The X-Factors of Leading Teams
3 Team Rituals That Turn Good Teams Into Great Ones
Leadership takes time. Time in the seat. Time together to create Team Rituals.
If you’ve been on a great team, congratulations, you have a mental starting point.
Not yet? Well, it’s time to create your 1st winning team. These are the things you don’t learn in business school.
You can read and hear advice and playbooks from your coach but leading teams requires being on the field and actually experiencing both success and failure of leading teams.
Read It - Do It - Teach It!
The X-Factor?
That invisible glue that most all great teams have?
= TRUST!
As in, I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine. Especially during the hard times and those 20% of times you are (and should be) failing.
Hint - if you aren’t failing 20% of the time, you aren’t taking enough shots on goal.
When your teammates pick you up after a “failed attempt” and when your teammates know you can score and support you the next time, you know you are a winning team.
Trust is built and compounds through small, seemingly unimportant but consistent rituals. Trust is built off the field, during practice. Trust means knowing your teammates so well, you know where they will be positioned without even looking. Trust requires time. Trust requires connection between teammates.
So, I started thinking of some rituals great teams have and which I’ve personally used in my career. I’ve recently begun sharing these, starting with some of my coaching clients, and it’s time to share them more broadly.
Ritual #1: The 3-5 Minute Personal/Team Check-In to Start Team Meetings
Invest 3-5 minutes to start your weekly team meeting. Trust requires time. Trust requires “knowing your teammates”. Make this investment.
Build this new ritual by “going around the table” and hearing 1 or 2 “check in bullet points” from each team member. Most teams are under 10 people. 30-45 seconds for each team member. This 3-5 minute investment will compound. Trust me!
Here’s how I’ve done it and have learned to introduce this without the eye rolls:
Tell Your Team WHY you want to experiment with this new ritual. Here’s your opportunity to tell your team in your own words “Why?” team trust and team rituals are important.
Create a Safe Space. Make it ok for team members who are more introverted or not comfortable sharing able to “pass”. Permission is required. Many times people simply need “permission” to show up as their true self. Casey Woo - if you are reading this - I know you’ll never forget when I encouraged one of the more introverted operators at the Annual OG Conference to do something unexpected…and it’s a story that we will both remember forever.
Go First. Model It. Leaders must go first. Make your check in personal not predictable. Be authentic. If you didn’t get great sleep last night, say so. If you have a family member who has had a set back and is distracting your focus, try sharing that. If you woke up ready to conquer the world, your coffee was great and your energy levels high… then share that feeling. Whatever is being felt currently, right now, model being “present”.
Acknowledge and Thank each person for sharing without further commentary. This is a learned practice. It’s not meant to be therapy or meant to distract and definitely don’t go down any rabbit holes. Simply thank the person for sharing and move to the next person. If anyone wants to go deeper with the person, they can do so post-meeting 1:1. This is the whole point of this ritual… to create the possibility of teammates connecting with each other in a deeper way.
This 3-5 minute team check-in ritual allows your team members to be seen as humans not solely as business robots in the roles or position players they play.
Note: if somebody does share something super deep or impactful, this is your leadership opportunity to follow up with them 1:1 after the meeting since they were so brave to share in front of the group.
Wrap Up and Now Dive In to the purpose of the team meeting, the metrics, the goals.
Some Powerful Questions as you experiment with this new Team Ritual to get your leadership modeling and team’s juices flowing:
“How is your energy level?”
“Anything you are looking forward to this week or weekend?”
“Anything you are dreading?”
“Is there a vacation coming up (or you just took) that you are excited about or want to share?”
“If you want to simply give a Thumbs Up; Thumbs Sideways; Thumbs Down as your update, that’s perfectly fine.
Or how about a 1-10 score for how you are feeling right here, right now - we’ll take that.
Repeat often (maybe the first 2-3 times you attempt to establish this new ritual…) “We don’t want anyone uncomfortable sharing anything they don’t want to share or even feeling pressured to share anything at all. Completely voluntary.”
Remember: Rituals take time to develop. Trust takes time. Stick with it. It’s worth the time investment.
