Five Next Level Defining Elements

So here is my definition of team. It includes 5 distinct paradigms that are more advanced than the 3 baseline paradigms found in most other definitions of team. My definition augments or strengthens other definitions. It doesn't eliminate or replace them, but it just goes deeper into really unpacking what a team really is. So here, here's the definition. A team is the intentional collaboration of the 4 Rs within an organizational ecosystem to achieve a common agenda and create a brand. The intentional collaboration of the 4 Rs within an organizational ecosystem to achieve a common agenda and create a brand. So a guy in one of my live workshops said to me, man, this looks like a really complicated definition. It is really extremely simple once we break down each of the 5 essential elements of this definition. The 5 elements are intentional collaboration, the 4 Rs, organizational ecosystem of agenda, And the fifth component is brand or branding. So intentional collaboration, the first element of the Genesis team definition, intentional collaboration. Now, I really like the imagery of team that this group of skydivers embodies or illustrates. Now, we saw this picture a little earlier. These skydivers are a textbook illustration of intentional collaboration. You don't think that they just happened to be in the same place at the same time, 2.5 miles above ground, do you? The average height skydivers go above ground, they call it the AGL, above ground levels, is about 12,500 feet, which is roughly 2.5 miles. Believe me, they just didn't happen to be in the same place at the same time, 2.5 miles above ground. There was intentional collaboration, intentional coordination so that they could be at that place in that formation that high above ground. So intentional collaboration. The next essential element to my definition of team is the 4 Rs. The 4 Rs. So what are the 4 Rs? Well, it's pretty simple. The first R is relationships. For a team to be strong, people must be intentional about relationships. Someone asked a skydiver, what makes you guys a successful skydiving team? And the skydiver responded, "One secret to our success in skydiving is to be on a team with people you can get along with, accept criticism from, joke around with, and be motivated by to be better for the sake of the team as a whole." So the 4 Rs begins with relationships. The second R is rules. In a team, rules are meant to protect the team. So there must be intentionality as it relates to team rules. 2.5 miles above ground is the last place you want to start making up new rules about how to achieve the team goals, right? You want to do that long before you get up there. So the second R that must be intentionally collaborated around is rules. The third R, the third R is resources. One of the most important elements of team, one of the most important elements of team is the willingness and the ability of team members to share resources. Selfish team members eventually kill a team.

Resources may include things like technology, knowledge, data, data bases, contacts, supplies. Money, however, is not a resource. That's a common misconception. See, money is a result when you strategically allocate your resources. See, great companies like Google exemplify intentional collaboration of resources.

Robert Bruce Shore, the author of Extreme Teams, researched the Google team environment And he found that Google's culture encourages asking questions and sharing information. It's a team environment that invites and elicits contributions or elicits sharing from all team members. Robert Shaw says that the best teams are those where everyone is engaged and contributing or sharing to the group's performance. So the third R, to have an effective team, you must intentionally collaborate relationships, intentionally collaborate around the team rules, intentionally collaborate on team resources. The fourth R is results. Ultimately, teams come together to achieve a result. And that's on the macro level. But results can also be considered and must be considered on the micro level because every macro or major result is simply a series of several hundred micro results successfully achieved. Important concept. Because so often teams get distracted by the big outcome, the big picture. And it's good to have the big picture in mind. But you can never get the big picture achieved unless you focus, intentionally collaborate around the micro results, the micro pictures, as it were. Strong teams that perform great are intentional about small micro results. They pay attention to the little things. So that's the second element of my definition of team. First, we discussed intentional collaboration, then the 4 Rs, looking at relationships, rules, resources, and results.

Next, we will look at organizational ecosystem.

