Members of great teams confront each other when they see something that isn't serving the team.
Interpretation
Great teams prioritize collective success over individual comfort by addressing issues directly.
The quote emphasizes the importance of open communication and accountability within teams. When members of a team witness behaviors or decisions that detract from the team's goals, it is their responsibility to speak up and address these issues, fostering a culture of transparency and trust that ultimately leads to success.
In practice
This quote can be used in a team-building workshop to highlight the importance of honest feedback.
I know that any group of people can become a team if they do the right things, but I came to realize over time that if you acquire or develop the right kind of people, that process of building a team is going to be much more effective and easier.
The truth is that intelligence, knowledge, and domain expertise are vastly overrated as the driving forces behind competitive advantage and sustainable success.
The kind of people that all teams need are people who are humble, hungry, and smart: humble being little ego, focusing more on their teammates than on themselves. Hungry, meaning they have a strong work ethic, are determined to get things done, and contribute any way they can. Smart, meaning not intellectually smart but inner personally smart.
Team members have to be focused on the collective good of the team. Too often, they focus their attention on their department, their budget, their career aspirations, their egos.
Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it's virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) - ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn't require masterful insights or tactics).
Clients don't expect perfection from the service providers they hire, but they do expect honesty and transparency. There is no better way to demonstrate this than by acknowledging when a mistake has been made and humbly apologizing for it.
The best way to serve the individuals on the team is to see that the whole team wins.
What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit.
That the potential to become Level 5 exists in you and me and the people we work with and that it is then a process or a journey to nurture that seed... in a culture by and large that doesn't reinforce it.
You build a better company by building better people.
It's important to take criticism seriously - not personally.
At Microsoft, we're aspiring to have a living, learning culture with a growth mindset that allows us to learn from ourselves and our customers. These are the key attributes of the new culture at Microsoft, and I feel great about how it seems to be resonating and how it's seen as empowering.
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