You may have heard the saying, “there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” Is it true? Find out where it comes from and what it means here.

Former Navy SEAL Lief Babin is famous for saying: “There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” Babin wrote this much quoted line in “Extreme Ownership.” It’s a great read and highly recommended.

It’s akin to what other people mean when they say, for every problem, leadership is the solution. As he tells it, Babin learned this lesson as an instructor for Hell Week at Navy SEAL training. He calls it “one of the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership.”

The Obstacle Course

Babin provides a dramatic illustration of why there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. He retells an exercise conducted during Hell Week, the culmination of Navy SEAL training. Hell Week starts off with 200 men determined to become Navy SEALs. Typically, only about 40 get to the end of Hell Week. Getting through requires strength, determination, innovation, communication, and team work. As Babin puts it, they are not just looking for those who are physically tough. They are looking for men who can also “out-think their adversary.”

Near the end of training, Babin was in charge of the Officer Training Course. At this point, the men were divided into crews of seven. Each crew had a large inflatable boat, filled with water and sand to make it heavier. The seven-man crews had to carry the boats through an obstacle course.

After several rounds of the obstacle course, the water races began. This was the ultimate challenge. Keep in mind, they had spent the day carrying the heavy boat for miles over walls, along ropes, and through tunnels. During the last week, they had had only a couple hours of sleep.

On the day he recalls, the final assignment was this: Paddle out into the cold, rough surf past the breakers. There, dump everyone into the water and get everyone back in. Then, paddle to the next marker a few hundred yards down the coast. Finally, paddle back in and carry the boat back over a couple of berms to return to start. It was grueling. The team who completed the course first got to sit out the next race, a precious few minutes of rest. The other crews had to start the race again immediately.

The Leader’s Task

Each seven man crew had one leader who received the instructions. The leaders’ job was to communicate them clearly to the crew and lead them through the task.

One crew, Boat Crew II, dominated all week. All highly motivated, they had learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The leader had arranged it so that they compensated for each other’s weaknesses and complemented each other’s strengths. They took pride in helping each other and were proud of their wins.

On the contrary, Boat Crew VI had been coming in last every time. As Babin tells it, “Rather than working together as a team, the men were operating as individuals, furious and frustrated at their teammates. We heard them yelling and cursing at each other from some distance, accusing the others of not doing their part…. The boat crew leader was no exception.” According to Babin, the leader blamed his crew. They were a team of underperformers, he said. Unfortunately in his view, there was no fixing them.

For several races, Boat Crew II came in first and sat out a race. Meanwhile, Boat Crew VI came in last, yelling and screaming every time.

Then a senior chief officer had an idea. Tired of hearing the complaints, he instructed the leaders of Boat Crew II and Boak Crew VI to swap teams. It was night now. The instructors couldn’t even see the boats, only the men’s headlamps. They watched as the crews moved into the waves, dumped everyone in the water, got back in, and started paddling.

There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

Out of the darkness some minutes later, Boat Crew VI appeared first. All week, they had been coming in last, and their leader blamed them for underperforming. Now, with a new leader, the same team, with the same task, came in first. The only change was the leader.

Team II came in second. They did well in part because they already had a great team culture. Certainly, they knew how to operate together and help each other out. The new team leader, yelling at them, distracted them and decreased their performance just enough for them to come in second instead of first.

It was a clear example of why there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. From this surprising outcome, Babin writes:

“Leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance—or doesn’t.”

Importantly, he goes on to write: “And this applies not just to the most senior leader of an overall team, but to the junior leaders of teams within the team.”

As a whole, the experience prompted Babin to reflect back on his own training. When he did, he realized that he himself won when he put himself at the head of the boat. By taking the heaviest part, his selflessness inspired selflessness in his crew. As a result, they put away their egos and focused on the task at hand. Again, his own experience confirmed the truth that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

The Research Confirms It: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

This is clearly a dramatic anecdote. The question remains: is it anything more than a single anecdote?

As it turns out, the principles that bring winning teams together on a cold night to battle grueling waters are the same principles that bring out the best in business teams.

Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith literally wrote the book on how teams work, The Discipline of Teams. This is another excellent and highly recommended read. They interviewed hundreds of people on 50 teams within 30 companies and found similar results.

Specifically, they found that “when purposes and goals build on one another and are combined with team commitment, they become a powerful engine of performance.” According to their research, if there are no bad teams, good leaders are the ones who provide the purpose and define the goals in order to inspire a team.

They define real teams this way: “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” Siloed workers are not teams. They are working groups with performance goals that are individualized.

In their research, Katzenbach and Smith show that real teams always outperform working groups. The story of the SEAL teams illustrates their definition of why there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Five Ways Leaders Create High Performing Teams

Specifically, Katzenbach and Smith discuss five actions that great leaders use to inspire a small group of people (fewer than 10, they suggest) to become a real team.

  1. Purpose: Team-performance goals that are different than company-wide goals and separate from individual goals give the team a purpose and focus.
  2. Attainable Goals: Team goals must be attainable and specific. The team must be able to measure if they are making progress and if they have succeeded—or not.
  3. Group Challenges: Difficult challenges that cannot be accomplished by one person alone have a leveling effect. People stop worrying about titles and authority. Instead, they start focusing on achieving the work and have to trust each other to do their part.
  4. Small Wins: As they pursue their goal, milestones build confidence and become a compelling reason to keep pushing toward larger goals.
  5. Compelling Performance Goals: The goal itself should be aspirational, energizing, and motivating, offering the team a symbol of significant accomplishment.

In Summary

In sum, Katzenbach and Smith write: “The combination of purpose and specific goals is essential to performance.” This is exactly what Babin and Willink discovered on that cold, wet beach. Letting the winning boat crew sit out a race was a purpose they were all willing to put aside their egos for.

In every case, the best leaders pull teams together to accomplish specific goals that cannot be completed by a single individual. When good leaders form a team, they make sure everyone is using their strengths, and compensating for each others’ weaknesses. As they pursue their goals, good leaders keep the focus on common goals, put aside their egos, and become accountable to each other for goals that are meaningful to the whole. To reach the best performance levels, they lead by vision, example, and inspiration.

Experience and research both confirm the truth of Babin’s statement that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. So, the task now is to step up to excellent leadership and inspire your team to win.

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