Courage must be the firmer, heart the bolder, spirit the greater the more our strength wains. Written over a thousand years ago and recorded in a fragment of Anglo-Saxon poetry the words are those of an Anglo-Saxon warrior fighting an invading Viking force. Words that echo out of the centuries and remind us that bad things show up.
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I’ve worked with a lot of teams in the military, in sport and in business. In almost every case where the team does not work well or is somehow less than the sum of its parts the root causes are to do with the quality of relationships that team members have and in particular the relationships the leader has.
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In my late teens I was pretty obsessed with rock climbing, unfortunately I lived in Kent about as far from climbable rock as its possible to get – I climbed a lot of trees! None the less it has stuck with me as a passion. A couple of years ago I got back to it more seriously doing more and then training seriously. Not actually with any specific goal in mind other than to get better – a pursuit that now takes around 10-15 hours a week. The process as much as the result fascinates me and I’m struck by the parallels between a physical training process and the quest to get better at anything or to perform at your best consistently.
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On November 19th, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln, stood at the battlefield of Gettysburg at an event to consecrate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. He was not the main speaker at the event, Edward Everett a fellow politician had spoken for 2-hours before Lincoln rose to his feet. When Lincoln finally rose to his feet, his speech lasted a few minutes and constituted less than 300 words. Lincoln himself considered the speech a failure and the Crowd’s reaction was polite. Now known as the Gettysburg address it is one of the most famous speeches in American History and one of the profoundest statements on how we should frame our relationship to those who paid the full measure of sacrifice with their lives.
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Turning food into energy and the nutrients needed for health takes a comprehensive and complex digestive system. Turning knowledge into action requires no less of a system.
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Leaders must judge where they can have the greatest impact – this is rarely from behind a desk because this decision is always about connecting with the key people who are going to get the job done.
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This is the half remembered distillation of a conversation that involved a very long run, half a bottle of extremely expensive scotch and a Cuban cigar.
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A man walks into an appointment with his Doctor for a routine check up. ‘Do you feel unwell she asks, do you have any symptoms’? ‘No, I feel fine,’ the man replies and moments later finds himself back on the street.
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Dream teams are often a fantasy collection of all the talents with the assumption that individual talents will lead to team success. But individual talent is actually a poor predictor for team success. Teams with the most individually gifted members often end up less, or only equal to the sum of their parts. It takes more than talent to transcend the limitations of individuality, as all great teams are exponentially more than a collection of individuals. Here are some quick observations on great team characteristics:
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Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra once observed that ‘the conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. He depends, for his power - on his ability to make other people powerful. That process of making others powerful is an art but here are 5 thoughts on things leaders can do to help:
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