Mastering Success: A Comprehensive Guide to High-Performance Team Coaching
Stories to find the pattern for the High-Performance team!
Building a High-performance team: A story from my uncle….
My uncle was working in Army; he had many stories connected to his posting in different places in India! He is retired now, living contentedly!
I gather many stories from him. Especially his memory stationed during Kashmir for four years was an awesome and memorable one.
He was sharing his excellent high-performance team story from his army life. It was reiterating the five forces of a high-performance team, which I also observed from my two decades of experience with many diverse teams, I have worked with.
This Five forces for High-Performance Team,
- Force 1: Appropriate Team Composition
- Force 2: Effective Team Leadership
- Force 3: Balanced Team Chemistry
- Force 4: Appropriate Team Context
- Force 5: Effective Team Coaching
The battalion was formed with greatly skilled individuals. They produce such a skilled with a lot of training and with many years of experience with varieties of ambient and with the appropriate guidance from their colleagues.
The composition of the team is with the right setup based on the mission they are serving for. Every mission is unique.
If there is any deficiency in skills and competency, the battalion investigates to fulfill those as swiftly as possible and bridges those gaps.
Every member of the team is absolutely aware of the daily plan, weekly plan, and monthly procedure. They are aware of the localities, terrain, and surrounding wherever they are operating. They examine periodic movement, changes around them. They upgrade themselves regularly about the context they are performing.
Their data is real time and they do not live with obsolete information.
In the army team, life and death were dependent on the preparation and training they work out on an everyday basis.
There is no chance of any error as human life is involved. The Team knows that remarkably well, so they enthusiastically practice those guidelines.
There are numerous team members who support them to be on top of everything about the team context. What works in Kashmir is not the same as when my uncle was posted in the Northeastern zone of India. The context, team composition completely altered based on the geography and situation.
Team context is so vital for them to perform at their best.
Team chemistry is the lifeline that binds all the team members collectively. After so much hard work in rough weather, tough terrain, and long hours of duty, team members maintain absolute momentum & Spirit because they build that chemistry all the time. During duty in the camp or of the camp, they seek to find the humor, fun, and common connection to organize life interesting with extreme stress and pressure scenarios.
I have seen most of my uncle’s colleagues have these types of traits as part of their personality! They are so wonderful at connecting people. People’s relationship-building and rapport building is legitimate for them, esp with others.
They celebrate most of their party on the campus and I participated, many times, it was so fun, joyful, family gets together! Everyone recognizes everybody in their unit. The way the celebration goes, it is a complete unit that views like one Big family!
Team leadership is hierarchical in nature, they have their chain of command, but they are willing to listen and take action based on ground-level information. Their nature of work is distinct, so it works for them.
I have seen senior leaders are invariably guiding the junior employees. Mentoring, training, and constantly educating are part of the culture.
They have dedicated training at a certain interval to those leaders who are specialized in certain specific training. Constant coaching and training are some of the leadership activities they do. The teams are very disciplined and team members have to follow the discipline so that they are building mental muscle. It helped them to survive in the tough time.
When my uncle comes back home in a year, he is the same discipline person at home as well. His family members also learned those great traits of leadership. They are role models and similar types of stuff they teach another through coaching.
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High Performance Team! Apollo 13
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American docudrama space adventure film directed by Ron Howard.
The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America’s third Moon landing mission.
En route, an onboard explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA’s flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turning the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.
Their oxygen could run out, they could be poisoned by carbon dioxide accumulations, or they could freeze to death. If somehow they were able to return to the Earth’s atmosphere, they had to enter at precisely the right angle.
Too steep an entry, and they would be incinerated; too shallow, and they would skip off the top of the atmosphere like a stone on a pond, and fly off forever into space.
Three days into the mission, the crew sends a live television transmission from Odyssey, which the networks decline to broadcast live. After Swigert performs a standard housekeeping procedure, one of two liquid oxygen tanks explodes, emptying its contents into space and sending the craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking. Mission Control aborts the Moon landing, Lovell and Haise hurriedly power up Aquarius as a “lifeboat” for the return home, and Swigert shuts down Odyssey before its battery power runs out. In Houston, Kranz rallies his team to come up with a plan to bring the astronauts home safely, declaring “failure is not an option”. Controller John Aaron recruits Mattingly to help restart Odyssey for the final return.
