"Great teams have the right people on the bus in the right seats."

Network marketing can lead to significant individual success if worked consistently and intentionally. Sustainable high levels of success are earned by the network marketer who can develop a high-performing team.

The first step for any network marketer is choosing to develop a high-performance culture and to intentionally seek people they want to work with on their team to be in the right places to grow themselves and help the team. to become high performing. Developing high-performance teams requires two elements a high-performance culture and using a WIDGET to help people be their best so your team can be its best.

The sad news about most Network Marketing or Google or N.F.L. teams is that most are not high-performing. Many are downright dysfunctional. A quick study of any sports on T.V. or many organizations shows that only a few teams perform well. There are two ways a network marketer can build a high-performance team and avoid dysfunction in their team.

One way is to seek out and observe other leaders in network marketing to see what they do and don't do. A coach or mentor can be a great help in this process. 

Secondly, they can check out studies on high-performance teams.

There are two significant studies a network marketer can consider about the factors that come to play with high-performing teams. A recent article What is Project Aristotle? Written by the INSTITUTE SUCCESS TEAM described how Google's Project Aristotle studied teams for two years, a multi-year project the company undertook starting in 2012 to examine why some teams thrived while others failed. The lessons learned from this project can be broken down into five qualities, with the first being the most essential:

1.  Psychological Safety  -  More than anything else, a sense of psychological safety, or a shared belief that a team is a safe place for interpersonal risk-taking, was critical for making the team function effectively."

2.  Dependability –  Strong teams get things done on time and meet high standards. Each member knows they can trust the others to do what they say they will do.

3.  Structure and Clarity – Team members must clearly understand their goals. It starts at the top – leaders must define what success means to them and understand how each team member defines success to create a shared vision so every employee knows what's expected of them in achieving that vision.

4.  Meaning – Work must be personally important to the team members. It is up to the leader to impart to their team the "why" behind what we do daily. What motivates us to get out of bed, to come to work? Remember, customers, buy "you" before they ever buy what you are selling, so you need to have buy-in from your entire team and define your essential mission before you can present it to the outside world. "Two primary factors in leadership impact showed the majority of high-performing teams were diverse groups led by women.

5.  Impact – Leaders have a tremendous impact on their teams. Truly great leaders maximize their strengths first to enroll others in a shared vision for success and inspire them to be at their best. Interestingly Two primary factors in leadership impact showed the majority of high-performing teams were diverse groups led by women

Professor David Burkus, in an 11/28/22 article The Secrets to High-Performing Teams writes, "A recent meta-analysis combined research conducted on over 200,000 teams in a variety of industries to answer that question. Across 274 dimensions of performance and over half a million individual team members, The study highlighted four factors or secrets of high-performing teams."

1. Work Out Loud

The first secret of high-performing teams is that they work out loud. This means that everyone on the team knows what everyone else is working on because the team is constantly communicating with each other about the work.

2. Understand Differences

The second secret to high-performing teams is that they understand each other's differences. And in knowing and leveraging those differences, they unlock greater performance.

3. Build Trust

The third secret to high-performing teams is that they build trust at a higher level than normal teams. Trust in a team is a prerequisite to honest discussions and productive conflict. Teams need to trust that they can speak up when they disagree and not have the conversation devolve into an argument.

4. Reinforce Purpose

The last secret to high-performing teams is that they reinforce purpose regularly. These studies are exceptional because they provide practical and valuable information to any leader who wants to build a high-performance team culture. This culture is especially critical for network marketers who lead teams who, like the leader, independent contractors, in essence, volunteers. These are all vital factors, especially in creating a high-performance culture. One part that has not been addressed about high-performing teams is, differences, and diversity is often listed. As a leader, we often hear, "you have to have the right people on the Bus" In Good to Great, Jim Collins expanded this to having the right people "IN The Right Seat" on the bus. What do we mean by "In The Right Seat"?

Patrick Lencioni, a leadership expert who consults with high-performing teams, provides a guide to addressing this question from a different perspective. Lencioni believes the answer is a WIDGET. Patrick Lencioni's concept of the WIDGET from his newest book, The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team, provides a guide for leaders to understand and reimagine work and also how people can do their best work by knowing and utilizing their individual working genius.

Lencioni's book describes six types of working genius for work and today's consideration of how all of our work on a high-performing team is based on positioning people to be successful using a W.I.D.G.E.T. as a guide to describing the different gifts or genius people bring to a team

W. The Genius of Wonder.

The ability to ponder and ask what if to provoke thoughts and action. These people can think "outside of the box."

I. The Genius of Invention.

The ability to be coming up with all manner of original systems  ideas or models

D. The Genius of Discernment.

The ability to be of uncanny judgment to asses original systems, ideas, or models

G. The Genius of Galvanizing.

The ability to rally and motivate  and organize others in the organization  to move forward

E. The Genius of Enablement.

The ability to provide people with support, assistance, and encouragement, responding to the needs of others.

T. The Genius of Tenacity.

The ability to push through the "slog "and complete tasks. Over the past two years, Lencioni's Table group (Tablegroup.com)  piloted a simple and concise assessment to help people understand their working genius and how it can reimagine work how people work. Thousands of individuals and hundreds of companies have taken his assessment. The data showed people all have the six genius but vary in which types of genius are their gifts to be productive and fulfilled in their work and other activities.

They found three distinct areas  of genius  for all people, with two in each category

1. Working Genius

These two types of genius are where a person derives their most pleasure. These types of genius lead people to be the most fulfilled and productive and derive energy.

2. Working Competencies.

These two types of genius are ones a person can do well or even very well and yet derive little feeling of the purpose of fulfillment from. These types of genius can be deceptively similar to working genius yet can be a problem if they are where a person works most of the time. The effect is they drain energy.

3. Working Frustrations.

These two types of genius are an area of frustration. A person can work through them for a time yet derive little or no fulfillment or joy. Over a long time, they have been very energy-draining. People who are working exclusively or even predominantly in  their working frustration are frequently unhappy and tired and maybe a bit cranky to work with.

All work to be practical, especially in network marketing or any field, requires all six working geniuses to play. The network marketer who intentionally creates a high-performance environment based on the above factors can be very effective. When a network marketing leader creates a culture of high performance and positions their team to work in their working genius and supports them in tasks that are working frustrations, they can develop an interdependent team that likes and trusts each other, which is the team that walks across the stage at Seminar, or year-end sales conventions. These leaders have developed teams that add credence to TEAM =Together Each Achieves More. The culture of high performance coupled with positioning people to be their best creates sustainable expanding influence and success for all.