Page 59 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE WHY OF WORK

require combining people with different skills into cohe-
sive and high-performing teams. As McKell and his team
worked to shape the bank’s direction, they found that their
ability to work as a team turned individual strengths into
organization capabilities. When they put aside individual
biases for the good of the overall bank, they made the whole
of the team more than the sum of the individual players.
They worked to create this sense of teamwork throughout
the organization.
Chapter 5 suggests specific ways leaders can strengthen
positive work relationships that enhance teamwork. These
work relationships make even difficult work more doable.
Our meaningful work relationships include friendships,
mentoring relationships, and professional networks.
5
Research on high-performing teams explores the ways
teams coordinate the efforts of many people to solve
complex problems. Although teamwork is itself more com-
plicated than working alone, it also allows team members to
reduce complexity by specializing. Research suggests that
high-performing teams operate with clear purposes, good
governance, positive team member relationships, and the
ability to learn. 6
While leaders must attend to teamwork in complex
work settings, the concept of abundant organizations goes
beyond teams that produce and perform their tasks well to
teams that engender a kind of passion that allows for cre-
ativity, focused energy, trusting connections, and mutual
respect. High-performing teams come from high-relating
people. Research on successful marriages suggests patterns
and stages of effective long-term committed relationships
that can be applied to teams in organization settings. The
best teams work through these stages and use these patterns

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