But before we get to organizational ecosystem, let me, let me just give you some additional information on results. So why do great teams stress the importance of micro results. See, it's like a domino effect, right? Every action, no matter how small, is designed to produce a specific result that other team members are depending on. The essence of team is that every action produces a result that impacts the effectiveness of other team members somewhere in the team system, or what I call the organizational ecosystem, which is the third element of my definition of team. Remember, team is the intentional collaboration of the 4 Rs within an organizational ecosystem. So what is an organizational ecosystem? This is a crucial component of defining a team. In my definition of team, This is the crux of the definition. In fact, we have an entire course that looks only at this component, this organizational ecosystem. We spend 6, 7 modules, several hours just talking about organizational ecosystem, what it is, how to define it, how to create it, how to do an organizational ecosystem map. So this is critical. So what is it? The organizational ecosystem is a complex network of interdependent parts working together cohesively to achieve a common goal. Notice the emphasis here is on interdependent parts, not people. And remember earlier I said that people may not be the most important critical piece of a team in a team definition. So organizational ecosystem, complex network of interdependent parts working cohesively to achieve a common goal. These interdependent parts are broken up into the 4 major categories known as the 4 Rs. Remember we talked about that just a minute ago. So the 4 Rs. At those interdependent parts. But within each one of those R's, there's just a myriad of different subsets that make up the 4 R's, that make up each R in the 4 R's. This organizational ecosystem is what makes a group of people working together towards a common purpose. This ecosystem is what makes that group a team. When relationships, resources, rules, and results work together cohesively, that is the ultimate picture, the ultimate imagery, the ultimate reality of a strong sustainable team. And just to reemphasize that point, people would fit into the relationships quadrant, primarily. People could also be resources, but primarily relationships is where people would be. And notice that the relationship quadrant is only one of four. In other words, only 25% of the entire ecosystem or the entire team. And this is important because even with the best people, If a team is deficient in the other aspects of the ecosystem, such as a team is deficient in rules or resources, even with the best people, that team is unlikely to produce great results. Putting great people in a dysfunctional organizational ecosystem will yield poor performance. On the other hand, look at the Patriots. They never seem to get a top draft pick, and they have a reputation of selecting players who are cast off from other teams. They take these players who are not stars, who may not be extremely skilled, and plug them into the Patriot organizational ecosystem. And those players in that system win Super Bowl after Super Bowl after Super Bowl. The important takeaway here is that the organizational ecosystem is way more important than the team members. Another way to say it is that no one player is greater than the team. The next piece to my definition of team is agenda. Now, agenda is just another word for agreed-upon purpose or action. And we have an entire course, several modules long, that we spend just looking at how leaders can create an agenda. How do you create that agenda? How do you create buy-in and consensus? How do you articulate that agenda? To the team. So that's a crucial piece. The reason agenda is so important in my definition of team is that it is the proverbial page that people always talk about when they say we need to be on the same page or the team needs to be on the same page. Agenda aligns action. It keeps everyone in line, all arrows pointing in the same direction. Remember this: if you ever feel like your team is out of focus, like people are not really going in the same direction, there's a sense of disconnectedness and discombobulation, you may want to check your agenda. How clear and compelling is your agenda? Do your team members know The agenda. Understand the agenda and do they buy into the agenda? Because agenda aligns action. The final component to my genesis definition of team, remember my definition is the intentional collaboration of the 4 Rs within an organizational ecosystem to achieve a common agenda and create a brand. The final component is brand. Create a brand. We talked earlier about branding when we discussed the 5 things that team leaders find most frustrating when trying to build a team. And remember we said that an off-brand team member is a member whose behavior and performance doesn't reflect the image of the team. Remember we talked about that. And so branding is a critical element to the definition of team. But the first thing that comes to mind many times when we talk about a brand is an image or a logo. And why is that? Well, because images and logos are visual representations of a brand.. But in the context of team, branding refers not to an image, but more to a behavior or a standard of performance that easily identifies your team. You know, I've heard people say about teams, that team is a gritty team. That team is a resilient team. Those words, those adjectives, gritty, resilient, That's their brand. They are known for being resilient. And so in the context of team branding, strong teams have a certain standard of behavior, a standard of quality that they want to be known for. This is their brand. It is what defines that team in the eyes of the marketplace. Strong teams have a brand that compels And you'll hear me use the term a compelling brand. Strong teams have a brand that compels team members to perform in a manner consistent with the vision of the team or the organization. Again, we're going to spend a lot more time talking about how does a brand compel behavior and performance. How do you build a compelling brand that makes the team members want to be whatever that brand is. They want to be resilient if your team is branded as resilient. They want to be tough if the team is branded as tough. How do you get that brand to compel them to behave in that manner? So there you have it, the definition of team, the genesis definition of team. So there are 5 critical elements to the definition of team.

So a super high-performing team, great, super strong team, would exhibit or display these 5 elements. They would be intentionally collaborating on the 4 Rs. They would have an excellent high-performing ecosystem They would have a common agenda that pulls the team together, keeping them on the same page. And they will have a compelling brand that makes every team member want to live up to the standard of that team.

How does your team stack up in these 5 points of the Genesis team definition?

As you would expect, We have a 5-point Genesis team definition assessment. It's available in the one-on-one version of this course, or if you are also taking the virtual group training version of this course. In this assessment, I will interpret your results with you and highlighting which of these 5 elements your team is strongest in and which you are weakest in. We will rank each of these 5 elements from strongest to weakest for your team. Um, for each one of these 5 elements, I will provide an actionable team-building strategy that you can implement to increase your scores in each of these 5 areas. Now, if you have not upgraded to the one-on-one version or the virtual group training version of this course, it's really super easy to upgrade, just click the upgrade button to get your upgrade information and be able to take the 5-point Genesis team definition assessment. Very valuable tool. You know, you really want to get that done to see how your team stacks up in these 5 elements.