Setting Up Your Team: (Common Purpose and Mutual Accountability)

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody. - Thomas Paine (Author)

If you have followed the articles on teamwork then you should have started considering how best to put your team in place. Today I shall discuss two other unifying factors. Without these unifying factors every team eventually goes to disarray.

The unifying factor of common purpose: Every team must have a single reason why it is doing what it is doing. Every member of the team must share that ideal. This is the purpose of the team. Myles Monroe in his famous quote said, “If the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable.” This applies to teams when team players do know the purpose of the team.

When a common purpose is recognized and understood, a team’s effectiveness sky rockets. It is a sorry thing to see a team with differing purposes. Any sports team with such would easily fall to a team with a better sense of it’s purpose. This applies to businesses, families, classes and the like.

A common purpose is built, first, by clearly communicating it. Indeed a team leader should be able to articulate the intent behind his or her team but beyond one-way articulation, team players should be able to understand and produce performance that clearly shows their understanding. Only when this happens can we say communication has occurred.

Also, team players should be willing to submit every action to the purpose of the team. Contradictory actions that obviously create a division in the team should not be entertained.

The unifying factor of mutual accountability: who is responsible? Whose fault is it? Who is to give account? These are questions all groups have to answer at one point or the other and therein lie where many groups fall short of being teams. Note this; in a team, nobody is accountable, everybody is. It is nobody’s fault; everybody is at fault. Nobody is responsible, it is everyone’s responsibility. The moment this is missed, the cords that bind team play are broken. The whole point behind team-play is mutual accountability. This is when every team player feels as much responsible for the team and its progress as everyone else. You don’t get this in hierarchy where responsibility clearly lies on the people at the helm of command. Every player in team-play learns responsibility. When one falls, all fall. When one is up, all are up, none is left behind. Accountability is demanded from every player at all times.