Being a great leader is one thing. Building a high performing a highly cohesive team is another! You can be a great leader, but if you don’t have the right people surrounding you you’re not going to get very far. If you’ve ever felt like finding the right people to build that highly cohesive team is a bit elusive, you’re not alone! We can find great people, but to be able to have them gel and to have high performance quarter after quarter and be ready to tackle whatever the world throws, that’s not so easy. The reason is that most people are really focused on what they need to get done in their department. What’s needed though is for everyone to come together to say “Where do we need to be and how are we going to attain what the organization as a whole needs?”.
The basis of a high performing, highly cohesive team is vulnerability-based trust. Now most people would say they trust their teammates. That’s not what I’m talking about here. Vulnerability-based trust is all about trusting each other for:
- asking for help
- saying you’re overwhelmed
- saying you don’t know the answer
- saying you’re scared
- saying that you’re concerned
- holding each other accountable
- voicing your opinion when you you have a difference of opinion
- having real conversations
These types of team relationships will propel you forward and allow you to achieve greatness in your industry.
Once you have established vulnerability-based trust as the foundation of your team, you can have healthy debate around different ideas and ways to move forward. You can effectively find solutions to problems together and figure out how to attain more market share as a team.
If you have people that are keeping their opinions to themselves, not feeling heard or actually not being listened to, I can tell you they’re not really going to commit to the company’s goals. They’re not going to be all in. And if your people don’t commit, you’re not going to have everybody giving the same type of energy and effort to accomplish what you want.
There are so many aspects of a high performing team starting with trusting each other at a deep level. Only then can you start building greatness and making the difference that you want to make in the organization, your community and the world. It comes down to a choice: are you willing to settle with the team functioning exactly like they are today and accepting the results that you have today? Or are you willing to roll up your sleeves and create a group of people around you that is willing and able to roll up their sleeves with you and tackle anything that the world throws at them?
A team is just a group of people truly focused on what they want to accomplish. But a highly cohesive team can take you farther than you ever imagined!
