What really makes a world-class team?

For the first ten years of his career, Simon Hartley worked purely with athletes and sports teams as a psychology consultant and performance coach. Over the course of that ten year period, his work sparked a curiosity in him. 

“I wanted to know how the best in the world performed – world-class human beings and teams from any domain, any walk of life”, he explains. 

As a result, the last 20 years have seen Simon actively working with and studying the best in the world from all manner of fields, with the goal of understanding what differentiates them and the principles behind their success: principles that he can then help others to adopt. 

In his recent Vistage webinar, Simon shared some of his discoveries. “Over the years I’ve found a number of common denominators in world-class teams, from Michelin-starred chef teams to surgical teams, yacht crews and polar expedition teams”, he says. “My simple theory is that if you find common denominators in all of those, they’ll probably be things that any team can adopt”. 

The 3 characteristics of world-class teams

“Teams like SAS units and polar expedition crews have to become brilliant at navigating uncertainty”, says Simon. “They simply don’t know what’s going to be around the next corner. And teams like this have three key characteristics in abundance”. 

Those three characteristics are alignment, empowerment and engagement. 

“Many people will say, ‘oh that’s nothing new, those characteristics aren’t rocket science’”, admits Simon. “However, it is rare that a team has all three together”. 

He talks of an exercise where he asks an entire team to stand up and face the direction they individually believe is north. “People face all different ways”, he says. “If everyone walks for 10 minutes in their direction, there’s no alignment. Workplace teams will generally know their target and know their mission statement. What they don’t often know is how to make decisions that align with that”. 

In terms of empowerment, Simon explains that much of the time, team members don’t feel confident enough to take the reins. “It may be that they have a leader who doesn’t want to let go of them – or that they as individuals don’t want to take them”, he says. “Managers are sometimes petrified of giving their team the freedom to operate, meaning all decisions rise to the top of the organisation”. 

With engagement, he explains, leaders need to be very clear about what they want to see and hear so that it is tangible. However, they also need a process in place to make that happen. 

In Simon’s Vistage webinar, he defined these three characteristics of world-class teams, and explained how businesses can cultivate them for themselves. 

“Culture is collective character”

“The All Blacks have a saying that culture is collective character”, says Simon. “If we want to get our team’s culture right, we need to get its character right first – we need to make sure we get the right people in the first place”. 

He uses football as an example. “A football club will teach its players to develop tactical and spatial awareness, to run faster, to jump higher, to be stronger”, he explains. “However, that club also needs to help them get their mental game right and develop them as people to be really great human beings, really great professionals. If they can do that, the chance is that they’ll produce far better players”. 

Character, he says, is about living our values. In order to find people with the right values, organisations should narrow desired values down to a handful that are really important. “The problem is that you won’t necessarily gauge an individual’s character through their CV – or even an interview”, he continues. “You need to figure out another way”. Find out how through Simon’s book: Hire Great People.

Simon’s webinar is a must-watch for anyone who has an influence over the performance of a team. To watch the webinar in full, click here.

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