They were a motley crew, and they stood no chance.

At least that was what many people thought, including many within the team. They had only a limited arsenal of services to offer their customers, and had many legacy problems to deal with. It would have been understandable if they would have surrendered even before they got started. But they didn’t.

Instead, they got on with their work. They cleaned up their shop, developed new internal tools and created new services for their customers. Eventually they turned their business around.

But most of all, they turned the culture of their company around. They intentionally created team momentum that was based on Hope, Confidence and Optimism. These three underestimated “soft” resources are at the core of all successful transformations and scale-ups, as they can create an astonishing fighting spirit and team performance.

Team momentum = Hope x Confidence x Optimism.

You have probably figured out that this is not the story of Braveheart. It is the story of a logistics company, and about how teams can build hope, confidence and optimism, and how this creates momentum. It is also a homage to those people and teams, who take on big challenges with brave hearts; The end result may not always be what you want, but that’s how life sometimes goes.

You can feel when a team has momentum, both as a member, and as an observer. The “buzz” you feel is the team’s hope, confidence and optimism.

HOPE: IT CAN HAPPEN.

Without hope, nothing happens. People will not take action if they do not have hope that “it can happen”. Having hope is the most fundamental prerequisite to master a challenge or reach a goal. Teams need hope, as the people in the team need the air they breathe.

Team leaders play a big role in building hope, as they enable the team to see the pathways towards the goal, and enable the team to move intentionally towards the goal. In short: Leaders are paid to show the way, coordinate the actions and inspire.

In reality many teams underperform due to their unspoken doubts. When we work with leaders on the subject of “doubt”, they easily get defensive and cannot comprehend why the team is doubting their strategy. But the doubt is not necessarily related to the strategy. In fact, we mostly experience that the doubt is about the team’s capabilities, the commitment of colleagues or feeling overwhelmed by the pace and VUCA of the business.

Here are a few ways to build team hope:

What is the (SMART) goal?
Plan the path towards the goal.
Which obstacles may occur? (Potential source of doubt).
How will you overcome these?
Which resources will you need to do that?

CONFIDENCE: WE CAN DO IT.

The famous “can do spirit” is having confidence in one’s own abilities to make things happen. It is the fuel that teams need in order to take action, and it is a constructive view on the future.

Mostly, we view confidence as an individual resource, and overlook that collective confidence is what propels teams ahead. Just like individual confidence, collective confidence can be built and nurtured. That’s what great leaders do, when they enable their people to take on seemingly impossible tasks.

The team leader is by far the biggest influence factor of a team’s confidence level, but unfortunately employees rate their leader’s capability to build confidence to be below average. Elanor Roosevelt said that “a great leader makes people believe in themselves”, which is pretty much what leadership is about.

Here are a few ways to build team confidence:

Why is the goal important to team members? (Motivation)
Which resources can the team utilize? (Education, role models, past success etc..)
How will the team build the additional resources that may be needed?
Adopt a “presilience” mindset, and plan ahead for potential obstacles and setbacks.
Have unconditional positive regard for the team members and their strengths, irrespective of the performance. Encourage, appreciate, support and challenge team members. Again and again.

OPTIMISM: IT WILL HAPPEN.

“Optimism is naïve”, some people say. But when they learn how to build Strategic Optimism, they realize that optimism can be a powerful resource they can develop and utilize. Both individually, and as a team.

Negative expectations and limiting self-beliefs are present in all of us at some level, and they make us create a pessimistic inner narrative. We can hear the demons telling us that we are not good enough. Teams can succumb to the sum of their individual pessimism, and even multiply it. That’s when teams go into a downward spiral and perish.

Leaders have the opportunity to address these inner voices, and to nurture an optimistic narrative that empowers the team to see how they will make things happen. They can foster the conviction that “it will happen”. They can work with both the team system, and with the team members individually. This is not “Chaka, we can do it”, but rather a structured and intentional approach.

Here are a few ways to build team optimism:

Identify the worries and the negative beliefs behind. Help the team to dissolve their doubts.
Be flexible, yet inspiring, in the goal formulation. Don’t create moon-shot goals, go step-by-step instead.
Be realistic in the assessment of the available team resources, capabilities and potential obstacles, and align the goal formulation accordingly.
Co-create the path towards the goal.
Develop commitment to the goal, and be prepared to continuously work on a common positive narrative. This constant and consistent communication should focus on the path towards the goal, not the goal itself.

Have you ever seen a team with real momentum that did not have collective confidence, optimism and hope?

Building TEAM MOMENTUM CAN BE LOUD.

Teams with momentum have found their equilibrium of harmony and tension. But if they tilt too much to either side, they lose the momentum. Teams can turn into a over-harmonious Cozy Club, or become a bloody Fight Club. The team needs to find their own balance of supporting and challenging one another, and this only happens when the team can jointly explore, debate and co-create. Mostly, this is loud, and it is a herculean task for the leaders.

To build team momentum, a team needs to be intentional about how they work together, and how they build hope, confidence and optimism. The 7 Bases Team Framework we have developed, is one way to facilitate this. If you are interested, we are happy to tell you more about it.

For those teams who are, or have been, fighting to make “impossible” goals come true, remember this: Whether you win or lose, you learn.

Yours,

Henrik