Successful teams

A successful team or franchise is very hard to come by.  In professional sports, there are about five teams that I would define as franchises.  In the four main professional sports, to only have about five franchises says a lot about how difficult it is to sustain excellence at a team level.  The best example of a team that has sustained excellence is the San Antonio Spurs.  They have been at the top of the National Basketball Association for the last 16 years, and it does not look like they have any intention of slowing down.

I have been a part of only a few successful teams in my life.  The most successful team I have ever been a part of was my freshman year football team in high school.  We had an undefeated record and we won our conference by a unanimous vote.  The reason the team was so successful was because we have one boss for every part of the game.  What I mean by this is that for our offense, our quarterback was always in charge.  The play call would come in from our sidelines and then he was totally in command of the entire offense.  Nobody was every going to question him because we all had a great amount of faith in what he was doing and how he was conducting himself.  It is a lot easier to be a leader when your organization is having a lot of success versus when it is not.  On our team, we where winning and therefore everybody who was not a leader was perfectly alright following our leaders who we knew had given us success in the past. 

Now thinking about it, our team was a simple hierarchy.  We had our head coach who was the main man in charge.  Then we had all of our assistant coaches and captains who were our individual leaders on and off the field.  Our defensive leader was our middle linebacker.  Our middle linebacker never got a call from the sidelines.  I know this because I was our middle linebacker and my coach and I spent so much time together, that I knew the play call solely based on what position players the opposing teams would put onto the field.  Our defense worked as one unit because there was never any questioning of my leadership.  Everybody on our defense knew that I knew what I was talking about and that I would not throw our team into a situation where we would not be able to succeed. 

When I began to read the section of the book by Katzenbach and Smith I saw a very interesting quote.  “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, set performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” (Bolman, Deal 107) That quote is perfectly accurate when describing my freshman football team.  No one person possessed all of the skills to get the job done.  We functioned so well because every person on our team knew that we needed the other ten guys on the field if we were going to reach our goals.  We set a goal every week.  That goal was to win the next game.  We never looked ahead to the games ahead because we did not want to become distracted.  If someone was not doing their job, the entire team would call that person out and make sure they knew what they were doing wrong.  Accountability was huge on our team.

“High performing teams shape purpose in response to a demand or an opportunity placed in their path, usually by higher management.” (Bolman, Deal 107) That quote is meant for a company but it also applies to a football team.  Our demand from our coaches was to remain as a unit and to win.  My teammates and I took the demands that our coaches gave us, and we worked our hardest to execute and accomplish those demands. 

Last thing I want to say is that winning solves everything.  Nobody is going to complain when things are going well.  When you are 7-0, what is there to really complain about.  When a company is thriving, what is there really to complain about.  People start abandoning ship and complaining when things are not going well.  People begin to question leadership when you begin to lose or a company stops thriving.  Overall, winning or success makes everything much easier.  I believe that to become a great leader, you need to have been on successful and unsuccessful teams or organizations to truly earn credibility from your peers.