Breakpoints

Chapter 12 The work of team

This chapter is about how you turn your management team into a team of leaders — able to collaborate with each other and cascade the passion and purpose through their own teams. How they work together as a team can either lift the business or hold the business back. I've seen both happen, and not just because a team was internally divided. That's relatively rare. What is more common is a team that is just a group of functional managers who are reporting to a central table and who are interacting and transacting without lifting their performance to the level of true leadership. At one stage the All Blacks rugby team, which won every match from 1967 to 1970 (and still holds the world record for most successive matches won), had seven provincial captains in its forward pack of eight. That's a pretty formidable leadership capability.

The work

The work of team is never done:

• A team you're really happy with is a team that in six months will have a problem you'll have to address.
• You cannot stop the work of team while you sort out who should be on the bus.
• Your role is that of talent manager — who to use, who to lose.
• The individuals and groups must be kept energised and engaged.
• Enough change must be introduced to unleash new dynamics without being distracting.

The work you have to put into your team is from your own leadership first. You have to be courageous in forcefully voicing your vision. This could feel strained at first, but it is a skill that ...