T4. Create a team
Build shared identity and purpose. Strong teams outperform individuals.
Resources to support growth in this behaviour
Whether this behaviour has been chosen through Step 1. Diagnose, highlighted through reflection or coaching, or identified as a school or trust priority, you can now follow the steps below to develop and embed it in your daily leadership practice.
Step 2. Learn: Read Everyone Succeeds: 54 Leadership Behaviours to Transform Your School to understand what great leadership looks like in practice. Each behaviour is grounded in research and real examples from schools and businesses.
Step 3. Reflect: Use the Everyone Succeeds Workbook to apply ideas to your own context.
Guided reflection, practical actions, and space for planning turn understanding into improvement.
Step 4. Apply: Work through the Leadership Toolkit for this behaviour. Use the Create a Team toolkit to clarify purpose, establish shared norms, and build unity so the group becomes more than a collection of individuals.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Create a team Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through coaching questions about purpose and norms, rehearsing cohesion so groups act as one.
These can be used individually or with colleagues to embed key behaviours.
Step 6. Plan: Set measurable goals using the 90 Day Leadership Planner.
Turn improvement into action by tracking your focus and progress over time, with completed examples for different career stages.
Step 7. Lead: Apply your learning to real situations through the Scenario Finder.
Over fifty scenarios link directly to the behaviours that help you solve the challenges that matter most in your school.
One book suggestion
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni (2002).
This text deepens the behaviour by exploring how trust, norms and shared purpose turn groups into effective teams. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Lencioni, P.M., (2010). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. John Wiley & Sons.
Pentland, A. (2012). The new science of building great teams. Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 60-69.