Building a Strong Team
The Pentathlon is primarily a solo event. And yet, teamwork, cooperation, and camaraderie are huge boosts to success and consistency. Knowing there are other like-minded people in it together with you goes a long way in making work easier and life more enjoyable. We've seen people accomplish more when they're on a strong team, and we've seen great friendships and connections come out of it too. In this section we'll provide an overview of how you can help to build a strong team.
Do: Take a leadership role on your team
First things first, a single person taking a leadership role in engaging people can make a huge difference. If you want to max out the chances of having a strong team, look to personally engage and ask questions to anyone in the group who might be a little more quiet or shy. In general, participants on the Pentathlon tend to be very engaged and driven, but additional leadership goes a long way towards having people get engaged with their team.
You might consider looking to understand about your teammates early:
- Who they are
- What their Most Important Work is
- What their schedule is usually like
- What challenges they anticipate might come up
- Sharing best recommendations and resources
- Getting these discussions in on the first day or two goes a long way towards a strong team.
Some people are more shy, and others are more outgoing — but we've noticed a definite pattern that teams where one or two members took a lead in sharing different types of information, asking questions, and encouraging teammates to join and use the channel helps a lot for success.
During Pentathlon 2, Barbara Garnier and Caroline Poser-Carrihlo strategized using the team channel, and also sent each other text messages to pick each other up and plan together. Barbara explained,
"The fact, being on a team with someone I know — Caroline who is amazingly good — of course there is an effect of pushing you forwards She pushed me forwards… even though I'm not competitive, the fact that she had such good scores, she's so good, I'd like to have at least one day where I score the maximum points… so I'm competitive, but not that much pressure either… we communicated more on bad days, "don't feel good", "feel lazy", "feel like I'm going to eat tons of sugar", it was great safety net and motivation… like a friend basically. It puts a floor under your feet, there's always just a few words to get some positive feedback."
This type of communication is open to everyone — you merely need to take the initiative in sharing your experience, asking questions, encouraging your teammates, and looking for encouragement or strategizing together as needed.
People who take a leadership role in engaging their teammates, sharing their experience, and asking for feedback are (unsurprisingly) more effective and stick to their goals and targets at a much higher rate.
Do: Build momentum with check-ins
You can learn a lot about general team dynamics and interpersonal dynamics through the Pentathlon. After all, it's a great jolt of peak performance, but the stakes aren't that high in the grand scheme of things.
Some teams come together better than others. Noteworthily, if one team member sloughs off checking in and participating, that can have a detrimental effect on a team. If two team members do it, the whole team norms sometimes fall apart.
We do what we can to sort teams logistically by timezone and otherwise to form cohesive teams, and generally speaking people who join the Pentathlon are highly motivated and disciplined. But not every team comes together strongly.
Even in that case, you can learn a lot from it: that's like real-life, too.
To really maximize the chances of having a strong team, you can follow the guidelines here: get on team chat communication channel, get to know your teammates, commit to a schedule of checking-in, and share upcoming challenges and support your teammates when they do the same.
It's very helpful to establish a "check-in" schedule in the first days of the Pentathlon, and stick with it.
We set up a team chat for each Pentathlon team, but it does require you getting engaged with it very early in the Pentathlon.
As with any event, habit, or discipline, the highest momentum and motivation is early. You want to use that early "rush" feeling to get established in norms and practices on your channel.
This can be just everyone giving a short update of how things are going for them. You might pick a couple days to check in with each other in real time and schedule some time for discussion and planning on the calendar. It won't be possible for every team, since sometimes people are on radically different schedules of work and personal obligations. But if you can check in daily at whatever time, and get on at the same time two or three times per week, that can help a lot.
Do: Work through challenges together with your team
Successful teams create an open environment for members to talk about upcoming challenges. If you've got eight hours of meetings scheduled in two days and are wondering how to fit your Most Important Work in, that can be great to discuss with your teammates and get some feedback and support.
We've seen successful teams discuss their challenges and how to approach them (counterplanning), share planning methodologies, note which days are going to be harder for them to hit their targets, and give each other feedback and encouragement around those type of days.
Once again, you can take a leadership role in asking others what challenges they might have and sharing your own. This doesn't happen automatically – it's a function of leadership to begin the process and get it going. It's a very valuable way to get feedback and support, so share potential challenges and ask teammates about theirs early, and start supporting each other in that way.