Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a (legendary) team of people
Steve Jobs
High-performing teams is a timeless leadership topic.
Ever since I started working in working groups in university I was fascinated by the power of teams. Sometimes you are in this great group and everything flows naturally, but other times you are just stuck and you feel like you’re doing everything by yourself or with one other legendary teammate.
More relevant than ever
After the COVID pandamic, everyone is used to the hybrid working, which has challenged us in being a high-performing team. It simply created a physical barrier which has an impact on the closeness we perceive to our peers and also making it less easy to use body language and other forms of physical communication to assure top performance.
Nevertheless, there are many teams of course who are great and very conscious about fixing these kind of obstacles but it is something worthwile discussing in your team(s).
This is also why it’s important to go back to the key characteristics of high-performing teams and assess and discuss which areas could be improved for that ultimate vibe and performance we all aspire for.
What makes a legendary, high-performing team?
Becoming legendary is such a cool concept isn’t it? Directly makes you see yourself walk around with a red cape? I believe we can all be legendary in our own way. We have our own authentic strengths and powers and that is also why I love helping people with finding their inner self with personal mission statement sessions and discussing someone’s authentic strengths and values. And knowing ’thyself’ is one of the most important aspects for being open to working in a high-performing team. Your insecurities shouldn’t block strong communication or cause any friction in the team so if all people are their best self, you’re off for a great start.
According to various research below are the key characteristics of high-performing teams. I will not dwell on setting SMART goals or too many of the other ‘open doors’ for high-performing team. I will only highlight how to do this legendary.
1. Have an awesome shared vision
“If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Obviously you need a shared vision but how can you go about this? One of the ways I really like to use is:
- Brainstorm together on your desired destination and make it very vivid and truly visualize how the desired destination of your work will look like. Vision is the destination, strategy is the route.
- Google’s organizational vision is: “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” and this strong vision has ultimately resulted in Google turning into a verb!
- Dream LEGENDARY – people psychologically need to be inspired. That is why your vision (also for your team) needs to be big. It’s something that almost feels impossible. So go for it, why would you settle for less if you and your team can be legendary?
- Instill a strong purpose in the team – this is much more about the “why”. All of you probably know about Simon Sinek’s golden circle so I’ll skip to the point: you need to have multiple ways to communicate and discuss a strong sense of purpose. It’s not just about your point of view of the why, don’t just share it and mention that you want to go from “good to great” and transition towards “excellence”. It’s much more also about why having this purpose is beneficial for the people in your team. Will it make them happier in their work? More fulfilled? Make them – legendary!?
Once you have mutual clarity on your desired destination – and an instilled sense of why – then it’s time to put your vision into action: a legendary strategy.
2. Develop meaningful mutual goals and plans
This sounds boring like this right? So how can we make this awesome? Strategy according to the Oxford dictionary is:
noun: strategy; plural noun: strategies
- “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim. “time to develop a coherent economic strategy”
So we need to work on strong ‘pillars’ or areas to focus on for the execution of our vision and then have a strong plan to achieve the vision we’ve set up. What are the resources that we need and which goals should we set to achieve that vision?
Now it’s getting legendary, because building on the philosophy of “Atomic Habits”, I genuinely see that if we would all go 1 level deeper and focus on: “which habits do we need to achieve this specific goal?” we are completely changing the game. You are Legend.
Why? Because setting a goal is easy, achieving it can be very hard. And the best way to achieve your goals is by putting in consistent, conscious effort.
Example
It’s my ambition with GROEIVRIEND to help >100.000 people over the coming years grow and become the best version of themselves. To do this, I need to have both: 1) stellar content, propositions and credibility in my craft, 2) keep developing my own personal leadership to be the best version of myself and 3) make sure that I do enough sales to achieve my mission.
This is all nice and fine, but my habits will determine my success. So I’ve planned blocks of time where I focus on exactly these 3 things. In those blocks, I focus on nothing else since this is my only way to truly become legendary. The habit is doing this every day at the same time as much as possible, having everything I need ready, making this habit go smoother and smoother every day.
