What makes a winning team ?

Following is a debriefing from a talk I attended last weekend.

1. Communicating : The art of listening. A team that communicates well is a productive and an efficient
team. The key here is empathetic listening. Are you able to share your enthusiasm with your members? Are your members able to communicate with you freely? Do you listen to speak or do you listen to understand their needs? Do you often get put down for you ideas? Do you often stop others in their tracks if you think they have a silly idea? Do you wait to listen to the full story?

2. Sharing a common goal. Set a clear goal and drive your members towards it. Break your goal down into SMART objectives; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.

3. Trusting : a two way communication. Develop the trust and faith of your members and more importantly, learn to trust yourself and move on to trusting your members. Trust has the potent capabilities to turn lives around. It is a human necessity.

4. Being visionary. Dare to dream and think big. Build your vision from the base, build structure and add the final detailed touches. Visualise it everyday, as you wake up and/or before you sleep. If you have to, paint it out and paste it on your wall or fridge door or even keep a copy in your wallet!

5. Talent and knowledge : the art of selling yourself. Take time to build yourself in both your knowledge and your talents. Keep rotating the cycle. You can never know too much and be too good. There will always be the next-to-be lurching around the corner. Give him a chance and he would spring on the opportunity!

6. Leading and serving. A humble leader need not be a weak leader. In fact, leadership is built mostly from leading as a role model. Anything the leader does, his followers aim to achieve twice as much. Another human nature : monkey see, monkey do -- the base of human evolution.

7. Self awareness. Alas, changing the world starts with changing oneself. Am I aware of how others perceive me? What if others had you as their role model this entire time ? Watching your actions, listening to your talks and imitating you? Think of a winning team you know of. Reflect on it. Think of your team. Reflect on it. What is good? What needs to be improved? What are the lessons learnt? How can you bring a difference, independently?




This is Laveena Kukanesan writing to you for Antara TV. I hope you had a good read! Don’t forget to give me your side of the story!

Til next time!