No matter how good the astronauts were, they would never have been successful without the team that supported them and their mission. From the scientists and engineers who built the rockets, to the programmers who wrote the navigation programs, to the seamstress who sewed the spacesuits, the success of the Apollo missions resulted from thousands of people pulling together to achieve something that once seemed impossible. Every single person who worked for NASA pulled together in an astounding feat of teamwork to save the crew.
High-performance Team requires below areas to be strengthened:
a. Effective Team Coaching
b. Appropriate Team Context
c. Balance Team Chemistry
d. Appropriate Team Composition
e. Effective Team Leadership
What I have discovered in any team, when all these areas are weak, the High-performance output cannot be obtained. It takes a long time for coaching to enhance these areas
Some of the leadership dialog and Team coaching by Gene Kranz,
the NASA flight director who served during the Apollo 13 crisis
Gene Kranz : Let’s work the problem people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.
Gene Kranz : We’ve never lost an American in space, we’re sure as (heck) not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.
NASA Director : This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever experienced.
Gene Kranz : With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour.
Gene Kranz : Well, we’re gonna have to figure it out. I want people in our simulators working re-entry scenarios. I want you guys to find every engineer who designed every switch, every circuit, every transistor, and every light bulb that’s up there. Then I want you to talk to the guy on the assembly line who actually built the thing. Find out how to squeeze every amp out of both of these god damn machines.
Every moment you can find the instance of Team chemistry, team coaching, and team leadership. Of course, all this is possible due to the right team composition being there and all the people are NASA people in the Aersoapace context.
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Team Performance: Learning from the Movie “Remember the Titans”
“Remember the Titans” is a 2000 American biographical sports film, Based on the true story of coach Herman Boone, and his attempt to integrate the T. C. Williams High School (now Alexandria City High School) football team in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971.
In the movie it was demonstrated Approximately ten years earlier in the summer of 1971, at the freshly integrated T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, Herman Boone, a black head coach who was supposed to lead the black high school’s football team, is assigned to the coaching staff under current white head coach Bill Yoast, who previously led the white high school and has been nominated for the Virginia High School Hall of Fame.
High-performance Team requires below areas to be strengthened:
a. Effective Team Coaching
b. Appropriate Team Context
c. Balance Team Chemistry
d. Appropriate Team Composition
e. Effective Team Leadership
What I have discovered in any team, when all these areas are weak, the High-performance output cannot be obtained. It takes a long time for coaching to enhance these areas.
In an attempt to soothe growing racial tensions and the evidence that all other high schools are “white” only, the school district decides to change course and name Boone the head coach. He refuses, believing it unfair to Yoast, but subsides after looking at what it aids to the black community. Yoast is then offered an assistant coach’s job by the school board and initially refuses but reconsiders after the white players pledge to boycott the team if he does not participate. Dismayed at the prospect of the students losing their chances at scholarships, Yoast changes his mind and takes up the position of defensive coordinator under Boone, to his daughter Sheryl’s dismay.
There was great Team chemistry and black and white team members displayed in this movie. Team learned to respect each irrespective of the color.
In the movie it shown on August 15, the players gather and journey to Gettysburg College, where their training takes place. Early on, the black and white team members regularly clash in racially motivated conflicts, including some between captains Gerry Bertier and Julius Campbell.
However, through persuasive coaching and rigorous athletic training by Boone — which includes an early morning run to the Gettysburg National Cemetery and a motivational speech — the team achieves racial harmony and comes out a unified team.
In the movie it has shown a great relationship between the two ‘Captains’ of the team that turns things around. They start out not liking each other at all, but over the course of the film, develop undying respect for each other — even going as far as to call the other one brother. Great Team Chemsitry!
The whole movie was about coaching! Through coaching, how can we establish a stronger team. There are many challenges but those have been overcome through better coaching and effective conversation.
It has shown the movie when the black students trying out for the team have a meeting in the gymnasium with Boone, but this turns into a fiasco when Yoast and several white students interrupt. After this, Boone takes Yoast aside and explains how he will run the team and that black and white does not matter to him, leaving Yoast with renewed faith in Boone.
