Playing Hurt
Whatever happened to the days when team members could be counted on by other team members no matter what? I know they do not grow warriors like Cal Ripken, Jr. or Brett Favre on trees, but has the expectation to "play hurt" for the overall benefit of the team dwindled in recent years.
Okay, let's step out of the realm of pro athletes for a second. What is the expectation among your team? Do your team members pick up the slack for one another when one member is unable to perform? Do folks in your office or on your team readily volunteer to cover vacations for one another? A deeper question to ask yourself is just how much of a role does the quality of leadership play when it comes to the willingness to "play hurt?"
The culture of team-building is a tricky science. A mentor of mine used to refer to the "team" as an ongoing science or chemistry project. That analogy always kept the dynamic of team-building fun. Proper planning, goal-setting, levels of accountability and a low-tolerance for poor performance are all critical in formulating the winning team. Do you want your team-members to "play hurt?" If so, they need to know exactly why they should be laying it all on the line at all times. What is the mission, the vision, the end goal? In professional sports this can be obvious in the form of a championship, a legacy or a Hall of Fame induction. In the business world, this is often up to the team leader to define, plan and execute. Does your team clearly understand and support the goal? Are they zealots? When people are passionate about their work, they execute at higher levels of performance. Part of a leader's responsibility is to be constantly stoking this fire. A unified goal, cause or mission will go a long way to creating a "playing hurt" performance culture. Which will in-turn go a long way in helping the team exceed performance expectations.
"As long as I can compete, I won't quit. Reaching three-thousand is not the finish line as long as I can contribute." – Cal Ripken, Jr.
1 comment:
This past weekend I was fortunate to chance upon a book titled 'Beautiful Teams' by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene.
You do correctly imply that a mark of a good team is people working together.
We do talk about teams and how important teams are, but we tend to forget how these teams come into place. Who in a typical corporate hierarchy is bestowed with the opportunity of creating them, and most importantly nurture them.
The more I see, read and experience, building and nurturing exceptional teams is an art not a science and certainly not accidental.
I was particularly struck with the following paragraph from the book which not only further emphasizes the point you are trying to make but tells us that building teams is a serious matter and does not only involve assigning tasks as many inexperienced managers tend to believe.
“…The truth, as it turns out, is a lot more complicated than we realized at first. It has more to do with things that are a lot harder to quantify. Sometimes the best people on the team aren’t always the most technically skilled, and sometimes the most technically skilled people on the team can actually be detrimental to getting the work done. People need to be able to work together, and if they can’t, it doesn’t matter how good their skills are. In fact, some of the best programmers (from a technical perspective) are in danger of getting too cocky, and can actually make it more difficult to get the project done. But those are often the most important people on your team….”
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