It's all about differences... or not?

definition of good team

It's not easy to create a good team. It's even hard to find one definition of a good team which would be accepted by everyone. I think the reason is simple - there are many solutions to each problem and the problem can be solved in a satisfying way by good teams working differently, teams consisting of people with various personalities.

Because of all the things that I wrote above I won't try to present a generic definition good for everyone. I can only share with you my own understanding of it.

A good team resembles a healthy organism, built from the various parts which cooperate with each other to reach the shared goal. Each part has different responsibilities, is the best in its respective fields, need different resources and brings different values, but even though each wants to reach exactly the same goal what the rest. The same as team members, who share the same vision and purpose, even if they aren't similar in most aspects.

differences and...

I'm writing about a group of individualities, a group of different people. However, it's not as easy as take a bunch of people, who are completely different, put it together in one place and wait for results. It doesn't work this way. Each team member should be different, should have his own opinion, own skillset, own motivation, but... yes, a few things should be common for all people in team.

courage and humility

Each member needs to have courage to protect his own opinions, but on the other hand he should be humble and needs to know when it's good time to admit that he was wrong. He needs to respect opinions of others even (most of all!) when he doesn't agree with them.

A Team member should know his own value, should need to know how to present his opinions, but at the same time he must know the value of others, he needs to know that view which particular person has, even if different than his own, it's just another way to bring us closer to our goal.

It's great to work with a group of people with different ideas, but only if they can come to some conclusions. The bigger differences between them, the better. This, however, is true only to the situations when they know how to talk with other people, especially with the ones with different opinions.

If we have a chance to work with such a team then we can be sure that invented solutions will be really good and efficient.

vision

They need to share the same vision and want to reach the same goal, because their work can be great, but without common purpose they just can go in different directions.

It's really sad when you look at a group of people who are really give the best qualities they have, they're doing as much as they can and their effort is tremendous and... somehow it's still not enough. Or at least they (and other people as well) can think in this way.

In some cases the problem is not related to team's efficiency or lack of skills. Sometimes they just struggle with lack of a common goal, everyone think they know where whole effort should bring us, but without clear vision and common understanding of it, each team member can see something different at the end and this can lead us to a simple problem - everyone works hard, but not as a team.

I need a team

It's not easy to find people who displays such qualities, and to be honest it's not only about finding them.
If your team is composed of strong personalities you, as a leader, have to teach them how to cooperate.
It's your responsibility to motivate them and instill passion and inspiration in them.
It's you, who needs to give them vision and goal and, what is more important, help them understand what you as a team really want to achieve.