Mentally tough teams

Having mentally tough individuals in the team is one thing, having a mentally tough team is something else.

We all bring strengths to a team, some of us are heads down and focussed on achieving the team’s objectives, some of us are questioning the team’s purpose and aligning the team in a common direction and others are trying to learn from the team’s mistakes. It’s by integrating these individual strengths that a team becomes stronger, or tougher, than the sum of its individuals; the opposite of integration is fragmentation, with individuals playing to their personal strengths and the team suffering from collective weaknesses.

Integrating strengths leads to teams that have self-belief & can-do attitudes and the stickability that leads to success.

Without this integration, teams suffer from self-doubts, avoidance & can’t do attitudes and the unwillingness that leads to failure.

Teams need to be in control of, and know, where they are going, teams need to be committed to delivering on their objectives, teams need to learn from both successes & failures and teams need to have confidence in their abilities to succeed – teams need Mental Toughness.

A mentally tough team has clear and well-defined objectives, treats conflicts and the associated emotions effectively, delivers on its commitments, continuously improves its performance and exudes confidence and alignment.

The Clough and Strycharcyk 4C’s benchmark model of Mental Toughness can be applied to both individual and teams; each of the sub factors within Control, Commitment, Challenge and Confidence contribute to effective collective team performance.

Interpersonal Confidence will contribute to both working together and communicating, Risk and Learning Orientations will contribute to continuous improvement, Goal Orientation will contribute to having a common Purpose & objectives, Achievement Orientation will contribute to delivering the objectives, etc.

Here are some things those in mentally tough teams might say:

• We make decisions based on the team’s vision, mission & values
• We do not ignore emotions but we deal with conflicts in a rational & objective manner
• We set clear concrete objectives with intermediate milestones
• We are interdependent and will do everything necessary to deliver on our promises
• We embrace risks & opportunities positively without taking hasty & reckless decisions
• We evaluate regularly our performance, looking for “best practice” & improvements
• We have a high level of trust and there is a clear feeling of “WE” within the team
• We are at the “leading edge” of our competencies and deploy them when needed

If you are interested in developing the Mental Toughness of both your team and your team members do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com, I have been helping teams to perform more effectively for over 30 years now and I am a Master Trainer for the internationally recognised 4C’s Mental Toughness model.