You can’t make it happen:
What most corporations, organizations, board of directors, churches, CEOs, presidents, prime ministers and all other creators of teams forget is that you can’t decide to make a great team. By waking up in the morning and deciding “I’m going to make a great team” you almost certainly curse yourself to not being able to do so. Teams happen, they don’t get created. If leaders could learn to recognize when a team is starting to happen instead of focusing on creating teams they would have a much better success record.

They’re not extraordinary:
Most teams don’t have a single genius to point to for their successes. If they do have a genius to point to then the team probably had very little to do with the success. Most great teams at their beginning are made up of slightly above average folk. If you follow the traditional educational system’s way of looking for talent you will never identify a team. In high school I imagine individual great team members would have a mid eighties average. A great team learns how to use their heads together, not as individuals.

Get the heck out to the way:
If you’re in a leadership position and you think you have a team forming under your care, get the heck out of the way. This is the SINGLE biggest mistake most leaders make. They see a team and with good intentions they split them off, tell them they’re great and then expect great things. By immediately recognizing a team as great you eliminate the “what if” wonder a new team always have. What if we could do this, that, or change the world? By putting a team up on a pedestal at the start you are placing expectations on a team that ruins the creativity, the wonder, and the fun.

We are equals:
Everyone in a team is an equal, regardless of position, pay, stature, education, and talent. Another great way teams are ruined is if lines of authority are brought into the fold. As soon as structure is enforced the team looses one aspect of its creativity…how it will structure itself. A CEO or president in a team cannot pretend to be more important than the coder or the system administrator. As soon as they do, they upset the balance of the team. Everyone contributes equally.

Your idea sucks:
Great teams are notoriously honest. They can separate attacks on ideas from attacks on persons. No one is offended when told their idea sucks. This mentality is often so prevalent in a team the team will deal with the outside world in a harshly honest way. Often surprising and refreshing those who deal with them.

There is a real purpose:
Great teams emerge to solve problems, conquer a challenge, prove to someone they can do it, or even to amuse themselves. A team must have a unified sense of purpose. This is not written down. It floats through the team as an abstract idea that none of them can really put into words.

Learn how to make decisions:
While tied loosely to honesty, a great team learns how to make decisions. They often make decisions the hard way. Long drawn out processes to decide on a color, a shape, a name. What teams are doing in these heated long drawn out dealings is not just choosing a color but learning how to deal with itself and how to make a decision that everyone buys into.

Make No Big Decisions:
Great teams seem lucky. They seem to always catch the breaks. While this is somewhat true it also is an illusion. Great teams get so good at making decisions that they make a thousand small good decisions and that leads to a great thing. They often do not themselves realize the correlation between the two.

Go through stages:
A team will usually go through three distinct phases in this order.

1. They will form – these are the golden times. Happy, optimistic, everything is great times. We can conquer the world.
2. They will storm – A good team will almost break up many times over. They are learning their limits, testing their strength.
3. They will perform – Once they’ve stormed they know their weakness as a whole and as parts. They will then get to work. They will work hard, efficiently, and better than a hired team 100 times their size.

Use their complimentary talents:
A great team will know each other inside and out. Each person will fall into exercising his or her best talent. The team will inherently recognize this talent and trust it. Once talents are established and trusted a team need not spend complex time figuring out who should do what. Work and issues will automagically fall into the laps of those best apt to deal with it.

Have Fun:
It often looks like a great team isn’t working they’re having so much fun. They are working and they are having fun. The two are one in the same. That’s what makes them so productive.

You won’t understand them:
If you have a team in your midst you’re going to go nuts trying to understand them. They will have a world and language all of their own. Trying to understand them will frustrate you and the team.