Knuckleheads and Headless Chickens... — Photo by HTC Consulting

I met Coach again today.
He's the guy from the gym...you know, I mentioned him in a recent article; he's the muscle-man who trains the local school football team. He didn't look too happy, though, I have to admit.
Still, I thought I'd do a bit of poking around to see what was up.
Probably wasn't a wise move in hindsight.

I decided to ask him how the team was doing; if nothing else, that usually elicits a response with potential for some entertainment value.
But today, he just sort of glared at me. And growled.
Yes, glared and growled like a big angry bear; mumbling something that didn't fully register at the time. By the look on his face, I thought it best to find something of interest at the opposite end of the gym. And pronto.
Continuing to poke the bear clearly wasn't wise.

Later, I found out that I had, in reality, come closer to a near-death experience than I might have thought. When I got home, I scanned through the local paper to see how his school team are doing this year.
Not good by all accounts. Not good at all.
They are O and 5 for the season...with not a win in sight and, worse still, they were thrashed in the last game. Apparently, the parents (read: Dads) are getting restless too.
So, all in all, things aren't going very well for poor old Coach at the moment.
I likely had a very lucky escape.

But, I now know what he had growled at me earlier. It made a lot more sense after reading the newspaper report. He had replied, more or less as follows, when I had asked how his team were doing:

"Those knuckleheads wouldn't know what the word team meant even if it came up an bit them on the ass. Nothing but a bunch of headless chickens is all they are. And half of them don't give a damn as far as I can tell. Wasting my time..."

Although I will likely need to stay well out of Coach's way for the foreseeable future - at least until the results improve - the encounter did get me thinking about what makes an effective team, in any context.

Now, as you likely already know, there are many elements which combine to create an effective team and no one factor on its own will do the trick. Still, for me at least, a key driver will always be the quality of leadership and at the end of the day, a team can only be as good as its leader; mind you, I will not be bringing that particular nugget of wisdom to Coach's attention, for what should be obvious reasons.

Other priority concerns for building top teams in any context include:

Common Goals – for sure, a team without common goals is a team in name only. The leader's role is to work with team members to define meaningful and relevant common goals and, more importantly, to get 'buy-in' for them. Having clear direction reduces the potential for 'headless chickening'.

Collaboration – an effective team is always noted for the high levels of cooperation and collaboration seen between team members. The leader must play an active role in building the levels of collaboration and, as one simple example, this can be achieved by the way work is allocated between team members so as to ensure that the same people don't always end up working together all the time; this avoids cliques forming.

Compatibility – of course, not all team members will like each other to the same degree, but there must be some element of compatibility between them all. This has implications for leaders in many ways but particularly in terms of how they recruit new team members in order to ensure they will 'fit' as closely as possible with existing employees; or, as Coach might say..."no knuckleheads allowed."

Commitment – unless all team members are committed to the team, and its goals - or, in other words, unless they all actually give a damn - then this creates an element of disharmony amongst them. Levels of commitment do of course fluctuate to some extent, but leaders should never tolerate any individual who shows continuous lack of commitment to the team, either in terms of their attitude, behaviour or overall productivity.

Communication – the best teams always have high levels of meaningful and productive communication between them. The leader should ensure that the right structures and channels are in place to maximise the effectiveness of internal communication; my sense is that Coach does a hell of a lot of communicating with his players, but how effective it all is remains open to debate. Again, if you don't mind, I will avoid raising that particular matter directly with him.

Climate – is a broad area and has to do with general levels of morale, how problems are dealt with, trust and other issues that set the general tone for the working environment. In many ways, a positive climate is the output from the other factors, but the leader can contribute to creating the right climate through their own attitude and behaviour. Poor old Coach is pretty down right now and he likely needs to work hard not to let his frustration get to his players.

Of course, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of factors which contribute to an effective team, but they certainly are key areas which you should always pay significant attention to in relation to your own team.

Enda Larkin has over 25 years experience in the hotel industry having held a number

of senior management positions in Ireland, UK and the US. In 1994 he founded HTC Consulting, a Geneva based firm, which specialises in working with enterprises in hospitality and tourism. Since that time, he has led numerous consulting projects for public and private sector clients throughout Europe and the Middle East. He is author of Ready to Lead? (Pearson/Prentice Hall 2007), How to Run a Great Hotel (How to Books 2009), 'Quick Win' Leadership (Oak Tree Press 2010) and Journeys – Short Stories and Tall Tales for Managers which is due to be published in March 2012. He may be contacted via www.htc- consult.com or at [email protected]. Read his Blog at www.htc-consult.com/new/blog