing that the accomplishment of their ultimate objectives relies upon the performance of each team member. They understand that the stronger the individual, the better the outcome of the team. The intentional and compassionate mentorship of team members yields this powerful mentality.

This determination to enhance people replaces a competitive spirit with a cooperative one, one of sharing and building. The focus is not comparing oneself to one another but on displaying one’s unique contributions and encouraging the same in teammates. Aptitude, expertise, and experience are not withheld from the team, but are freely shared in a humble spirit of mutual development.

Commit Themselves to the Vision

As opposed to a solitary employee, teams typically do a better job of implementing a shared vision, collectively integrating it into daily operations. 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.

This group has been primed to not require outside monitoring, though at times they can certainly profit from careful leadership feedback. With a deeper level of commitment, teams have the capacity to monitor themselves, preventing unnecessary diversion. If a discussion or direction is divergent, they faithfully return to the vision.

The value of teams goes without saying! You as an effective leader must ensure that your team elicits attitudes and actions that compound, not stifle, the existing giftedness, increase excellence, and enhance production.