152. Forming a Team

 

Going it alone or forming a team. It often seems as if this decision is hard to make. The old adage regarding teams is real, “if you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far form a team”. On a daily basis those two choices are being made, often they are being made by default because few know the reasons or methods to make the choice. When that is the case everyone picks do it alone.

 

Whether you reference the five key areas of life: health, wealth, learning, relationships, or spiritual; these two choices are being made constantly. By default, go it alone represents 80% of the choices for some reason. Over the past 30 years I have taken note why alone seems to be default. Most go alone because they don’t have to explain themselves. Others go alone because it is easier and quicker to get to it in each of the areas. While many go alone because they fear failure.

 

Yet, there may be a method to use to look at and select a team in various endeavors and going alone when necessary. When writing the curriculum to train leaders to lead during chaos and succeed when times are tough, I interviewed 100s of leaders and teams and organizations. A pattern emerged.

 

Every successful team or even individual had 6 distinct team members; people the needed to help them succeed. When I saw that pattern, I was shocked. People who had fewer really struggled with success.

 

Even if you take a look at your life, rather when you look at your 5 areas of life you will immediately see the areas where you are successful you have 6 the areas where you struggle you will have much fewer.

 

Bottom Line Up Front is that you need 6 distinct partners or people on your team per area. If you want to win this is baseline and not negotiable. 6 people you select to help you win.

 

To further break it down you need two different types of people. The first type is you need 3 people who are sought out to teach you something and hold you accountable to doing it. The second group is 3 people who you seek to do some particular action for you.

 

Let me tell you selecting 6 people in two groups is a struggle for people. Maybe because we are so drawn to trying things by ourselves. Winning isn’t a personal struggle winning is a team dynamic. So get over this notion of doing at it alone.

 

So the first group of people, the group of three I call the accountability group. These three are sought out to over see you doing something. They oversee your actions. For example, if you are a runner, you seek out a coach to teach you form or some running method after being show you literally must go forth and do that method and they keep you accountable. Possibly in business you bring in a trainer to teach at new sales method then you must go sell that way with their follow up and over sight. You will need three different accountability partners.

 

Oddly enough most people will find three of these types. Accountability partners produce accelerated growth that is their job. If you want to learn something you need to have someone show you then follow up with you until you get it. Clearly just being shown or reading about a technique then trying to prove it out by yourself is a complete failure.

 

The second group is people you seek out that will do work for you and you keep them accountable. This is where sustainable growth comes from. Alas few people select this group well or even at all. It is a struggle but one worth having.

 

Here are some examples! In health, get a physical therapist or a massage therapist to give you therapy. They do work for you that helps you. In wealth, hire an accountant to do your books. Don’t you do it. Hire someone to do needed actions so that you can do other actions. It is that simple, yet few people have three team members solely responsible to doing activity that supports the over all mission.

 

You can only do so much yourself so get a team of six set up immediately: three to keep you on point, and three to do activities so that you can remain on point.

 

This is the baseline reason to have a team.

 

A CEO team structure looks like this. He or she has no more than three direct reports. They are the three people doing work for him: COO, CFO, Chief Admin. The CEO then finds three people to teach or keep him or her on point, these three may not be inside the organization.

 

Imagine if you had three people committed to helping you do difficult activities every single day? Imagine if you had three committed people to conduct activities in order to free you up to do the things you needed to do?

 

Over the holidays see if you can develop a list of 6. I would love to see that list and help you get 6. The amount of growth you can have in 2020 is real. The sustainability of that growth will only happen if you have 6.