Building a Team that Wins the
World Cup for Your Business

by Rob Zell

Managers who are focused on the right things are consistently focused on building and maintaining effective teams. The manager that successfully does this is able to steer the team to accomplish tasks efficiently rather than having to manage the tasks themselves. The question, then, is how to build and maintain a high quality team.

One way to learn about team building and effective teams is to watch your favorite team sport. There are plenty of key elements of successful sports teams that can be leveraged in the workplace. Personally, I am a soccer fan and so the World Cup serves as a wonderful model for engaging teams to perform at a high level. When trying to maximize the effectiveness of the team you have to begin by selecting the right players, maximizing their contribution to the team and engaging them in a common purpose.

Picking the Team

Selecting the right players is obviously the starting point for great team building. Many factors go into team selection. You must first find the people that have the skills you need. Technical skill is not the only selection factor. You also need to consider organizational culture. Perhaps you have heard about players on professional teams that were not a “good fit in the locker room.” This is a prime example of considering the culture factor.

Not everyone gets to pick his or her team. Sometimes managers are promoted or transferred into roles and inherit teams. As a new manager, your first job is to assess the technical and interpersonal skills of the team. Leading a team means managing the personalities and communications that go on between team members and across teams. You may find that when you inherit a team you will have to spend some time helping team members develop skills needed for success.

Developing the Team

Everyone needs development. I can guarantee that every nation builds a World Cup team of the very best players that the country has to offer; but in addition, every team is practicing. Why are they practicing? There are the obvious reasons like to build trust and comfort with each other, and, while obvious, this should not be underrated. Trust is a critical part of successful teams. Team members have to believe that they can count on each other to deliver under pressure and to make both simple and complex plays. However, the more powerful form of trust comes from being honest with teammates and sharing weaknesses and areas of improvement. This kind of trust opens greater possibilities for teams as they learn how to support each other and maximize strengths to overcome obstacles.

There is also the opportunity in these practices to have coaches with fresh eyes examine how players perform, and provide feedback for improvement. Coaches are going to rely on the player’s strengths to be successful. During selection, players were chosen based on the strengths they bring to the team. The coach is far better off looking for ways to enhance and hone strengths rather than trying to fix, in a very short preparation window, the player’s flaws. To be clear, I am not saying that coaches do not work to improve glaring flaws in a player’s performance. If a goalkeeper tends to favor one side of the goal, or a striker plays poor defense, the coach would be foolish to completely ignore the weakness and never coach to it. I am saying that there is far better payoff in looking for opportunities to maximize the strengths of each player.

Too often, managers focus on development plans that force team members to dwell on weaknesses rather than strengths. Our hypothetical soccer coach, if he was a poor coach, would spend hours trying to get his main goal scorer to play better defense. Likewise, poor managers keep highly talented team members away from their strengths in the drudgery of developing their weaknesses.  The highly skilled coach would instead leverage the goal scoring vision of the star goal scorer and have them work on better body strength to protect the ball in front of the goal rather than on shooting more often in practice. The coach already knows they can shoot; more repetition is not going to create a large increase in performance.

One Team, One Goal

Like the Olympics, participation in a sport while representing your country is a high honor. There is no greater sense of purpose than the desire to bring home the trophy to your country. Every team from every nation has a singular purpose: win the Cup. Luckily, coaches of World Cup teams probably do not have to explain this to their players. Defenders know they need to keep the other team from scoring. Forwards have to score goals. Managers, on the other hand, have to create that sense of purpose and create the line of sight for their teams. Team members need to know what they are working for and how they contribute to the cause. You accomplish this in two ways: 1) Set clear expectations of what the team is working for; and 2) Make it clear what success looks like.

Unfortunately, in our workplace settings we do not bring home trophies for our success. But when managers correctly interpret strategy, they are able to make it clear how what the team is working on contributes to the strategy of the organization and its overall success. This gives the team a sense of purpose, that individually, and as a team, they are working on something bigger than themselves. They also need to know how to measure success. Clear milestones and success measures give team members goals for which to strive. The great thing about completing goals is the opportunity for celebration. Every goal scored in a World Cup game is celebrated, probably because they are so hard to come by. Imagine how motivated your team would be if goals at work were as wildly celebrated as goals in soccer matches!

Great Manager = Great Coach

The key to doing all of these things well is to get to know your players. Great coaches know their players, not just for what they do on the field, but also as individuals. They know what motivates them, they know their concerns and they learn how to work with them as individuals as well as parts of a whole. Managers often get bogged down in the tasks and lose sight of the fact that employees are more than just workers: they are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. They have hobbies and interests outside of work that impact how they perform. As managers, our job is to get to know the diversity of the team not just in the skills and knowledge they bring but also in terms of the perspective and passions they hold dear.

Building and leading an effective team is one of the greatest and most rewarding challenges a manager can face. When you select the right people, put them in a position to use their strengths most effectively, give them a sense of purpose, set clear goals and celebrate successes as a team, you and your team will bring home the trophy of higher productivity, profitability and efficiency that you desire.

In what ways do you celebrate your team’s strengths?