Why are there so many mediocre teams and so few exceptional ones? This is one of those meaty questions with no easy answer.
There is a root cause, however, and it’s a big and deep one. The root cause for why there are so few exceptional teams is simply because there are few exceptional leaders. Collective excellence has it’s genesis in individuals first. And exceptional individual contributors don’t last long working for mediocre managers. They just don’t.
Want a better team? Become a better leader, period.
Yesterday I hit one of my clients with a cold, hard fact. He isn’t as good as he thinks he is. He is NOT holding his teammates to a high performance bar because he’s afraid of how they’ll respond.
Today, I met one of my clients teammates that had been hit really hard by my client. He had been put on a written performance improvement plan. He had been given 90 days to turn his performance up to the very specific performance bar, or be gone. Today, my client shook this teammates hand and congratulated him on turning his performance around. I listened to the exchange between them and there was genuine respect and gratitude in both directions. My client was deepening his belief, as was his teammate.
Leading any team requires a minaical (nutcase) leader that is full of LOVE and filled with durable disciplines. Few have either one. Very few possess deep reservoirs of both. Fewer still possess both and keep perspective. The only way to do that is to build your CORE alongside your humility.
Want a better team? Become a better leader, and notice how far you still have to go, not how far you’ve come. And, don’t lose heart as you honestly look within for your next “performance improvement project.” This is why high performance is only for the few. Few want to work hard enough to build excellence within. Few understand that you can’t build in another what you don’t have yourself. Few keep perspective when they do.
Don’t STOP when you get ahead. Instead, act like you’re behind…
BUILT TO LEAD 