Master Your Game: High Performance Teams
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Free Download - Master Your Game: Expectations That Generate Results By Jacque Small |
Many organizations talk about teams and teamwork but few really know how nor take the time to build teams. This article is the first in a series about teamwork. It explains the difference between a group and a team and outlines how dynamic teams lead to future success and growth.
Groups Are a Collection of Individuals
"There is a simplistic concept that if you select and put 6 to 12 people in a room, you have a team; what you really have is just a 'group' of individuals."
G. Gibson and C. Smith in
Dynamic Coaching to Build Dynamic Teams
How many times have you decided not to contribute to meeting discussions because:
• you did not know if you had the right answer
• you did not understand what others were talking about
• you were tired of listening to others and have tuned out
• you believed no one listens to you anyway
• you feel it is not worth getting into an argument?
If you do not feel like participating in meeting discussions for any number of reasons, chances are that you belong to a group, not a team. If you are worried about "you" rather than the collective, you are not a team member. If you do not feel motivated to participate in discussions, you don't belong to a compelling environment that encourages open, honest communication -- in other words, you do not belong to a team.
Groups, like teams, are a collection of individuals that have come together to meet on a regular basis. Often when individuals come into these meetings, each has her or his own priorities and agendas. Regardless of the specific purpose that brings them together, it is how individuals behave that sets apart groups from teams.
Team Members Leave Their Egos at the Door
To be a highly effective team member, you will have to leave your ego at the door when you enter the meeting. A team meeting is about accomplishing the common goal and working together - not competing - to achieve the desired outcome.
R. Maddux, author of Team Building: An Exercise in Leadership describes the qualities of groups and teams as follows:
Groups
• Individuals work independently
• Distrust and disagreement
• Unclear communication
• Conflict avoided or escalated
• Conformity
• Self focused, hidden agendas, ownership
Teams
• Members are interdependent
• Openness, trust; disagreements seen as positive
• Open honest communication
• Recognize value of conflict
• Free expression
• Mutual goals, purpose, mission, sense of unity
If focusing on mutual goals, purpose and mission is the objective, teams clearly have an advantage over groups.
Dynamic Teams Lead to Success
With each member contributing, the collective team energy is laser-focused on achieving the shared goal. Each one works harder to have open and honest communication, resulting in cumulative knowledge that leads to better decisions, a synergy that generates creative outcomes or "extraordinary results".
Dynamic teams bring out the differences of opinion and encourage the respectful exploration of these differences to determine what would work best for the team. The brilliance of teams is demonstrated by the creative and innovative generation of ideas and outcomes.
Here's another argument for fostering high performance teams: The future success of our organizations and our economy will depend upon our ability to be creative and harness the intellectual capital of people's ingenuity. Perhaps Dr. Martha Piper, the University of British Columbia president best explains:
". . . knowledge on its own has very little use - that indeed we need people - people who can use the information and knowledge in an innovative way - people who can create the new knowledge and the products and services that flow from it - people, who, for want of a better term, are creative."
Teams with effective communication can operationalize this creativity, and in turn, contribute to our future economic success.
Building Dynamic Teams,
Jacque Small
Master Your Game High Performance Teams - To learn more about this author, visit Jacque Small's Website.
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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