I’ve had teams who did the initial eye rolls, who were very hesitant of sharing anything at first (accounting and finance teams are especially prone to this more introverted and quiet behaviors).
But I continued to model and lead, and one at a time, even the most quiet members of the team felt comfortable sharing and gaining the trust of their teammates and being comfortable with being more authentic.
Nearly all team members over time have said months and years later this ritual was impactful for them.
Ritual #1 - Team Check-In Summary
3-5 minutes.
Not therapy
Just Human Connection.
As I deeply believe and have written historically, “Connection Is Our New Currency”. Connection doesn’t just happen, it requires “focus and effort”. This kind of ritual helps design it.
These micro-moments remind everyone there’s a human behind the title or zoom screen. We are all dealing with something. Life is never perfect. We are all showing up with our own energy and context. Most times this humanness is hidden behind our professional facade.
Great Teams Require Trust. Trust Requires Time and Connection. Hard stop.
Ritual #2: Kudos and Recognition Time
End your weekly meeting with 3–5 minutes of team-led recognition.
Same “Go Around the Table” Drill.
Anyone can recognize anyone else or anyone outside the team on a cross-functional team. Kudos is kudos.
No rules. Just appreciation.
Participation not required.
“Hey Alex, Kudos man for stepping in last minute on that customer call with me.”
“Shoutout to Priya for helping me rewrite that deck.”
Recognition is powerful. When people see their peers being appreciated, it’s a strong signal that what is being done matters. In a world of mostly negatively oriented “feedback”, positive recognition goes a long way.
Ritual #3: “Small Lifts Create Huge Leverage”
Great leaders constantly look for ways to give small, micro-behavior lifts to their team members that not everyone notices. They are mostly subtle and easy to miss but massively compound over time.
Bill Campbell was a master at this. I was so fortunate to have been part of his team at the age of 27. His quiet 1:1 notes of encouragement, his nicknames (“Cookie”) created the trust for when the harder coaching moments were needed - “You dumb ass - what were you thinking?” or “Cookie, you rocked it!” Both worked. Both because of the shared trust we built both on and off our respective “fields”.
The Quiet “Forward the Compliment” Lift: When a customer or other executive or another department leader praises somebody on your team to you, HIT THE FORWARD button on your email. Simple. Subtle. Lifted. This takes seconds to do and buys weeks and sometimes months of motivation.
The “Pre-Preso” Lift: Before a team member you’ve coached up on has an important presentation, just send a quick Slack or private text.
“Your section is strong. You are ready. I’ve got your back in the room.”
It’s amazing how much a small boost of confidence massively changes a person’s performance. Believe in oneself is key to performance. Somebody you respect who believes in you is the foundation of many people’s self-confidence.
The “I Noticed That” Slack or DM: When somebody went above and beyond, fixed an escalated issue, showed great innovation, demonstrated great leadership, <Insert Your Own Here>.
“Hey, I noticed that. It may been invisible to most but not to me and I wanted to recognize it and say “Thank you.’”
The Subtle Introduction: Is there somebody influential outside your department or in another company you can (and should) introduce a rising team member to?
“You two should grab some coffee. It will be well worth both of your times.” (Or something like that in your own words)
This type of introduction signals “potential”, “recognition”, and the fact you took time to help somebody level up
The “I’ve Got Your Back” Lift: When something is high stakes or possibly has already gone wrong, the best leaders own the problem, take responsibility, and then coach privately. The worst leaders? - unfortunately the opposite of all three. Take the heat, defend your team members. Shield them so they can learn and grow. The loyalty you build will compound over not just months but years and sometimes careers.
<Insert Your Own Small Lift Here>
Bottom Line: You are signaling…
I notice you.
I believe in you.
I support you.
You matter to this team.
To borrow from security: “If You See Something, Say Something!”
Final Note
Build these rituals in the good times… the stable times. The next crisis is coming, it always does. When these hard moments hit or the next big team issue requires candle burning and round the clock hours, the team you’ve built, the trust you’ve built, will show up in your teams performance and the investment will pay off.
The best teams don’t just work together… they play for each other. You can’t have a championship team without it.
