Team Development

As a leader, it is very important to have a strong team surrounding you. You can't possibly do everything by yourself all the time and need a support system with different strengths than your own to keep you balanced all the time.
A good team is a hard working, cooperative group of people that work well together. This team should have a variety of people with a variety of different strengths and weaknesses. If everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses, then the group is clearly going to struggle through some part of their designated task. With a variety of people, you get some creative thinkers and some logical thinkers; some organizational and some cluttered; some outgoing and some intraverted; but you get it all. There isn't a weakness because every possible weakness is someone's strength.

With that being said, a team improves when each person makes the effort to improve themselves. If each member takes the time to improve one weakness of their own, then the results and success will multiply. If there is a 20 person team, and each one of them takes time to improve one of their weaknesses, then that is 20 more strengths added to the list as opposed to just the leader improving one of their weaknesses.

A team is successful when everyone has the same mission and goal in mind. If each individual has a slightly different idea of what the outcome will be, then there is a lot of confusion and controversy. With a team, the less controversy, the better. There are clearly going to be some problems, but having a common goal or purpose will keep everyone level headed and pointed in the right direction. A team is also successful when every member does his or her job correctly and to their maximum potential. In football, most people watch the quarterback and the receivers and rarely pay attention to the lines. In OU's case this year, a slip up on the line cost us our Heismann Trophy winning quarterback and arguably a return to the National Championship. Granted, most mistakes aren't quite that dramatic, but they all have potential to be. Sam Bradford got hurt because someone was being lazy and wasn't doing their job, which didn't allow the team to be successful.

An unsuccessful team is turned into a successful one by changing all of the above. If the team has all of the same strengths, hire people with various ones. If the team needs to be better, push the members to change one of their weaknesses. If the team is lazy, try to change their attitude. If the team isn't in agreement, remind them of the goal they want to achieve.

This is all easier said than done, but it is possible and is necessary to be a leader and accomplish a group task.