John Eades* says one of the secrets of good leadership is the ability to blend a group of individuals into a team dedicated to the same successful outcome.
Golf is one of the last sports from which you could expect to glean lessons in leadership.
It’s primarily an individual sport — but that changes for one week every other year during the Ryder Cup.
If you aren’t familiar, this tournament features 24 of some of the world’s greatest players competing as the United States and Europe in a team competition.
The leadership challenge that both teams’ captains face has similarities to what many organisational leaders encounter.
They work to get individuals to act and behave like a team to produce the best outcome for the group.
The ability for leaders to do this successfully isn’t easy and is a skill that few do consistently well.
However, teamwork is the remedy, and it’s achieved when each individual buys into the group’s greater good over their self-interest.
Take Amy, a sales manager in a technology company, as an example.
I started working with her as a coach when she was hired to take over a group of 15 salespeople.
At the time, only 20 per cent of the team was hitting their quota, collectively they hadn’t hit their sales target in five years, and engagement was an abysmal 57 per cent.
The uphill challenge didn’t scare her because management jobs rarely open up when things are going well.
She jumped right in, got to know her team members personally, made some tough decisions about letting a few people go, brought in some fresh faces, then got to work in developing teamwork.
She invested time, energy, and money to bring the team together in person once a quarter and created weekly meetings where each person was an active participant.
During those crucial interactions, she manufactured human connection, gained buy-in, and built the belief that the team could collectively achieve a big goal.
Little by little, the results started to come together, and by the end of her second year on the job, 80 per cent were hitting their quota.
The group exceeded their sales target by 40 per cent, and the engagement rate jumped to 84 per cent.
Amy understood the key to her leadership success was getting each individual to buy into the group’s greater good over their own self-interest.
When team members are authentic, collaborate, and challenge each other, the results are almost always superior to working alone.
Teamwork is when people bring their authentic selves and skills together to produce excellent outcomes for the group.
If you want to improve teamwork, here are a few ideas to get individuals to work as a team.
Get obsessive buy-in towards a shared goal
A team, by definition, means coming together to achieve a common goal.
Success won’t follow if leaders don’t define a common goal that team members care about achieving.
The key word here is ‘shared’. It may be tempting to stand at the top of the mountain and scream a big, hairy, audacious goal to your team.
However, if they haven’t bought into the goal and are not allowed to help define what’s possible, they won’t give their best effort.
In the example of the Ryder Cup, the ultimate shared goal is simple, take home the Ryder Cup Trophy at the end of the tournament.
However, every team competing since 1927 has had that goal.
The key as a Ryder Cup captain, or as a team leader at work, is getting obsessive buy-in from each individual about achieving the goal.
Manufacture human connection
Teamwork can’t be achieved without people getting to know each other and working well together.
Too often, leaders assume and take for granted the quality of relationships between members of their team.
Here is the hard truth: Just because members of the same team are in meetings together, doesn’t mean they know or care about each other.
Conflict and diverse thinking are essential elements of teamwork.
Because of this, developing relationships built on the foundation of trust and respect is a requirement.
While it might be uncomfortable at first, part of a leader’s job is to manufacture human connections and create a sense of belonging between team members.
Inspire personal growth that benefits the team
When people are growing, they are much more likely to buy into the leader that is helping them do it.
We often think about growth in terms of the overall organisation, but rarely do we think about it in terms of people.
Personal growth is the foundation of motivation. It’s hard to motivate team members who aren’t growing.
Personal growth is the foundation of any successful professional.
Leaders have a unique advantage of creating healthy competition between team members to fuel personal growth and development.
In the case of the Ryder Cup, successful captains have created smaller pods of team members in the competition build-up to fuel personal growth and performance.
There is nothing easy about leadership and getting individuals to work as a team. As many stories there are about sales managers like Amy, there are more stories of managers who have the opposite outcomes.
Thinking, reading, and looking for specific ideas to apply in your leadership approach should provide you with the confidence that you are on the right track.
*John Eades is the Chief Executive of LearnLoft a leadership development company. He is also the host of the Follow My Lead podcast. He can be contacted at johneades.com.
This article first appeared on John’s LearnLoft blog.
