15 Rules Of Building A Dream Team
If you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, you go together. But if you want to go beyond where very few have managed to even come close, then you build a dream team. Welcome to Alux!
First stop. Creating a dream team is to go beyond carbon copies of yourself. If you need someone to do what you do while you work on something else, you're not looking for a dream team member; you're looking to outsource. You want a team where each member brings something unique to the table, where their strengths are your weaknesses and vice versa. Some people are extremely creative, some are extremely analytic, some can get a lot broader stuff done quickly, and others can fixate on crucial details. Synergy is not just about filling gaps; it's about creating a team that can collectively solve problems from multiple angles.
A team where everyone is the same will never be any stronger than its strongest member. We believe that every problem stems from two possible angles: a skill issue or a knowledge issue. A skill issue means you don't have the ability to solve it, to fix it, or to improve the task at hand. A knowledge issue means that you have the skill, but you don't know how or where to apply it. And both of these angles can be fixed if you've got the right mindset. Skills can be taught, knowledge can be researched, but attitude, resilience, and adaptability, those need to come from within the person.
On top of this, we might ruffle some feathers here, but we believe that hard skills are extremely overrated in terms of how hard it is to learn them. I mean, let's be completely honest for a second. It's not that hard to learn a new skill. Most people can do it in less than six months with the right learning framework, but you can't teach genuine passion or at least initiative and desire for progress. A team member with the right mindset can grow and adapt, ultimately becoming more valuable than someone with a high level of skill but a rigid or incompatible attitude. That's why, for example, you can't gather a team of superstars in sports and expect them to win everything. Eventually, they'll get beaten by a team with stronger synergy and a unified mindset.
There are two types of synergies. The kind people have when working together and the kind people have when they're around one another. Some people just don't get along for whatever reason. They can manage to work together for short projects, but they'll eventually get on each other's nerves, given enough time. There are plenty of strong teams that are disbanded due to poor personal synergy, and at the end of the day, you are working with people, and it's pretty unlikely to find people who are an exact match in terms of what makes them tick. So you need to make sure they’re at least not opposites, which is why natural synergy is often overlooked, and also why many Dream Team members are often longtime friends.
A dream team doesn't start out as a dream team. It starts out as a group of people who've got the potential to build something that's bigger than themselves. Yes, they still have a track record. They've got their achievements and their own accolades. There's no question about their own skill levels. But this is a matter of what they can achieve together in the future, not what they individually achieved in the past. Track records act like skill reassurance, but potential is all about future growth.
If you end up needing to micromanage or to handhold often, you don't have a dream team. You've got employees. They're not the only ones driving initiative and growth. They cannot be held responsible because they're not the one making the calls, and they cannot have autonomy because they don't have the room to choose what to work on. You see autonomy and ownership are what truly makes a team stand out because it's something that sits at the core of continuous growth. You alone cannot pull all of the strings. You can't oversee absolutely everything in every department.
And managers can't really do that either because their only job is to make sure others do the job, which, let's be real, that's not really a high input job. A dream team doesn't need managers or people looking over their shoulders every day, and that's because they've got the room to act in the direction they see fit and are in control of the resources that get put into it. Trust is the only real glue that holds the team together. It's not the common purpose or the paycheck or how many benefits they have. It's all about the trust.
And that's because a lack of trust in a team means avoiding vulnerability, feedback, and difficult conversations. If they can't trust each other, they'll play the game nice and safe and ultimately slow and efficient. They won't take any risks because they don't want to be vulnerable in case something doesn't work out. They won't provide constructive feedback in order to avoid being a target for possible retaliation, and generally, they'll avoid doing anything that might put the spotlight on them. And that's why full trust is essential.
We mentioned a common purpose doesn't hold the team together. However, it does steer them in the same general direction. People worthy of being a part of a dream team need something bigger than them to work toward, and they want it to be an ideal that's shared among the team members. This also helps them to trust one another because they all want the same thing. They're all in the same boat on the same journey. And not the kind coming out medium rare from the grill.