How is this for you now? Looking at your own personal mastery? Which habits do you really have to achieve your goals? Are they fully aligned?
Successful people are simply those with successful habits
Brian Tracy
3. Create legendary communication among team members
I LOVE COMMUNICATION. Genuinely, I can’t stop watching and analyzing how people communicate and still it can be so hard for some people right? If people are very dominant or just ignorant it just feels like communication is impossible. That is also why you need to have the right people in your legendary team.
Unpopular opinion: I am not going to say that everyone can learn legendary communication because I don’t believe that is true. To have a legendary team you can’t have poor communicators, period. And yes, people can become better but if they are genuinely not empathetic or really fail to understand what kind of feeling they give to the other person then it’s all about improving their communication as much as possible, but they can never be part of a legendary high-performing team. They will probably just mess up the culture that you’re trying to create; being toxic and making it all about them and their insecurities – not about the team’s vision and goals.
Accordingly, if you have truly self-aware people who also really care about other people, then you can start creating a strong communication culture that works. Where being vulnerable is applauded and where respect and equality or core values of your team. “I am here to genuinely listen to you, since I know you’d like us all to do better.” That is the vibe that you’d like to create whilst managing all the other needs of your team. Key is to keeping getting back into that vibe – making it a habit – even if something happens which derails you, keeping getting back to that culture of excellent communication.
Intuition as your communication superpower
A crucial legendary skill that high-performing teams have is that they are also able to listen to their intuition – and communicate about that in a strong way. In situations like hiring a new team member or working with a new client or making a strategic direction, you sometimes know that it’s not ’the right thing to do’ although rationally it all adds up.
True legends stand-up at that time and say: “I don’t know why, but I feel that we shouldn’t do this, something is not right – what do you feel?”
Great foundational communication skills, culture, vulnerability and truly following our intuiton leads to legendary communication.
4. Develop and maintain positive relationships among team members
You want the team to be “homies for life” after this project. They will look back at this project in a few years during a classy lunch and then they’ll say: “do you still remember when..”.
This goes back to the deeper meaning of friendships and why people like each other. Going back to legend Dale Carnegie, and similar relationship experts, I would like to point out a few key pointers for positive relationships:
- Be genuinely interested in the other – ask regularly (but genuinely) how someone else is doing, feels and also remember important events for him / her and ask about that
- Provide compliments and smile often – trust me 🙂
- Use WAIT (Why Am I Talking) a lot – try to be a listener more than being talkative. In general, people will like you much more, if you ask the right questions than when you talk (too much)
- Organize many social events with your team to foster a culture of friendship
- Call each other regularly to just ‘check-in’ on them or motivate them that it’s going to be a legendary day
- And a rare one is really talking about your feelings – if things went wrong, if you’re not happy with how things are going – it’s all good – as long as you can talk about it together. Only by also being able to do that, you can create long-lasting positive relationships between team members
5. Having a culture of encouragement and trust
Who doesn’t enjoy a good cheerleader who makes you ‘pumped up’ to do what you are going to do?
And even better if this cheerleader can encourage you to really go for it – whilst, no matter the outcome – he or she will stand behind you, as long as you gave it your all. As long as you showed courage, really went for it, didn’t look back but took the risk! That is as legendary as it gets.
How do you give that feeling to someone – well, tell them and be the example. Just like that – BAM. Legendary.
6. Solve problems and make decisions on a timely basis
Your intuiton is always right. Really, as long as you don’t confuse your intuition with instinct or your ego of course. But if you sense that not a making a decision is holding you back or there are problems (elephants in the room) which just need to be cleared, just do it right away! Don’t think about it – just raise it and make a decision. Not moving forward is also a (bad) decision so combine your intuiton and the power of TEAM to make decisions quickly and solve problems on the spot.
The worst thing you can do to prevent legendary status is to not bring things up, create depletion and let things drag forward.. Be legendary, just do it.
