People
Issue No. 19 - October/November 2004
High Performance Teamwork
by Graham Winter
Driving across town listening to the radio, a thousand people ponder the challenge posed by the announcer: "Name the three best teams in Australia".
I‘ll bet that before reaching the next set of traffic lights nine hundred have chosen at least two sporting teams - maybe the Australian Test Cricket team, the Hockeyroos or perhaps the Brisbane Lions. The team itself isn‘t important - more interesting is the fact that the majority of people think of sport to identify a top team.
Certainly teamwork in sport is highly visible and we see it just about everyday on the television BUT it isn‘t just on the sporting field that teamwork is important and a driver of exceptional performance. There are top teams in business, performing arts, military, community and lots of other areas and we can all learn from them and lift our teams performance.
Developing Your Team
When researching the book, High Performance Leadership, I came across three extraordinary examples of Australian teamwork.
The Australia SAS, who surely must be in the top three Australian teams with their capability to perform in the most dangerous of environments. An Everest Expedition team led to the summit of the world‘s greatest mountain by adventurer Duncan Chessell, and the world-acclaimed Royal Adelaide Hospital Medical Retrieval Team led by Dr Bill Griggs.
These and many business, sport and community teams achieve high performance by overcoming what author Parick Lencioni described, in his book of the same name, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team":
- Absence of trust
- Fear of conflict
- Lack of commitment
- Avoidance of accountability
- Inattention to results
These five dysfunctions challenge all of us who recognise the power of teamwork and aspire to building high performance teamwork in our businesses. Let‘s turn Lencioni‘s dysfunctions into a five-step guide for building high performance team...
