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| The Miracle of Teamwork |
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| Written by Tom Wall |
| Tuesday, 23 February 2010 06:35 |
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With the 2010 Olympics in full swing, diehard fans of the winter games have been enjoying some great individual and team events in Vancouver this year. I admit, I haven’t always followed the Olympics very closely, but the movie Miracle is, without question, one of my all-time favorites. Miracle, made by Disney, is the story of how coach Herb Brooks led the U.S. hockey team to beat the invincible Soviets in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics and then went on to win gold (sorry, I just gave away the ending!). There are numerous scenes in this movie that make you want to jump up and cheer aloud for Team USA, so it’s pretty hard to pick a favorite. Generally it’s just a fantastic story of how a determined coach took a group of young men from all over the country and turned them into a winning team. He didn’t seek out the country’s collegiate all-stars; he picked talented kids that were coachable. While he spent most of his after-hours breaking down film of his opponents and designing his own plays, Brooks was constantly focused on overcoming the challenges that come with building a team. Whether he was dealing with individual egos and attitudes or he was trying to get everybody to buy into his winning vision, Brooks knew he had to get his team to work together toward a shared goal. And by the end of the movie, Coach Herb had his players on-board. They considered themselves family and knew they had been prepared to play for the gold. Too often it’s easy to look at a winning team and think that they are successful because they’ve got better players, better plays, or better coaches. And many times this holds true. But it’s not entirely because of pure talent or skill. What we typically don’t see is the time and effort it took to create team chemistry. Maybe this cohesiveness comes from an obstacle that the group overcame together, a shared desire to be better than the ‘next guy’, or as a natural friendship/bond that developed within the team. But mostly, teamwork is created intentionally. It’s no surprise that managers want everyone to work together as a team. Unfortunately, many managers don’t actively commit to doing what it takes to make that happen. They simply expect people to work as a team because, logically, it makes sense to work together. But as most of us have seen, many people have their own personal agendas and struggle to work as a team. They are often more concerned with protecting and promoting their own selfish desires and not those of the team. And just as it’s important for a coach to focus on running plays (the day-to-day work), this leader also needs to focus time and energy on developing and improving the team’s internal relationships in order to perform the ‘real work’ successfully. In other cases, the lack of teamwork occurs because the team’s shared goal isn’t clear enough. Some people are only aware of how a process affects their own workload and do not understand the overall effect on the rest of the team. For this reason, managers need to communicate the team’s shared goal and discuss how each department contributes to getting the entire team closer to attaining it. Although your team isn’t playing for a gold medal in Vancouver, it still needs to work together toward a common objective. So... what are you doing to help your team work together to understand and achieve their goals?
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