Great Team

I like one quote that says“ Your competitor can copy every advantage you’ve got – except one, the business of building team leaders”(Antoine de Saint-Exupery).

Many years ago, my mentor told me that the word “T.E.A.M” stands for “Together Everyone Achieve More”. She says that if everyone in an organization can work together to achieve the common goals, the synergy effects will be 1+1 > 3. I truly believe it.

Last 2 years another mentor told me that T.E.A.M means “Trust, Encourage, Appreciate, Motivate”. Wow! This is very cool! It touches the “feeling” part of a team. When every single member can trust each other and praise their colleagues when things went great (I support you!), giving encouragement when things went wrong (I know you can be better), appreciate the goodness of others (Thank you because ….) and motivate each other towards a desired destiny(Today we are …..next year our aim is to achieve …..) , then you are nurturing a great team!

Trust – When members have trust in the team, they feel the sense of belongings. They will find ways to work through disagreements, take greater challenges, stay in the team longer and contribute better ideas. I like to say that this is the fundamental of a team. My mentor advised me that we should trust a person first rather than waiting him to prove he can be trusted. Do you agree with me?

Encourage – every members in a team or organization must learn to encourage each other during the hard times or good times. I discover that instead of doing this, many people tends to through complains, criticize others, blaming other mistakes and gossiping. If we promote encouragement with positive words in an organization, I am sure the working atmosphere will be great. One of my friends likes to end his words with “gambate!” (Japanese word which means “add oil”), cool right?

Appreciate your team members – If you take the effort to appreciate your members when they did the right thing at work, you will “touch” their hearts. To retain our talents in organization, we need to fulfill their monetary needs as well as non-monetary needs (appreciate them through words on their achievements). Recently, after completed my seminars, one participant came to me and ask if he could give me his feedback. Of course, I love to hear about it. He told me for the first 2 hours, he had compared me with another overseas speaker and felt bored with my training. However, after getting into the mode, he told me he enjoyed my training. He appreciate my passion in training and complimented “You are charming on stage!”(你有舞台的魅力!). He makes me float!

Motivate – when you want to motivate someone, please state his current state and lead him to a higher state. For example, if you want employee A to improve his work, you must state clearly that you want him progress from “average” to “good” after discussing the 3-5 key strategies that both mutually agreed.

Please rate yourself from 1 -10 for the 4 aspects mentioned above. How did you score in each item? What can you do to improve each?

Watch out for my next article, the new definition of T.E.A.M in 21st century.