Is Your Team Built to Bend, Break or Bounce Back?
"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." - Phil Jackson, NBA Player and Coach
After a conversation last week with a young manager early in their career, I’ve been reflecting on what truly makes a team thrive. We discussed the essence of great teamwork, and it struck a chord. From my experience, exceptional teams aren’t built on talent alone. They flourish through a blend of diverse strengths, unwavering trust, clarity, and a shared sense of purpose
It made me reflect on the nature of teams themselves. I love analogies (I can’t help myself), and three keep rattling around in my brain: chain, rope, and elastic band. Let me explain what I mean…
"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team."
Chain – When Looking Strong Isn’t Enough
I used to think chains were the picture of strength. Each link looks solid, the whole thing seems unbreakable. But here’s what I’ve learned: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Teams can look brilliant on paper, but if everyone’s working as their own isolated link, they’re only as strong as that weakest point. From the outside, they might seem organised and efficient. But often they’re more fragile than anyone wants to admit. One relationship goes sour, someone makes a mistake they can’t talk about, or one person quietly struggles, and suddenly cracks appear where no one expected.
Rope – The Magic of Being Woven Together
A rope tells a different story, and it took me a while to really understand the power of a team like that is woven like a rope. Unlike a chain, a rope isn’t trying to be one solid thing. Its strength comes from lots of individual strands twisted and woven together, and when they are, it’s incredible. This has become my favourite way to think about great team culture. I'm not talking about culture that gets laminated and posted on the wall, but what it feels like to work with people who understand how their contribution fits into the bigger picture.
I’ve been lucky to see this kind of weaving happen: when conversations become real and meaningful, when people listen as much as they talk, when everyone feels genuinely connected to the work and to each other.
A Rubber Band – A Lesson That Stuck
Around 2010, I was part of a big project led by Katie Bickerstaffe, one of the most inspiring leaders I’ve had the privilege to work with. At the kick-off meeting, she asked the whole project team to imagine we were all holding part of an elastic band. That band was our shared effort, our collective responsibility. She challenged us to keep the tension just right, not so slack that we lost energy and direction, but not so tight the whole thing would snap.
That project became one of the most successful I’ve been involved with. I believe it’s because we learned to work with dynamic tension, paying attention to each other, making tiny adjustments all the time, genuinely caring about keeping things balanced.
Teams like this don’t just tick off tasks. They sense the mood, pick up on little shifts, and somehow know when to push and when to ease off. It’s about being responsive, not rigid.
The Superteam Revelation. One of my most influential learnings about teams came from Mike Pegg. He introduced me to the idea of Superteams; teams built with “similarity of spirit and diversity of strength.” These teams work with their differences rather than trying to iron them out. They embrace diversity and don’t pretend the gaps don’t exist. Instead, they create space for people to build on their strengths.
The Thread That Connects Everything. Through all these experiences, I’ve learned that brilliant teams don’t happen by accident. They’re built from the inside out, through clarity of purpose, honest communication, thoughtful leadership, and the energy of that positive tension - and when teams miss this foundation the rope frays, the elastic band loses its shape, people pull in different directions, and the energy drains away. Your customers will feel this disconnect long before the data shows it.
So, What Are You Building? Is your team a chain? A rope? An elastic band? The best teams I’ve seen often draw on all three qualities. They know when to hold firm, when to flex, and when to pull together. If you want a team that can grow under pressure, work with differences, and stay connected through complexity, it’s worth thinking about what you’re really made of, and how you’re held together.
One brilliant individual might carry a moment, but only a connected team carries the mission.
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships
If you’re curious about Mike Pegg's work, his free e-book shares decades of practical wisdom (Pegg, M., The Positive Encourager, available at: https://www.thepositiveencourager.global/). As he says, “Take the ideas you like from the book. You can then use these in your own way to continue encouraging both present and future generations.”
Comments