Winning Teams

The Eight Characteristics of High Performing Teams

Tim Baker

• Publisher: WINNERS-at-WORK Pty Ltd
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780646836331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Most team problems can be traced back to a simple misunderstanding, communication breakdown, or relationship malfunction. It's the people-dimension-not the task-dimension-that continually challenges team leaders. Winning Teams: The Eight Characteristics of High Performing Teams offers leaders practical and easy-to-implement tools to profile and build a robust team identity. A brand-new team identity model sets this book apart from its competition.

The Team Identity Model consists of the eight research-based characteristics that separates high-performing from low-performing teams. The focus of the model is the often-neglected people-dimension of teamwork. The secret of a winning team is found in how its members relate and interact with one another and the frequency of their collaboration.

This book is targeted at team leaders-typically promoted on their technical competence-who often struggle with the people-dimension. Further, business rewards task success-whether it's more sales, better widgets, or superior service delivery. But it's people that lead to task achievement... or failure-not the systems they use, or the know how they possess.

PART I

Building a robust team identity

CHAPTER 1

What can business learn from the world’s greatest sporting team?

When the opposition line up against the New Zealand national rugby team—the All Blacks—they face the “haka,” the highly ritualized challenge thrown down by one group of warriors to another. Māori believe that the haka draws up “tīpuna,” their ancestors, from the earth to the soul. It summons them to aid them in their struggles here on earth, with the sound of “ngunguru,” the low rumble of an earthquake:

’Tis death! ’tis death!

I may die! I may die!

’Tis life! ’tis life!

I might live! I might live!

Opposing teams face the haka in different ways. Some try to ignore it, others advance on it, most stand shoulder to shoulder to face it. Whatever their outward response, inwardly the opposition know that they are standing before more than a collection of 15 individual players. They are facing a culture, an identity, an ethos, a belief system—and a collective passion and purpose beyond anything they have faced before.

Often, by the time the haka reaches its crescendo, the opposition have already lost. For rugby, like business and like much of life, is played primarily in the mind.1

The All Blacks are the most successful rugby team in history. Many good judges believe this team to be the most successful sports team, in any code, ever. In 112 years of playing rugby, New Zealand’s winning percentage is 78. In the 20 years since the sport turned professional, that figure has risen to 84. Those figures are astounding and speak for themselves. The All Blacks are clearly doing something right and have been doing so for over a century.

You don’t have to be a rugby tragic to appreciate that record!

And if, like me, your country has been on the receiving end of the awesome All Blacks, you probably have a grudging and painful respect for this team. It’s an even more impressive record when you consider that the entire population of New Zealand is a touch over four million people.

To appreciate the success of the All Blacks, it helps to understand how it began. In the 1905 tour to Europe and the USA, the All Blacks—or the “Originals,” as that side is now known—played 35 matches and won 34, scored 976 points and conceded 59. Impressive start.

Jock Phillips is one of New Zealand’s most respected historians. “Rugby really took off as a national game at the turn of the century,” Phillips says, “and the crucial thing there was the 1905 All Black team.” According to Phillips, New Zealand had—and perhaps still has—a certain insecurity about its place in the world. “We’ve always got a certain anxiety that we are falling off the edge, that we don’t really count.” The tour, he says, “gave New Zealanders a sense that they had a role to play in the empire.”2 In so many cases—whether individual or team—success is driven by feelings of diffidence.

What can we learn about teamwork from the All Blacks? How can those lessons be translated to the world of work?

The All Blacks mirror the characteristics of high-performing teams I have studied in the workplace. Whether one understands rugby union or sport in general, one can learn a lot from examining this team. It’s clear to all who study the All Blacks that they have made a deliberate effort to build an exemplary team culture.

In this chapter, we look at some of these traits—on and off the field. These themes correlate with the eight characteristics of high-performing teams I cover extensively later in the book.

Teamwork in any context is broadly made up of two dimensions: task and people. The task of any sporting team is to win the competition they’re competing in. The All Blacks do this better than any other team in the world. But it’s the work they do off the field and in their practices that makes the difference. And a lot of this off-field work is about building the people dimension.

Although unquestionably skillful, the All Black’s point of difference is the culture they create within the team. This work is mostly done off the field.

What the All Blacks do on the field is inspirational (if you are a supporter and not on the losing team!) and highly effective. But it’s what they do off the field that contributes significantly to what they do on the field. And I’m not just referring to training and practice sessions.

But something was wrong in 2004. The 2003 World Cup had gone badly for the All Blacks. By the beginning of the following year, senior players were threatening to leave the team. Discipline was poor. A drinking culture prevailed. Systems and processes were disorderly. A poor culture existed and needed a radical transformation.

In response, a fresh management team under Graham Henry, the new head coach, began rebuilding the world’s most successful sporting team from the inside out. Henry wanted a different culture, a culture that placed emphasis on individual character and personal leadership.

Their mantra became Better People Make Better All Blacks.

The fruits of this success were sweet: two Rugby World Cup victories four years apart and an incredible win rate of just over 86 percent.

Henry—who confesses to being a natural autocrat—felt there was a need to transfer leadership from coach to players. His argument was simple. The team is the one that plays the game; the players need to lead on and off the field. This meant Henry needed to change his natural leadership style. The traditional them and us between coaching staff and players had to become we.

And so, transformation began. Leadership groups within the team were formed, giving senior players a distinct portfolio of responsibility. These responsibilities ranged from on-field leadership to social organization to mentoring new players to community relations. Henry contended that leadership and development were best left in the hands of senior players. After all, younger players are m...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III