I had the opportunity recently to interview Don Yaeger, the former Associate Editor of Sports Illustrated and author of twenty-five books, nine of which have become New York Times best-sellers. His newest book is titled, Great Teams: 16 Things High Performing Organizations Do Differently. Here are his responses to my questions. As a Patriots fan, I especially loved his answer to my final question!
1. You focus in the book on the notion that great sports teams build a strong high-performance culture. You say that matters more than having the right offensive or defensive schemes and strategies. Can you describe the most important elements of a high-performance culture?
Don Yaeger: Culture is a buzzword that is all over the business publications these days, so I think it’s important to define it. In considering how the word specifically applies to a team setting, I came up with two possible definitions: 1) the conditions within the organization that promote either growth or failure and 2) the shared understanding of what to do in adverse situations. The effort to achieve that culture can be broken down to four essential pillars that I believe set a truly Great Team apart from one that simply performs well.
• Targeting Purpose— The team is connected to a greater purpose. Members understand whom they are serving and why that matters.
• Effective Management— The team is able to think creatively and act dynamically in order to stay fresh, effective, and relevant.
• Activating Efficiency— Each member of the team brings a unique set of talents, experiences, perspectives, work ethic, personality traits, and know- how that melds with and complements those of the other team members.
• Mutual Direction— There is a strong sense of understanding, appreciation, shared responsibility, and trust that unites and motivates the team to work together.
After studying the subject carefully and discussing it with truly great leaders, I found sixteen defining characteristics that special teams— the ones that are in a class by themselves, that accomplish more than just a winning season or a successful fiscal year, that pack extra punch and bring a degree of excitement to what they do— all share. These traits can be worked on independently by individual team members, but the truly outstanding teams use them to build on one another. Organizations that exhibit real greatness combine talent, relationships, and innovation in a variety of ways for the sake of achieving a shared goal.