The reason a dream team is built is that the goal requires a special kind of dedication. The stakes are set at a certain level. The goal post is so far ahead that no ordinary team could reach it. Only a select group of people with special talents and abilities can get there, which means for every individual in the team, this is as close as it gets to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is the best-case scenario for them. They've got the right people in the right environment with the right resources and leadership. So they're extremely invested. They have stakes in this goal. It's something they also want to achieve as an individual besides achieving it as part of a team. If the stakes were not there and they don't feel like the opportunity is real, it's unlikely they'll do their very best.
People love being a part of a dream team. They'll wear the colors and lift the flag whenever they can. It's a sense of belonging. And every high-performing team makes sure each member feels they're an integral part of the group. For example, every jersey in sports is not just a piece of fabric. It's a flag, a badge of honor representing years of triumph. It embodies the sweat, tears, and toil of those who wore it before. And it's a mark that demands respect. Likewise, when you're building a dream team, you're not just assigning roles. You're creating a shared identity. It's an elite group known for its excellence.
When team members see themselves as part of a distinguished tribe, their dedication to the team's mission intensifies. They wear their team identity as a badge of honor, just as a champion athlete wears their jersey. It's not just about the name on the back, but the symbol on the front and the legacy that comes with it. A dream team has different types of players. Some are on the offense, some on the defense, and some are on the sidelines in supporting roles. And the most crucial thing is that everyone knows exactly what role they have to play.
Understanding roles within a team is like understanding the gears of a well-oiled machine. Each team member is a cog, an integral part of the mechanism, but distinct in their contributions. Clarity in roles also breeds accountability. Knowing exactly what's expected from each and everyone helps them take ownership of their responsibilities. It also fosters respect and appreciation because everyone is doing their part. After all, this is the Dream team, right? Not the afternoon nap team.
So it goes without saying that everyone is at the top of their game or striving to be there. There's no room for pretenders or half-baked work. There is a certain degree of competency that's expected from everyone, and a dream team can easily crumble under the weight of a single bad player. You're not going to find a dream team player on LinkedIn looking for a job. They're most likely already doing something that has the potential to lead them to something great. They don't really care about jobs or positions or corporate accolades because they can get those any time they want. But they've moved past that. They're now at a point where they're looking for opportunities to work on something truly outstanding, and they'll join you only if you show potential as a leader.
It's a two-way street, my friend. One of the main reasons someone eligible would join a team is to have access to tools they wouldn't have otherwise. Special training, special equipment, teammates that know what they're doing, and so on. So it's your job as the one assembling the team that you can provide all they require. And generally speaking, they need three things. One, something to help them scale. They can only do it once you help them 10x their output to resource allocation. Two: resource allocation. They know how to do it. They just don't know the means. So you allocate resources for them. And three: Reach. They can go super fast but not very far. You help them make the distance.
Like Jocko Willink said in his book, Discipline and Freedom are essentially the same thing in the context of a dream team, though discipline means everyone is extremely strategic with their time and resources. And in turn, this means everything is moving in unison when and how it's supposed to. Which leads to room to figure things out. You see, progress is impossible when you have to put all the fires out all the time; you end up spending more time making sure things don't fall apart rather than building them to the top. So it's your job to provide and enforce that type of environment.
You probably have heard the saying teamwork makes the dream work, but that's not really the full quote. The full quote is teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team. So you see, every team needs a leader, a shot caller, someone who knows the game and all the winning conditions. But a dream team will quickly disband if they feel like the leadership is not up to par. After all, high-level people never leave their companies. They leave their managers. So everything must come from the top in the correct way.
And of course, we've got a bonus for those sticking with us until the end. And that bonus is: Great things happen when great minds come together. That's why most success stories have at least two people behind them, even if just one of them is the face of it. For every Steve Jobs, there is a Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. For every Bill Gates, there's a Paul Allen; for every Batman, hey, there's a Justice League if you'd like to go there.
We hope you learned something valuable today, Aluxer. We'll see you back here tomorrow for the Sunday motivational video. Take care!