How to build successful teams

The best experiences

• “See the team growing up, perceiving how their vision and trust grows, observing how they are laying their ideas on the table and thinking together in order to reach their goal.”
• “Absolute lack of individual ego, world class developers that are only concerned with building a better product, instead of reflecting to the rest that they are the best in their job. Collaboration and reciprocal education.”
• “The best experience that I witness in the teams, is when the team leader decides to step aside and see how unconsciously they work independently, being responsible for the situation.”

The worst experiences

• “When I was 12 years old, I was in a football Team. I enjoyed playing football matches every Sunday and had fun with my friends. I did my best, but it was obvious that I didn’t have enough skills to play football well. I used to spend the most time on the bench, and in the end they told me that I had to leave the team, and in addition, I had to give back my team shirt.”
• “Lack of support from the executive team to execute changes in simple things, that provokes lack of proactivity in the team. The continuous improvement meetings lost their effect because there was a sensation that you cannot change and modify anything, and the team decreases and loses the motivation to get better results.”
• “I was working as manager in a team and there was a charismatic key person who didn’t have the ability to lead by example, this situation didn’t help me to stimulate the improvements, and caused the rest of the team members to stop following and trust in the proposals in order to reach the goals.”
• “The week previous to the dance festival premiere, each member of the dance team would become upset and nervous, in that moment the director cannot allow himself or herself to feel these emotions. And the director should know the different between an authentic problem and something which is creating tension in the team relationship, and should keep the balance between motivate, take caring of them and saying no to the team member requests. This is the moment when the insecurity and the self-centeredness appears.”

Based on these experiences, it can be concluded that a team has the potential to achieve its success when:

• There is a clear and unified goal built with the participation of all team members.
• Reaching the goals is above personal interest and self-centeredness is regarded as a side-issue.
• The communication and information flows without barriers and shared with the whole organisation.
• There is self-responsibility and commitment of each team member.
• The team grows independently and take advantage of the strengths of each member.
• The leader challenges the people, recognises the team work and keeps calm in difficult situations.
• The team has external and internal support and each team member rows in the same direction.

Finally, we want to express our gratitude to all the people that shared these experiences with us and give us the opportunity to learn more of about their teams.