The humbling journey to peak team performance

When considering the key success factors making organisations thrive in today’s ultra-competitive business context, the human dimension of success is probably the one a lot of us have the most difficulty to harness.

Yet, even more than competencies and business processes, the skill of creating great teams is probably the most critical lever, which will make the ultimate difference between a good performance and victory.

To achieve the state of mind, where they are able to operate at the kind of level required to deliver stellar results in a consistent way, teams need to grow attributes and attitudes, which will transcend the typical mistakes and biases that negatively impact interpersonal relationships.

Team effectiveness has been researched for a long time and the topic is well documented. The characteristics of top performing teams are known, from leadership styles to conflict management and from decision-making processes to the use of resources.

Nevertheless putting the theory into practice often proves a clumsy and unnatural undertaking. Prejudices and mistrust between team members are regular culprits making attempts to grow top teams or organisations eventually fall short of their objectives.

To operate at their peak, teams need to have gone through a bonding process, which will enable them to overcome prejudices and put their common goal above any personal agenda.

Such a process liberates the team’s collective intelligence and activates the synergies and feedback mechanisms fostering continuous learning and improvement, in other words, team growth.

Sailing and offshore sailing races are unique vehicles to accelerate this process not only for the many similarities they offer with the competitive challenges and dynamics encountered in the current corporate environment, but also because their very nature stimulates the kind of cooperative behaviours and humility required to learn from, listen to and trust each other.

These are key characteristics of top racing crews and top corporate teams alike.

To grow them, ALL4ONE consulting organises immersions into the world of ocean racing. During these events the focus lies on performance, through the experiential learning of key competitiveness concepts with the ALL4ONE TROPHY business game, simulating a sailing race around the world, reinforced by the practice of effective team dynamics on board sailboats.

ALL4ONE consulting executive retreats: create a step change in performance through a unique “team bonding” experience!

More info: Executive Retreats webpage