Your team is expected to deliver - BIG.

Avengers: Endgame has officially dethroned Avatar to become the biggest movie of all time. The Avengers -  Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk and  Ant-Man is the world's favourite super hero team. The Avengers taught us to accept one another in a team regardless of our different background and personalities and to set aside our differences and work together. The Avengers showed us that it is normal to have conflict between each other. We don't always see eye-to-eye because we’re only human and arguments will happen. But the important thing is to know when to let go of our pride, be the bigger person, move on and focus on a far greater purpose.

A few years ago, a series of business school student and kindergartner groups took part in a competition to build the tallest possible structure using pieces of uncooked spaghetti, transparent tape, string and a marshmallow. The contest had only one rule: the marshmallow had to end up on top. If you bet on the business school students because they possess the intelligence, skills and experience to do a superior job, your bet would be wrong. In dozens of trials, kindergartners won, proving again and again that a group of ordinary people can create a performance far beyond the sum of their parts.

Organizations keep throwing talented and intelligent people together, thinking that somehow talent and intelligent teaming will occur. It's painful to watch. Some teams have top talent and leadership and still lose. Others don't have the best talent and leadership, yet win.

In examining success stories of team success, we see a list that include trust, collaboration, respect, strategy, empowerment, communication. It's a list in countless books and organizations around the world. There's no surprise here: these qualities are necessary for a team to succeed.

But there's more. In nearly every success stories, there's a pattern - a way a team approaches their objectives and team members interact with each other. It does not require doing more; it is about being more. 

Here's a big question: do your teammates care enough about achieving success to care about each other?

The truth is, respect alone is not enough. It is merely a first step to being an effective team. To do meaningful work together requires that team members be meaningful in their interactions with one another. But caring is hard work that not everyone is up for. Caring requires that all of us listen more, accept where people are at in their thinking instead of criticizing them, and defend them even when they are not in the room with us. Not everyone has the heart to do these things.

Doing business together successfully requires connecting as humans effectively. A team can't make an epic impact if only a portion of the team chooses to partner those with whom they interact the most. When a team lacks the commitment to a human imperative, the business imperative becomes just one more thing to do on a long list of objectives.

When I ask people inside highly successful groups to describe their relationship with one another, they all tend to choose the same word. This word is not friends or team or any other plausible term. The word they use is family. What's more, they tend to describe the feeling of those relationships in the same way.

My team environment is like a greenhouse. In some greenhouses, the leader plays the role of the plant that every other plant aspires to. But that's not me. My  job is to architect the greenhouse by being painstaking in the hiring process, having low tolerance for bad apple behaviour, making sure everyone has a voice, seeking simple ways to serve the group and embracing fun. This obvious one is still worth mentioning, because laughter is not just laughter; it's the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.

My team deliver high performance and as the do so the members of the team become better people and stronger together. When they interact with one another, there's a striking camaraderie that continues to this day. Trust, laughter and lots of listening are apparent. As well, immediately noticeable are two things they don't do. They don't talk about themselves. And no single person acts as if the are bigger that the team. As a result, I find myself wishing I could spend more time with them. They cared. They knew they are better together. And it shows. 

For a team to succeed, leaders do not need to be superhuman. Nor do the members of the team need to qualify as exclusive specimens of humanity. These are people being at their best, bringing out the best in others, and partnering across the business to deliver shared objectives. And this is how we do big things. 

Oh, yes, here’s another thing I learned from the Avengers. ONE is better than one. One team is better than one person.