Outclass Teams thrive, flourish and prosper in an outclass culture. This culture in produced neither overnight nor a result of an accident. Outclass teams give their heart and soul in building a culture that supports peak team performance.
From my own experience of teams, I have been able to identify a set of seven hidden beliefs which seem to repeatedly sustain outclass teams.
A culture of accountability:
Team members know what they are being counted on for by the others, and what they can count on the others for. Outclass team members believe that every member of the team has a clear and public accountability.
A culture of confidence and belief:
Members in an outclass team have not even an iota of doubt about their success. They are confident that they (and they alone) are going to succeed in delivering the mission and achieving the goal, no matter what.
A culture of trust in competency:
Each member in an outclass team believes that the rest of the team trusts him not only at a personal level, but they also trust in his ability to do the job properly without being supervised. In a multidisciplinary team, this translates into: "I know what you have to do and am confident you can do it - how you do it is your business."
A culture of give and take:
Members of an outclass team believe that something is badly wrong if somebody is struggling alone and not asking for help, or is asking for help but being ignored by the team. Outclass team members understand that if they need help, they can ask for it, and it will be freely offered. They believe that asking for help, in moderation, actually increases their standing within the team rather than diminishing it.
A culture of transparency:
Outclass team members expect to be kept apprised in an honest and timely manner of any important issues in the project even if it does not directly affect them. This is part of the dynamic of every member believing s/he is a team leader and able to contribute beyond his/her specific functional team member briefs.
They also believe they are free to express opinions about situations they are not directly responsible for and these opinions should be listened to and respected.
Underlying this is the belief that each team member is accountable not just to the leader but to all the other team members.
A culture of value and contribution:
Outclass team members believe that the mission they are engaged in is significant, important and meaningful. They believe that if they are successful they will have made a fundamental contribution to their organization or even to the greater good. Members also generally feel they are the only people in the organization who could succeed at such a difficult task.
A culture of sharing pain and fame:
Outclass team members believe they are all in it together and that all fame and pain will be shared. They do not believe that the leader will take an unfairly big portion of the credit for success or the blame for failure.
If you wish to create superior team results, be ready to invest time, energy and resources to build a team culture that stimulates progress and peak performance.
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