Throughout training camp and the season, Boone and Yoast’s black and white players learn to accept each other, to work together, and that football knows no race. As they learn from each other, Boone and Yoast also learn from them and, in turn, the whole town learns from the team, the Titans.
The team formation was constantly happening. There is constant turbulence without the team. The teams and coach were steered through all these challenges till the end. This game needs rigorous exercise and training. It showed the heavy training schedule with a lot of strict deadlines to follow. Boon shows the best coaching by punishing the team until they complete something to his standard.
Gerry the captain, even has his best friend Ray removed from the team because of his racism following a game where Ray intentionally missed a block, which consequently led to the near-season-ending injury of starting quarterback Jerry “Rev” Harris.
Garry is the captain of the football team and shows influencing skills and encouraging team members to speak their mind
Also shown the main two reasons behind team success are the friendship between certain members of the team. Firstly, the coaches seem at war with each other. One takes the defense, the other the offense. They realize that without each other, the team won’t continue with the winning ways that they have started. It is a case of knowing how the other one lives.
Great movie to learn from….
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High-Performance team: Story from Lagaan movie!
‘Lagaan’ movie was released in the year 2001
I was telling the Lagaan story to one of the team.
It has been 20 yrs the Lagan movie has made and geat movie on cricket at that time.
It shows how a team performance improved and can happen and take a dedicated journey with forming storming and norming to performing stage.
High-performance Team requires below areas to be strengthened:
a. Effective Team Coaching
b. Appropriate Team Context
c. Balance Team Chemistry
d. Appropriate Team Composition
e. Effective Team Leadership
You could find all these elements well visible in the Lagan movie.
Effective Team Leadership:
In the year 1893, the villagers of Champaner await meeting their Raja. They want to ask for an exemption from tax (Lagaan) but the Raja is busy watching the British play a match of cricket. A young farmer named Bhuvan mocks the game. This is overheard by the company captain, Andrew Russell who later challenges Bhuvan to a game of cricket in return for canceling their tax, a bet that Bhuvan accepts. throughout the movie, Bhuban demonstrated persistence to win the game with an optimistic attitude.
Effective Team Coaching:
Despite protests from the village, Bhuvan gathers a few supporters and then they try to learn the game of cricket. Elizabeth, Captain Russell’s visiting younger sister, approaches them, offering to help. She wants to teach them the game so that the match is played fairly. Bhuvan is delighted, and the group starts meeting Elizabeth on grounds outside the village to learn the game. She was consistently enabling the teams to learn and play better cricket.
Bhuvan also coached the team wherever possible throughout the game to understand the game better. It helped the team to improve.
Appropriate Team Composition:
The captain of the cricket team, Bhuvan, led his team.
Lakha initially protested to come but later join in the game
Bagha was always there and he supported Bhuvan with great field fielding skills.
Ismail was a good, calm-headed batsman who played even in an injured state giving the team an opportunity to push for a final win.
Ishwar was the team doctor who meant business and took didn’t go back on commitments.
Guran, a fortune teller, was another good support for the team
Bhura is also great
Kachra, The ‘untouchable’ who couldn’t have got into the team had it not been for Bhuvan’s aid, Kachra was a splendid bowler who controlled the game within reach on the second day and it was his over-and-a-half long association with Bhuvan at the absolute end that pushed the team.
Young Tipu entered in place of wound Ismail in the movie. He had the highest partnership with Bhuvan.
Former sepoy and a beautiful all-rounder, Deva was one of the best planners of the team, and the most qualified, who fell a run shy of a half-century in the most inappropriate of dismissals.
Appropriate Team Context:
Despite protests from the village, Bhuvan gathers a few who support him, and together, they crouch outside the cantonment grounds trying to understand the game. None of these people very played cricket other than gulli danda! With the help of a little bit of knowledge and enlighten team help, the team could understand the cricket with through practice.
Balance Team Chemistry:
Initially, team chemistry was not so good, as when practice progressed slowly all the team members get each other wavelengths better. It improved over a period of time with an effort from all sides.
Look into any high performance team, you will be able to find these 5 forces how well these are playing a role to build a winning successful team.
