Building champion teams for the next final and beyond

With the 2026 football pre-season almost here (in the southern hemisphere), lets reflect on a leaders role of building high-performance teams—for the next championship final and beyond.  Whether you are inheriting or rebuilding a team, the challenge remains: how do leaders build teams that perform, improve, and are exciting to be part of?

Hint. A great culture – the responsibility of every leader – is just one of the C’s that might get your team a finals ticket but does not guarantee a win. Leaders will need to master the Cs and the Ps of team building mastery.

Capability, Character, Culture, Cohesion, and Community

In elite team sport, winning the season final is the ultimate recognition of years of team preparation. In business, it could be another year of market dominance or a major ‘leap ahead’ transformation program that delivers beyond expectations.

Globally dominant sports teams, like the All Blacks and the US Women’s football team with many world cups and 80% plus wins build success via the 5 Cs and more. They select well beyond capability and experience by seeking coachable, collaborative people who are aligned with the team’s values and purpose.  In business, we talk of hiring for attitude over aptitude.

Character and Experience: Performance Siblings

Coaches and psychologists consider experience and character as interdependent. Experience is built through exposure and likely functionally specific e.g. a half back or marketing leader. Experience enhances decision-making and emotional regulation under stress.

Character —resilience, courage, self-awareness, humility, integrity— is revealed under stress and enhanced over time. It determines stress behaviours crucial to team selections.  The best teams know that ‘experience helps you know what to do, character determines how you do it’ under pressure.

Successful teams, from sports to military, train under simulated stress situations. They set clear standards for behaviour and execution. They debrief after games /missions – win or lose – to improve.  Business needs more dispassionate ‘replay’ analysis to support their improvement.  Afterall “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”

Culture and Cohesion: Patience Pays Off

We know a strong culture – shared values and behaviours – is essential for any successful team.  However cohesion – the ‘on the field’ operational understanding between team members – is likely a stronger predictor of success.

Ben Darwin, of GainLine Analytics, has studied many thousands of professional sports leagues games finding that team cohesion is more predictive of success than individual talent. Cohesion needs team stability, shared experience, and time together.  Highly skilled new joiners need strong cohesion for peak performance.  When we hear coaches talk of players trusting each other – that’s cohesion.

Cohesion needs patience and attention as it grows slowly at 5% p.a. and can fall 50% in a week e.g. the coach or the business CEO resigns which often cascades to key players or executives leaving.  I think of cohesion little like the ‘’snakes and ladders’’ game – a slow steady rise and very steep fall.

The Winning with Analytics study adds that coach tenure amplifies cohesion. Teams perform best when players and coaches have worked together over time. Disrupt either and performance suffers. Team restructures need to be minimised.  Cohesion needs the P of patience to play the ‘long game’.

Community and Purpose: the meaning drivers

Great teams build programs to immerse themselves in their communities building connections with those whose hopes they carry.  The Matildas – Australia’s women’s national football team – play not just for their trophies but for equality and representation.

Businesses that connect to their communities can build trust, accountability, and maybe a legacy. Research shows that the P of purpose supports team resilience and performance through the tough times as the team digs deep into their ’why’.

Leading Across the Park

High-performing teams distribute leadership often by functions, experience, and respect. Sports teams often talk about their ‘’leaders across the park’’. Sarah Elk, practice leader at Bain & Co, summaries their global research on building high-performing leadership teams into four steps:

• Commit and invest: leaders invest time building shared behaviours together.
• Chart the Path to Change: Leaders must own the behavioural changes required to achieve the firm’s goals.
• Hold up the Mirror: debrief openly and use survey tools to find the blind spots.
• Sustain Momentum: the hard part – measure improvements to embed the required behavioural change.

When leaders show they are growing with their teams then trust builds, cohesion deepens and performance accelerates.

Leaders, Legacies and Lasso

Many leaders defer any legacy discussion perhaps worried this looks like hubris.  What if they prepared early, clearly articulated their legacy goals aligning with their vision? The team could buy in and build a shared legacy. Perhaps a truer test of leadership.

Bill Walsh, the NFL ‘Hall of Fame’ coach of Joe Montana’s 1980s triple Superbowl winning, San Francisco 49ers, focussed on player and coaching staff growth to get consistent results. His book ‘The score takes care of itself’ focuses on the P of the process of growth.

Ted Lasso’s approach, influenced by Walsh’s work, can be summarised as: belief in yourself and your teammates; curiosity vs judgement; and, success via self growth. He is building a shared legacy everyday and trusting the process for the wins.

Teams that build legacies are rare.  Leaders can find it hard to play the ’long game’ when they have impatient stakeholders expecting quick results.  Successful leaders can influence key stakeholders bringing them along. They know that trophies and legacies will be polished by those who patiently grow together. They understand building cohesion is their first step towards winning the championship.

For leaders who want their team to be champions more often, they will need to drive the Cs of Capability, Character, Culture, Cohesion, and Community and build the Ps of Patience, Purpose and Process.  The ’long game’ starts today!

Summary 

• Play the Long Game: Cohesion is strategic. Stability, shared experience, operating rhythm all builds trust. Avoid reactive restructuring which destroys cohesion and, in turn, trust.
• Character and culture hiring: Look beyond technical skills. Seek coachable, collaborative individuals aligning with your team’s values and purpose.
• Onboard for integration: Onboarding needs to embed new members into the culture and dynamics vs chase instant results. The best can take time to reach their peak.
• Debrief and Reflect Often: Create room for open feedback and replay analysis. Growth comes from re-learning. The best coaches expect growth from everyone.
• Leadership is shared and behavioural: Empower leaders across the team. Real Leadership comes via actions and the right behaviours vs positions.
• Purpose drives performance: Connect teams to the vision and purpose to build motivation and resilience.
• Build a team legacy: Think beyond the next win. Invest in people, processes, and culture that lasts and evolves.