TRUE TEAM TRANSFORMATION

We define a “true team” as a group of people aligned and committed to a common mission, vision or purpose, who trust each other to put the team before self.  They have learned to park their egos and have transcended the conscious and unconscious traditional competition among each other for choice assignments, budget, headcount, recognition or promotion.   True teams take time to perform maintenance and housekeeping on themselves to ensure they have a healthy and strong team dynamic, before leaping into action.  True teams are always learning, and they make it safe for team members to learn quickly.

True teams commit to achieving results they are unsure how they will generate at the time they make the commitment.  They embody the practice of aligning on “what” they will do before they figure out “how” they will do it, trusting that “how” will show up along the way.  They are not trapped by “realistic” or “unrealistic” mindsets. Rather, they embrace what is possible and often thought to be “unreasonable” at the start.

True high-performance teams take care of each other and ensure that everyone on the team feels valued and has an opportunity to contribute.  They act in a way to preserve and strengthen trust with each other and put the team before self.

The journey to becoming a true high-performance team is, on one hand, actually quite simple.  All it takes is for everyone on the team to embody new distinctions and practices.  Practices are what we do (behaviors) on a regular and consistent basis, and we are always practicing something. To get the results you want, you must change your practices.   However, embodying new distinctions and practices requires time and takes people out of their comfort zone.  That is why true change is often difficult.