7. Successfully manage conflict
Who doesn’t love a good conflict!? Well, like 98% of the people doesn’t really like conflict.. Only if you’re a narcisist (which is fine) you’ll like conflicts. Note that conflict is different than having a good discussion. It’s so important and so hard to manage conflict.
5 key tips for managing conflict as a legend:
- Take action first – you are the legend. Establish common ground and start with re-building the basics of the relationship
- Leverage the law of reciprocity – be vulnerable by explaining that you wished things would have gone differently and that you don’t like this conflict and would like to solve it with him / her. Ask whether he or she would be open for that too – as a legend?
- “Put the fish on the table” – in Sicily fishermen do this to clean the fish together and undergo the nasty task. Do the same and just put the issue out there, on the table, and start searching for a solution together. You can even use this as an example 🙂
- Go back to the roots – what is the deeper reason why this conflict has arised? Do you trust each other, what kind of feelings do you get from each other? Have a value-based discussion and try to turn this conflict into a positive (working) relationship once and for all
- Close strongly – and emphasize that you’re grateful that the other was so open to do this with you. Give compliments and move on – it’s done. Conflict handled. Such a legend you are
8. Facilitate productive meetings
YES – because we all actually really need that. This means:
- Don’t use meetings for your own ego trip – we don’t have time for that shit and we still love you
- Don’t just talk about a random topic but let’s take notes, make decisions and move forward!
- I love sharing my screen and draw a vision & strategy action, timelines and everything needed for success – it makes your discussion so much more productive if you directly draw it out together
- If it’s an operational meeting – make sure they are well prepared and don’t dwell on topics in this meeting (set up a separate one) – just follow the key actions, deadlines, handle the hurdles raised and finish early
Thank you on behalf of all the legends.
9. Exhibit effective team leadership
It’s so easy as a leader to not make time for the things that really matter for your people. And I understand, because you’re so busy making your numbers, focusing on the essentials, the pressure from above, and therefore not really making time for other things.
But as legendary leader you must focus on these type of things for your high-performing team:
- Acknowledge, appreciate and give credit to your team members ‘en public’ – it’s important for the culture of praise
- Listen actively – to be a great leader is to be a great communicator and great communicators listen. And let them know afterwards that you really listened and also act on it
- Show commitment – you are their promise for a better future, who stands behind the organization’s mission or why else are you here? Don’t talk bad about things that will not help anyone and show the commitment of making this team the best team ever because remember, you’re a legendary leader
- Communicate clearly – concise, clear communication is a crucial ingredient for high-performing teams. We can’t decide to go right and then last-minute decide to go left. Clarity and trust is crucial for stellar performance
- Lead with empathy – always be open and understanding to the viewpoint of others but also clearly communicate when for the team, it’s better to take a different path. In these discussions it’s super important that you make it clear that you truly understand where they are coming from and check with them whether they understand your perspective and position as well. And ask what they would do in your shoes to bring them onboard
- Be a legend – lead by example – what if you can be that awesome leader who stands up for the people? Did something weird on offsites or company days to emphasize how happy and grateful you are with your team? Make them feel how amazing they are. Say that at every opportunity – genuinely – and love them like crazy
Big people are the ones that make other people feel bigger
The Legend
10. Provide development opportunities for team members
Real legends are those who intend to grow and become a little bit better than who they were yesterday, every day. And best case scenario, legendary team members requires this from themselves and they are members of a professional development platform like MindValley or Masterclass. But to be sure, as a leader you can of course stimulate this like crazy. After all, you are leading the team :).
An obvious item here is providing your team with regular ideas for personal development; like a list of potential trainings or activities they can do to grow each month / quarter to push them for growth.
Next to that, you can invent “15 minutes of legendary” (or 15 minutes of personal growth) in which you stimulate your team members to spend some time on themselves in your time. This could be reading a book for 15 minutes or following an (online) course each day. And once a month, spend some time on purposeful, legendary growth – like better communication, improved client relations or anything similar and rotate the team member in charge for organizing this personal growth session.
You are so ready to become high-performing legends. So let’s get going! And just remember:
If you can’t do the little things right, you can never do the big things right – and be a true legend