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How Can You Create The Feeling Of A High Performance Team |
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The other day, we talked about what it FEELS like to be part of a high performance team. I like to think of things that way. Not because building and leading a high performance team is “touchy feeley” (though it has many of those elements) but because the art of inspirational leadership and creating a high performance team is all about EMOTION. You KNOW what it is like to be part of a great team because you FEEL it. It is not only the process you admire, it is the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself. It is the feeling you get when the energy of the group becomes your own energy and vice versa.
The next thing I’d like to make a few comments on is what you, as the potential leader of a high performance team, can do to create this feeling. The first thing we should all recognize is the first secret of inspirational leadership. Everyone WANTS to be part of something bigger than themselves. We see this every single day. Pick up the paper today. What do you see? Problems in the Mideast, Al Queda on the loose, Hugo Chavez stirring up his countrymen in Venuzuela, the Dow Jones average rising and falling with market volatility, Vladimir Putin trying to consolidate power and so on and so forth. What does it all mean? It means that everywhere on this earth and in every way possible, people are trying to be part of something bigger. They are going with the trends, they are trying to create a movement, they are trying to persuade, they are trying to bring to them more converts who will BELIEVE. Because every one of us wants to BELIEVE in something. We want to be part of some greater tribe. In fact, we are all part of many, many tribes or groups, or belief systems, or organizations. It starts with our family and goes from there. Kindergarten, Boy Scouts, our religious affiliations, the choir, the local sports team, our school, city and country and on an on.
Human beings NEED to be gregarious. We want to be part of a greater whole. The worst thing that can happen to any of us is to be cast from the tribe. To be isolated can be worse than death. All of the “ties that bind” are destroyed and we feel adrift and alone. There can be few greater punishments. The opposite of being cut off and adrift is, of course, to be networked and connected. But not only to be connected. To be connected to something valuable and worthy of our effort and of ourselves. This is the mission of the inspirational leader and the inspirational team builder; to create something that people want to be a part of that speaks to our inherent need to be part of something valuable and worthy of our effort and of who we are. So, the first secret of inspirational leadership, Everyone wants to be part of something bigger is the recognition that your most important mission to create that something bigger. In the coming days, we’ll look at exactly how we create that something bigger to replicate the feelings you KNOW are needed in a high performance team through the mirror of current events and historical happenings! I look forward to it!
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