Brainware Vault

Aristotle's observation about human behavior and motivation speaks to the very heart of exceptional team leaders. Over the course of my career and doctoral work I have talked with hundreds of team leaders, the majority of whom aspired to build energized engaged teams that delivered exceptional performance. Yet, for most of them, their results did not live up to their aspirations... For team leaders, the most important reflection is the one that captures how your habits foster energy and engagement, or drive deterioration and disengagement, across the key relationships of your team.

Why do we do what we do? A simple question, yet the answer is complex. What drives motivation at work is easier to answer: purpose, competence, and autonomy.

Would you build your family a house without ensuring that there is a safe, solid foundation?

The answer to this question is obvious. Yet, many team leaders bet their paychecks on the performance of a team without ensuring that they have put in place solid fundamentals. These team leaders give many reasons for taking shortcuts in building their teams — from too little time due to competing priorities and their company’s obsession with quarterly results, to believing that they can drive the team to perform though some magical mix of inspiration and coercion. While some teams may deliver results in the short term, as the pressure mounts for ever greater performance, cracks in their foundation quickly grow into a performance crevasse.

Driven by forces as diverse as the dramatic growth of independent, remote knowledge workers, and the expectations of Millennials who have been encouraged to work collaboratively since primary school, teams are shaping the future of work and organizations. Despite those mega-trends, and the billions spent on leader and team development and training, most team leaders feel that their teams fail to reach their full potential. What distinguishes exceptional teams and team leaders from the rest? The Architecture of Highly-Effective Teams...