Team Success: Is It All About Mental Attitude or Strong Individuals? Share Your Thoughts

Team Success: Mental Attitude vs. Strong Individuals

What is your opinion about the success of a team: does it depend upon the mental attitude of the whole team or on the strongest individuals/intellectuals? Also, I want to know to what extent team success depends upon the team leader's operational strategies.

Contributing Factors in Practical Norms

I am looking at the contributing factors in practical norms. According to a few, it is due to the mental attitude of the teammates, while others say the credit for being a successful team goes to the excellent teammates.

Kindly contribute and share your views, opinions, knowledge, or information you hold or have gained.

Note: I will appreciate it if you can post your views pointwise or in small paragraphs for easy reading and interpretation.

With profound regards

Dear Khadir,

Success of a Team: Mental Attitude vs. Strongest Individuals

The success of a team depends on the organization's culture. Mental attitude is a result of this culture. Yes, we do require the strongest individuals/intellectuals. However, they need to go along with the flow rather than dictating their whims and fancies. The sooner it starts happening, it destroys teamwork.

Team Success and the Team Leader's Operational Strategies

If the team is small, say for a particular project, then the success of the team would depend on the team leader's operational strategies. But again, the organization's culture plays a vital role here. Teamwork depends on the type of manpower you have, their level of competence, their motivation level, and so on.

Operational strategies of the team leader may be very good, but what is the use if the company is paying salaries below the market standards? Obviously, staff are demotivated. What is the use of the strategy if the systems and processes are not well-defined?

Secondly, the soft skills of the team leader also play a vital role. What is the use if the team leader does not know how to handle conflict? What is the use of the best operations strategy if the team leader has a poor Emotional Quotient (EQ)?

Contributing Factors in Practical Norms

I am looking at the contributing factor in practical norms. According to a few, it is due to the mental attitude of the teammates, and the rest say the credit for being a successful team goes to the excellent teammates.

As written earlier, the mental attitude is a result of your culture. Well before stepping into the company, an employee knows very well what is acceptable behavior here. He/she develops his/her frame of mind accordingly. One very senior ops manager of Infosys once told me that in their company, a delay of two minutes is also not acceptable. Mr. NR Narayana Murthy is very strict about timings. Obviously, the mental attitude of a candidate who joins Infosys is developed accordingly.

Credit for being a successful team goes not just to the teammates but the organization's factors as well. What if the systems and processes are very old, workers do not have sufficient tools to execute their job, there is always a delay in getting raw material, lack of spares of machines, etc. Supporting infrastructure also plays a vital role in the team's success.

Take the case of the staff of Kingfisher Airlines. They have not been paid their salary since January 2012. Will they work properly? Will they have sufficient motivation?

Thanks for initiating a discussion on this topic. Let other members also contribute their views.

Regards,
Dinesh V Divekar

"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."

Thank you very much for sharing your views. I must appreciate that your reply met my expectations as I compared it with my current organization's work culture, standards, operational policies, and pay standards. We are driving our workforce crazy to achieve the organization's goals/standards without giving importance to the foundation—the work culture. I understand that every organization faces some problems, but who is accountable for causing these issues faced by the majority of employees? If the organization focuses on standardized work culture and proportionate pay standards, the situation would be much better.

I hope there are many professionals registered in this forum, and I invite them to share their practical views and opinions.

With profound regards

Pointwise Replies

Success definitely depends upon the team leaders. If the team leaders can convince the team members about the purpose and objectives of the team, the goals and purpose for which the team is working, it is not possible to work with focused attention and achieve the end results.

The success of the team depends upon the mental attitude of the team members and not on a single individual. One or two persons may be good, but what about the others on the team? Unless all work cohesively towards the common goal, it is like every batsman trying to score a hundred runs in a 50-over match without looking at the run rate. Similarly, in hockey, if one is very good as a striker but you have poor fullbacks and a goalkeeper, all the efforts of an excellent striker would go to waste.

More importantly, as someone has rightly said, the team's strength is only as good as the weakest link. Just think over this, and you would have clarity on your points.

Regards,
Haresh

First, thanks for an interesting topic, Mr. Kadir. Second, thanks for sharing great thoughts, Mr. Divekar.

