The commitment and performance of each of the individual team members together build a high-performance team. In this part, Ricardo Gil discusses the importance of the team members’ roles as well as the importance of having a purpose.
On an individual level, what does a high-performance team member need to be strong at to be part of such a team?
What is the role of having a purpose?
Transcription
On an individual level, what does a high-performance team member need to be strong at to be part of such a team?
I believe the individual skills and mindsets are the same that we ask of a high a performing individual, and then again there are some social interpersonal skills that transcend the individual or personal skills. However, the personal skills, this is like a soccer or football team, where if you want the team to play well together you need good individual players. But good individual players is a necessary condition, yet insufficient. The same is true for high performing teams. You need talented individuals that know their technical jobs well, that they have good social skills, good personal skills. But then you also need individuals that can work well interpersonally. When it comes to making team decisions, and when it comes to sub-optimizing the sub-teams within the team, you need people able to make those tradeoffs graciously, and not get hooked and attached to having it my way.
How important is the role of the leader?
I think the role of the leader is extremely important, and in a non-conventional way. My point of view, and, again, this is my point of view, is that the best leader of a high-performing team is what some authors call the servant kind of leader, the leader that leads from behind, helping people develop themselves and grow individually and collectively. It’s not the leader that only gives direction, although sometimes the team needs direction, but it’s a leader that challenges the team members to stand up for themselves, to take a stand, to have a point of view, to disagree respectfully and graciously, to learn to be not attached to your ideas or to your views of the world, to take each other lightly, and to fail fast and learn fast and course-correct fast. I believe that the kind of leader that can do that is the leader that sees his contribution to the team and his ability to help the team members develop themselves as one of his main responsibilities. I call that the servant leader.
What is the role of having a purpose?
That creates the inspiration in the team members to go after something that looks unattainable maybe at first sight. This is what creates the desire and the willingness to go beyond what looks like your limits and allow ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It’s everything. It’s the reason, like you ask somebody what’s importance of purpose in life? Well a team has a meaningful purpose, of something they are uniquely positioned to accomplish as a team. They go after that. That creates a reservoir of energy that allows the team to overcome anything. No difficulty is big enough, no wall is high enough to overcome. That is what a purpose provides. It provides the epic for a team. The narrative. The inspiration. The desire, yes, we’re gonna do this. We can do this, and we are gonna do this. We are gonna succeed. Although it looks impossible, we’re gonna do it anyways. Why? Because we can.
And that doesn’t come from a place of personality, it doesn’t come from the intellect. That comes from when you align the head, the heart, and the guts. That is what purpose does. Align the head, the heart, the guts, and the hands.
