The Transcript of 4 Tips to Build a Winning Team

Hi, it’s Robin Sharma, the author of “The Leader Who Had No Title.” I would like to welcome you to this issue of Robin Sharma TV. Well this issue is all about four tips to build a winning team. I mean I’m here in Stockholm, Sweden. I’ve just had the pleasure of spending three and a half hours with almost 700 people, talking about Lead without title and Stockholm is a
gorgeous city that I finished the presentation and I went for a great ride and got to know the city even more, smelled the smells, got lost a little bit and really just savoured the moment on this tour. The tour started off in Dublin then went to Macedonia over to Stockholm, Paris tomorrow, then down to Mauritius.

But let me get right to the point. At the session after the event I had dinner with some of the executives, or lunch rather with some of the executives who had showed up at the Lead without a title presentation and one of the questions I got was how do you build a winning team? How do you
motivate your team? How do I get teammates who are inspired to wow they’re customers, to be great teammates, to do great work, to help me build a great company that does our part to change the world. Four specific tactics were my reply.

Number one. LBE; Lead By Example. So a lot of CEOs come to me and say, “Robin I’d like to have more engaged employees.” Well the real question is how engaged are you? A lot of CEOs come up to me or managing directors saying, “Robin I wish I had employees or teammates who work like Picasso painted.” And I look at them and I feel like saying “well do you work like
Picasso painted?” Lot of CEOs come up to me and say, “Robin you know I wish my teammates were more passionate about the work they do.” And I feel like saying “well how passionate are you?”

And so this force point is really this. Few things are as powerful as leading by example. If you want innovative employees, if you want excellent employees, if you want ethical employees, if you want passionate employees, if you want employees who win, then you be the change you want to see in your employees to sort of paraphrase what Gandhi said. So the first point is really, the game-changer is, lead by example. I mean you model the behaviour and the performance that you want your employees or the rest of the team to live and the more you do that, the more you will do whatever a leader without a title does, which is influence people.

Number two. The second thing I said to this executive if you want to have a winning team do what one of our clients, Ritz Carlton does every morning. Before the door is opened up for the hotel, they have a huddle and there are a few things they do. In that huddle, they talk about one of the Ritz Carlton values. They just talk about one of the core values. You know maybe it’s customer wow and they talk about what it looks like, what it means and that simply just reinforces that key value in the minds of the team first thing in the morning. Second thing they do, they come up with a customer service story. You know one employee at Ritz Carlton doing something that made a huge difference in the life of a guest. Then another thing they do is they celebrate birthdays, something human. So the second tactic for building a winning team, a morning huddle. Do it from maybe 9:00 to 9:15 everyday. Pick a value you want to coach your team on. Pick a story that you want to inspire them on and then celebrate your team because as we know the team that celebrates together is the team that wins together.

Third tactic; coaching. Well we could spend a whole session here on Robin Sharma TV talking about coaching, but really your job as a leader is to grow more leaders. Your job as a leader is to inspire your team to do work they never thought they could do. Your job as a leader is to leave a trail of leaders behind you.

So the third tactic, the third tactic to building a winning team is find some time everyday, even if it’s 3 minutes, to coach someone on your team. And don’t say “you did something wrong”, say “I have an opportunity for you to get to your next level of wow.” Build a coaching organization where literally part of the culture is you developing talent, coaching talent. I
mean here’s what the latest researches say. The number one thing your talent wants is to be coached, to be developed, to do challenging work. It’s not money. They want to do work that matters and it’s your job to coach them everyday, to develop them, and help them get to the highest point of their own abilities.

Then the fourth tactic that I want to share with you to build a winning team is to have fun. I remember having dinner with a billionaire. He built a fantastic technology company. I said what was the single most important thing you did to build a world class organization, and a winning team and he said, “Robin, the company that celebrates together is the company that stays together.” And he called it shared human moments. We’re in a world right now with all the technology that’s out there, where your teammates are craving community. They’re craving human connections.

So find some time to have pizza lunches together or find some time to go to a restaurant together. Find some time to maybe go for a run together, and don’t talk about business. Have fun together. Have fun with your team. Laugh as a team. Get to know them as human beings. Get to know their family. Get to know their hopes and their dreams. The more you can connect with human beings at a very deep human level, the more they’re going to come back to the office and they’re going to like you, and they’re going to trust you, and they’re going to listen to you. They’re going to buy into your version because they truly care.

Those are four specific tactics to help you build a winning team because as you know so well, if you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business and the bigger your dream, the more important your team. So take the time to develop a great team.

If you want more tactics on high performance team building or peak performance or leadership or productivity or if you just want to get more inspired, go on over right now to robinsharma.com. You can grab a copy of my 120 page e-book. It’s helped people from around the world, get some game-changing results as my gift to you for free. I will see you again in the next issue of Robin Sharma TV. Thank you for watching. All the best to you. Bye bye.