Chapter 3: Effective Teambuilding--Launching or Growing Your Team

Overview

Sometimes you get to choose who will be on your team and other times the team's members are inherited. It can be compared to running a sports team, where the general manager, with input from the coach, has three strategies to choose from: (1) use the draft or obtain free agents to staff the team; (2) keep the existing members but reassign them to positions that better fit their skills; or (3) spend a lot of time and attention on the development of members ' skills at their current position.

The Detroit Red Wings hockey team went from being one of the worst teams in the eighties ”locals referred to them as the "Dead Wings" ”to perennial contenders for the Stanley Cup in the nineties and beyond. General Manager Ken Holland and owner Mike Illitch helped Sergei Federov defect from Russia and become a star center for the team. They brought along top draft choices to ensure that all four lines had the ability to contribute. They acquired free agents including Brett Hull to fill out an all-star lineup. And they appointed Steve Yzerman captain to set the tone of hard work and excellence. Finally, they recruited the most successful head coach in the league, Scotty Bowman, to establish a system to utilize the talent. They selected the people they felt would produce a successful team.

In 1968 baseball's Detroit Tigers finally made it to the World Series after many years of frustration. They had accomplished this feat with a shortstop who could field his position well but who was barely hitting his weight (i.e., under a .200 batting average), and they had four very good outfielders, including Al Kaline and Mickey Stanley, but only three outfield positions to fill. In their quest to become a world champion, they decided to reassign Stanley, a good hitter, to play shortstop during the World Series. He played flawlessly, and this bold move benefited the whole team ”they won the World Series. They brought a team to excellence by placing the players they had in positions that best benefited the team.

George Wills devotes a whole chapter in his book Men at Work to Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles ”a great example of a player developing his skills at his position to help make his team great. Ripken built a batting cage in his own basement to practice hitting all year long. During the season , he would dedicate ten to twenty minutes of practice time each day to fielding difficult ground balls in the hole instead of having balls hit right to him as most players do. Although Ripken was the most recognizable star on his team, he continually worked hard at improving his skills to help his team move toward excellence.

A team can achieve excellence by selecting people who will bring success to the team, by placing current members in positions that will best benefit the team, or by having members continually develop the skills needed to become great at their position. Which strategy would be best for building your team?