High-Performing Teams Are Built Like Championship Teams

In high school, basketball was a big part of my life. I was recruited by many Division I schools and earned a four-year scholarship to play at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Some sports writers speculated I might be All-Big Ten one day. But the reality? I hardly played.

My role on the team became clear: my job was to push the starters — to show up at practice, compete hard, have a positive attitude, and help make the team better. It was a humbling experience. But it also taught me something many leaders don't learn until later: high-performing teams aren't just about who starts or scores. They're about trust, perseverance, clarity, sacrifice, playing your role, and shared purpose.

High-Performing Teams Help Build Remarkable Companies

The Triple Crown in horse racing refers to winning all three of the most prestigious races for three-year-old Thoroughbreds: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. Only 13 horses have won the Triple Crown in over 113 years. This percentage is eerily similar to the percentage of companies that ever become truly remarkable.

Remarkable companies do three things better than the competition: they delight their customers, they are strategically and organizationally agile, and they deliver top-quartile profitable growth. Agility is defined across three pillars: High Organizational IQ — becoming smarter tomorrow than you are today, on purpose. Change-Elastic Culture — a culture that bends without breaking, built on trust, transparent communication, and interdependence. High-Performing Teams — teams that know their roles, trust one another, operate with urgency and alignment, and hold themselves accountable to shared goals.

"You don't build a high-performing team with slogans, org charts, or talent alone. You build it through culture, clarity, and commitment."

The 7 Practices of High-Performing Leadership Teams

Practice 1 — Who Is on the Team? High-performing teams are built on mutual reliance. One of the first questions leaders must ask is: what do we mean by "team"? Too many leaders focus only on the teams they manage and forget that they themselves are part of a peer team where alignment, trust, and shared ownership are just as critical.

Practice 2 — Locker Room Trust. Trust comes from consistency, vulnerability, and presence. If trust were a formula, it would be: Trust = Intimacy / Risk. When one team member is alone in a room, there are no relationships. When a team reaches 10 people, they're managing 45 human relationships. This is why intimacy matters.

Practice 3 — Film Room Feedback. Feedback should be sharp — but never cruel. Great teams don't avoid conflict; they lean into it with clarity, care, and shared purpose. Disagreement is a duty. Alignment is the result. The best leaders are not just smart — they're humble, self-aware, empathetic, and capable of tuning into the room.

Practice 4 — Play the Game, Not the Stat Sheet. Championship teams don't succeed on raw talent alone — they succeed when individuals surrender "me" for "we." Phil Jackson put it best: "Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the 'Me' for the 'We.'"

Practice 5 — Freedom to Call a Play. Safe teams move fast. They call out risks, make bold decisions, and adapt with urgency. Decisions should be made as close to the action as possible — by the people who have the clearest perspective and best information. When Jeff Bezos was asked how he defines good leadership, his one-word answer was: "Judgement."

Practice 6 — Know Your Position. On elite teams, role clarity is the price of admission. Nobody tries to play two positions. Dennis Rodman didn't shoot threes. Steve Kerr didn't dominate the paint. They knew their value and amplified it. Great teams win not by covering every base individually, but by combining complementary capabilities aligned to the strategy.

Practice 7 — Scoreboard Over Stats. The only win that counts is the team's. There must be alignment between your personal goals, your team's goals, and the overarching goals of the company. High-performing teams internalize that failure isn't someone else's — it's ours. When you truly buy in, a missed target doesn't just land on a dashboard — it lands in your gut.

The Final Whistle

Reed Hastings was right: this isn't a family. It's a team. But it's not just any team. It's a team built to win — and one worth belonging to. The seven practices describe how high-performing leadership teams convert trust into speed, clarity into agility, and judgment into sustained value creation. The result is not harmony for its own sake, but a leadership system that can move faster, adapt earlier, and allocate energy and capital more effectively than peers — precisely the conditions under which remarkable companies compound advantage over time.