Video of the Month: Building a great team

Please click here if you can’t see the video above

The crazy Colom­bian has gone truly crazy! We are sup­posed to be on a blog about get­ting the life we want, and he wants to talk about team building?

Yes my dear read­ers, I want to talk about how to build a great team, and I will use the video above as a start­ing point. The two key points I want to explore today are

1. Why bother build­ing a great team, and
2. How to go about it

And don’t worry; I am not going to sug­gest you go on some stu­pid team-building exer­cise that uses moti­va­tional tech­niques usu­ally reserved for fit mem­bers of the army. Nor will I ask you to par­take on goofy exer­cise that  require you to use ropes, nails, mar­tial arts, paint, hot embers or a gold­fish (and if you don’t know what I am talk­ing about, you are obvi­ously one of the few lucky ones who has never been sent on a com­pany day off-site to be the vic­tim of so-called team-building experts (in which case you will prob­a­bly smile when  you watch with this video in Youtube)

But back to the topic: Why should you care about build­ing a great team? And how do you go about it?

You should build a great team around you because you can’t go through life alone

Let’s first define team. There are 3 rea­sons why you should have a great team around you

1. Because there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to do every­thing yourself
2. Nor are there enough hours in your week to do every­thing you have on your plate right now
3. Bur most impor­tantly because you don’t have enough hours in your life to learn every pos­si­ble skill you will need to live the The life you were born to live.

But you already knew this, didn’t you? Oth­er­wise, why do you have an accoun­tant, paid clean­ers, nan­nies /daycare, a doc­tor, or any of the other myr­iad of pro­fes­sion­als you pay hard-earned money to pro­vide ser­vices to you?

Most peo­ple fail to realise that there are a lot of teams around them. Almost every­one builds teams around them by acci­dent, and fail to realise that it is entirely within their capac­ity to build, shape, and re-shape those teams. Work col­leagues, fam­i­lies, pro­fes­sional organ­i­sa­tions, com­pa­nies we buy from; they are all part of your Life team. So don’t make the mis­take every­one makes, and relin­quish the power (and respon­si­bil­ity) to care­fully con­struct the best pos­si­ble team around you. When choos­ing a new team mem­ber (be it a friend, hus­band, or accoun­tant), be very clear on why you want them to be a part of your team.

Fol­low this sim­ple piece of advise, and you will be on the way to achiev­ing unimag­ined lev­els of effi­ciency, effec­tive­ness and hap­pi­ness. And that is the rea­son why you should care about build­ing a great team.

How to build a great team

There are 3 fun­da­men­tal steps for build­ing a great team:

1. Have a goal in mind. Stephen Covey has pre­vi­ously said that the first habit of highly effec­tive peo­pleis to start with the end in mind. So fig­ure out what type of life you want, and turn this desire into a SMART goal.
2. Iden­tify the help you will need. Once you know where you want to go, find out what you can (and should) do by your­self, and what you should (or could) get help from pro­fes­sion­als. Be cre­ative in this step, and keep your­self hon­est; Con­tin­u­ously remind your­self that just because you can do some­thing doesn’t mean that you should do it (Don’t believe me? Answer this ques­tion: can you drive your car off a cliff? Should you? There you go!)
3. Find the best per­son to help you. The last step is then to find new team mem­bers for each of the things you decided you need to get done, but you can’t (or will not) do your­self. It is crit­i­cal in this step that you look for the best per­son for the job, given all of your con­straints (time, money, loca­tion, etc). Remem­ber that find­ing the best per­son for the job is a very dif­fer­ent thing than find­ing  the per­fect per­son for that job (Hint: Some­times the price of excel­lence is accept­ing imper­fec­tion)

Part­ing thoughts on the video of this month

Before I go, I want to share with you a few quotes from the video above. I hope they will make you think:

• On what being part of a great team is all about:

If you want to set­tle old scores, you’re on the wrong team. We move for­ward, start­ing right now. We start becom­ing a great team, right now! … Skat­ing, Flow, cre­ativ­ity, that’s what this team is all about, not old rivalries

• On per­se­ver­ance under duress:

What the hell is wrong with you? Put your gear on. I said, put your gear on. ‘But the doc­tor told me I can’t play’. Yeah, Yeah, you got a bad bruise. You know what? Put your street clothes on, because I have no time for quit­ters. ‘Come on Herb, nobody is quit­ting here’

• On the impor­tance of hard work (Ein­stein: Genius is 1% inspi­ra­tion and 99% per­spi­ra­tion):

Do you want to win on tal­ent alone? Gen­tle­men, you don’t have anough tal­ent to win on tal­ent alone. Try again!

• On hav­ing the courage to stand out and be uncommon:

Hey, where are you going? Back on the line. This can not be a team of com­mon men, because com­mon men go nowhere. You have to be uncommon.

• On the impor­tance of clearly defin­ing what’s the team you’re play­ing for:

I play for Massachusets.

Who do you play for?

I play for the United States of America

That’s all gentlemen

For more great videos with amaz­ing com­men­tary visit our Video Archive.

Tagged as: Achievement, Life, Success, Team