The Indianapolis Colts stumbled and fell in their game this weekend without their four-time MVP quarterback Peyton Manning. In fact, Manning didn’t even travel with the team due to his third neck surgery in the past 19 months. That effectively brought his streak of 227 consecutive starts, including playoffs, to an end.

The Importance of Making Every Team Member Important -- sxc.hu/artworx

For small business owners and company leaders, it is a lesson too often learned in the field of battle. You never want your team to rely solely on you or any single person to reach your goals.

Build a Team that Can Function Without You

UCLA head basketball coach John Wooden once said, “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.” Sometimes keeping this in mind can be difficult for the entrepreneur or business leader who feels the need to always guide the ship. However, when you work with a capable team, you need to get out of the way and allow them to do what they do best.

And that is the crux of the matter. In the case of the Colts, not only were they without their star quarterback, but their defense was in a sorry state as well and they had a weak backup plan when it came to recalling Collins to fill in for Peyton. Regardless of who was at fault for the decisions and plays, the team didn’t seem to function as a team.

That’s where the lesson comes in. Build a team of strong members who know and play their positions well. “You can’t have a high-powered team with low-talent people,” notes Price Pritchett in The Team Member Handbook for Teamwork.  And you can’t have a high-powered team if the remaining members fall apart when one member – you or the quarterback – is temporarily absent.

Build a Better Mousetrap

Forbes contributing writer Steven Berglas offers five tips in his article “5 Ways to Build a Spectacular Team Without Damaging Your Ego.”

First, he suggests that it is important to know when to use a team and when to assign a project to an individual specialist. He suggests that you “create teams only when you feel no single person has the expertise needed to achieve an outcome you desire.”

Next, the purpose behind creating a team is to bring together divergent talents that compliment each other with their own unique skills and abilities. You won’t get far with everyone doing the same thing.

Don’t micro-manage and dictate behavior. The team project will be done when it’s done, and not a moment sooner. So breathing down their collective neck seeking a progress report isn’t going to move things along faster. And placing expectations on team behavior isn’t helpful.

Finally, Berglas notes that cash incentives aren’t the answer, and I agree. In my blog “Praise or Raise: What Do Employees Really Want?” I suggest that the “number one misconception that managers have about employees is that money is the primary motivator.” Berglas puts it this way: “Most entrepreneurs know that authentic game-changers don’t work for the promise of wealth but, instead, for the promise of improving the world.”

Unfortunately for the Colts the team didn’t live up to the hype either because team members couldn’t function without their leader or because they didn’t have the skill sets required to begin with. For entrepreneurs and business leaders making every team member important is about ensuring they each know their role and they have the ability to execute it well. There is no “I” in team, after all.

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