The Wisdom of Teams

Without a doubt the most effective and useful unit of production is an effective and efficient team.

Some of us have yet to learn this fact, while others have yet to learn how to lead, how to manage and how to coach a group of individuals to become and effective and efficient team, whilst I have to be constantly reminded of the fact.

On a recent forum someone asked the question how people explained coaching, my response was to quote from David Taylor, author of ‘The Naked Coach’ who defined coaching as “Any and every intervention that enables people, teams and organisations to be their very best.”

Evidence would show that I am a very competent and effective coach. I can claim significant success with individual clients and have dozens of testimonials to that effect, but can I double an individual’s output or effectiveness? Well probably, or eventually might be the response. Can I double the output or effectiveness of a team? I think the response to that question would be absolutely and frequently.

The irony is that significantly increasing the output and effectiveness of a team really isn’t that difficult and it is immensely rewarding, for everyone; the leader, the team members and the organisation. It is a classic example of a win:win, and yet it happens so rarely as to seem impossible.

The Wisdom of Teams also happens to be the title of an excellent book by Katzenbach and Smith, which I would recommend any business leader who wants to understand how effective a unit the team can be. High performing teams help to create a learning organisation and are a product of a learning organisation. They display their own wisdom in growing and perpetuating.

As a business leader the skill to lead, manage and coach a team to this level are skills that are definitely worth developing.