Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Grow your “DREAM TEAM” from the ground up - Together Everyone Achieves More

The first step when creating a “DREAM TEAM” is to acknowledge that you as the leader are accountable for every team member. When you accept that you are fully responsible for ensuring that you have the right people to fill your teams, you have created a perfect foundation for building a “DREAM TEAM” that matches the plan and model necessary to achieve the desired results.

Although you are responsible for your team and everyone in it, you must empower your team members by delegating tasks to them completely. Offer constant support and guidance where necessary, but have the confidence to give them enough latitude to assume a leadership role and to shoulder full responsibility for any task that you delegate to them. Research has shown that by offering greater levels of autonomy to your team members, you will inspire them to a greater degree, allow them to feel more valued and an integral and necessary part of the team.
Building dream teams, filled with super achievers, is all about understanding the importance of each team members contribution to the whole, where they are given autonomy to carry out their individual roles. This allows the members of your team to feel more challenged, keeps them focused on the outcome they are trying to achieve and allows them to focus their energy on any potential opportunities that may be available.
This shift, where you completely delegate tasks and responsibility to your team, will help you to free up time to be a more effective leader and will help you to retain the most valuable members of your teams, as they will feel valued and an important part of the common vision or purpose; you and your team are working to achieve.
It is seldom, if ever, necessary to completely reboot your teams and start everything from scratch. In most cases it is merely a small shift in the way teams are structured or led that result in massive positive changes.  The difference between mediocre team performance and stellar team performance is often in merely refining and defining certain small details. The building blocks for creating your “DREAM TEAM” are in essence, merely creating a core business model that is communicated to and understood by all team members.

Poor team performance is very often a symptom and expression of the lack of a clear vision. This can be rectified by reworking, refining and updating the overall vision and ensuring that each individual’s vision is aligned with the overall vision of the team or organisation. We can only perform at the level of our knowledge and understanding of our real vision and purpose. If this is unclear or ambiguous, the results that will flow will be less than satisfactory.
Look at the heart of the challenges that are limiting the performance of your team or teams. If you want to leverage the maximum from all the individuals on your teams, there must be a total commitment to rejuvenate them, with the drive coming from the front. This entire process is driven by great leadership, which has a clear vision and a set of common goals and objectives that is clearly communicated and understood by everyone within each of your teams. This will allow each individual within each of your teams to flourish, grow and thrive.
Clarity of vision and a clear understanding by each team member of their individual role in delivering on the common vision, where everyone on your team is focused and driven by a common purpose and clearly defined set of goals, will ensure that everyone is delivering on their commitments to the team. As each team member sees the results of their accumulative efforts and they consistently see the success they are an integral part of creating, they will realise their value and importance to the team. This sense of belonging and value is really important to people and is one of the most powerful tools available to keep your team members inspired and driven to succeed.  
To encourage real transformation you must commit to apply a new recipe for teamwork to all your teams. If you continue to use the same tired patterns, systems, habits, motions or even staff, you will continue to get the same results. When you are creating a real “DREAM TEAM” you must ensure that you are not merely rearranging your old ineffective team, but that you are altering the basic components of the team and ensuring that a common vision exists for each team and individual. This vision must be understood and constantly communicated to each team member.

Commit to be an authentic leader, one that has a crystal clear understanding, why the team exists and one that has a vivid picture of the purpose and vision the team must fulfil. Ensure that this is regularly communicated and understood by all team members and that everyone is working toward a common goal. This allows for the formation of better teams and will always result in a superior team effort.
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

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