The Sandstone Team Building Blog

I thought we would be amiss if we didn’t have something here that tied in to the World Cup fever from South Africa.  I’ll admit I’m not the world’s hugest football fan but I do enjoy watching the odd match and I always want our national team to do us proud.  Though on this occasion England didn’t perform as we all hoped and didn’t go as far as we all dreamed.

So what went wrong?  Well as I have already confessed I’m not the world’s biggest fan, so it would be a bit difficult for me to critique the team in football terms.  But I do know a thing or two about teams, and it is that approach that this blog is about.

Our definition of a true team is one in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  Ideally, all the team members should understand this and identify team and individual approaches to help achieve such a state.

So did our team and the coaching staff identify this for the England team?  One would have to say probably not in South Africa or indeed in the immediate run up to it.  We had a team of talented players, who perform week in and week out at club level.  But at club level they are not a selection of individuals, they are part of a team.  They spend a lot more time together, they train together, they identify their different strengths and weaknesses both individually and as a team.  They work together on the pitch to utilise each of there strengths.

When it comes to the England team, it seems to me that each player is selected on their strengths rather than how they fit into the team.  I may not have the pedigree of Fabio, but picking Gerrard for his talents and then sticking him on the left wing seems to me to be saying “we want you Stevie even though we’re not quite sure what to do with you”.  Crazy.  Surely that will always lead to the best individuals being picked and not the best team.  We should be looking for complementary strengths not just strengths alone.  So instead of having a strong cohesive team we ended up with Fabio’s best 11 individuals..

So what do you get from this?  Even the best players still need to identify how they work together as a team.  It’s not enough to be one of the best individual talents.  You need a team whose whole is greater than the sun of the parts.

Well done to Spain – in my opinion the right team won and maybe we’ll take the title from you in 2014!

Nikki