A couple of weeks ago I hosted a chief officers’ breakfast meeting to discuss how to lead teams in tough times. Our special guest was Ama Agbeze, the England netball international and captain of the gold-medal winning team at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Ama candidly shared how the team developed ahead of the Games, some of the issues they faced, her role in the team’s development and the lessons she’s taken away.
Here are my five take-outs from the session:
- Everyone in the team is a leader. Determine how you can best use everybody’s leadership capabilities to achieve your shared goals.
- Know every individual. A team is made up of individual people and will only succeed if everyone understands the motivations, aspirations and working styles of each other.
- Know yourself. No-one is the be-all and end-all. You should take time to understand your own strengths and limitations and determine how you can best lead.
- Teams take time. There are no short-cuts to building strong teams; you must take the time to work on important stuff – together.
- There are ‘playbooks’ for team development. But each situation is different and you’ll need to flex your approach to the specific circumstances.
What is your approach to team development? And how do you make sure that your teams can succeed and thrive in tough times?
Off The Record: Let’s Work Together by Canned Heat
Together we stand, divided we fall
Come on now people, let’s get on the ball
And work together
Come on, come on, let’s work together (now, now people)
Because together we’ll stand
Every boy, every girl and-ah man