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Success of the Organization

1. Of course, the success of the organization depends on the whole team's work, but an individual needs to push, convince, and encourage the teammates, whom we call the Team Leader.

One more real fact I want to mention is that the mental attitude of all employees, including the Team Leader, depends on the behavior of the organization. If the company takes care of its employees and extends strong support, then automatically, employees love to work efficiently and precisely to make the organization excel. Thus, for a great mental attitude, an organization is also responsible.

Contribution of Teamwork and Leadership

Coming back to the question, the success of the company depends 60% on teamwork and 40% on the Team Leader's operational strategies, as he is one of the responsible persons for his team.

2. Yes, the success of the team goes to the excellent teammates. In fact, if each individual employee takes their own responsibility and adopts the mindset that "Work is Wealth," then no team leader or manager needs to worry, as everyone can understand their own responsibility and do their job with great dedication.

By considering the above, I agree with Mr. Divekar that an organization and its culture play a vital role in encouraging, motivating, and supporting their employees and meeting their expectations.

Thank you,

Regards

At the outset, I appreciate your example. In certain areas, I have noted that team members are the contributing factor to the team's success without the involvement of their team leader. This is considered self-directing team leadership, where every member has contributed to the team's success. It's very rare to come across such team members with a dynamic, positive mental attitude capable of leading themselves and their teammates.

Strengths and weaknesses are a part of every team, like ups and downs in our lives. They must be taken care of and covered by supporting members while being converted into strengths.

I conclude by saying that a good team leader is worth a billion dollars, and every team must have one; otherwise, it will be difficult to achieve a common goal. Keep sharing as much as you can. Knowledge grows when shared, and learning is great fun irrespective of the information or knowledge we have been acquiring until now.

With profound regards,

I extend my gratitude for sharing your views with us. Both factors will support TEAM SUCCESS - MENTAL ATTITUDE and TALENTED TEAM MEMBERS. The TEAM LEADER is none other than the CATALYST or at times serves as FUEL or a MOTIVATING FACTOR boosting the TEAM'S SPIRIT.

When everything is perfect, there is another factor hindering TEAM SUCCESS because SUCCESS is not repeated for the SECOND TIME. It is none other than "THE COMPENSATION FACTOR." At times, it is very difficult to educate TOP MANAGEMENT on the PROPORTIONATE COMPENSATION FACTOR, and on the other hand, a PERFORMING TEAM cannot afford to lose its REPUTATION just for not being COMPENSATED. Hence, a wise decision is taken by PERFORMING TEAM MEMBERS: "SEARCH FOR A BETTER JOB AND THEN LEAVE THE ORGANIZATION." This is the major reason for losing the BEST WORKFORCE and indeed is very difficult to REPLACE THEM.

Once again, I extend my gratitude to you all. I hope there are more members with more knowledge to share.

With profound regards

Dear Mr. Sayeed,

I extend my gratitude for sharing your views with us. Both factors will support TEAM SUCCESS: MENTAL ATTITUDE and TALENTED TEAM MEMBERS. A TEAM LEADER is none other than the CATALYST or, at times, serves as FUEL or a MOTIVATING FACTOR boosting THE TEAM'S SPIRIT. When everything is perfect, there is another factor hindering TEAM SUCCESS because SUCCESS is not repeated for the SECOND TIME. It is none other than "THE COMPENSATION FACTOR."

At times, it is very difficult to educate TOP MANAGEMENT on THE PROPORTIONATE COMPENSATION FACTOR, and on the other hand, A PERFORMING TEAM cannot afford to lose its REPUTATION just for not being COMPENSATED. Hence, a wise decision is taken by PERFORMING TEAM MEMBERS: "SEARCH FOR A BETTER JOB AND THEN LEAVE THE ORGANIZATION." This is the major reason for losing the BEST WORKFORCE and indeed is very difficult to REPLACE THEM.

Once again, I extend my gratitude to you all. Hope there are more members with more knowledge to share.

With profound regards,

Thanks for the prompt response and points as well. I agree with your second paragraph; there are circumstances as mentioned. However, I believe an honest employee can support the same organization from where he is getting lots of support and care. Well, let's see what others have to say on this topic...

Regards,