The Dallas Cowboys: A “Team” In Name Only

The most erroneously used word in sports and business is… “TEAM.” The word team is so loosely thrown around that I often find myself wanting to dig deeper anytime someone uses it to describe their relationship to colleagues.

Think about it. We’ve all seen executives profess their corporate faith rooted in team-centric slogans shared throughout their company structure but then watched their “TEAM” operate merely as a group of people drawing paychecks from the same pot. You’ve heard a head coach or a boss say, “We need to gel better as a team,” knowing that they haven’t set any framework that would encourage a team-first mentality.

This typical “TEAM” façade became evident in the NFL over the past few weeks as I watched the Dallas Cowboys unravel at the seams, losing five of their last six games. The moment that stands out took place as Dallas was losing to the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins when their quarterback, generally seen as a “team leader,” laid crumpled on the grass field, dazed and confused. Just a few seconds earlier, Cowboys’ quarterback Andy Dalton had been upright throwing a pass when an illegal late hit by an opposing player exposed the lip service behind “America’s Team.” As I watched a concussed Dalton being removed from the game, I was struck by the complete lack of reaction—or emotion— from his teammates. They stood, hands on their hips. In a real team, there would have been others making sure the offending defensive player was aware that a cheap shot on my “teammate” was a cheap shot on me, as well. And the defender would have known that on this “team,” we have each other’s back.

But for Dallas, the response was... nothing.

The scene led me to call a dozen of the best TEAM leaders I know to try and break down the question: “How do you know if you’re a team or just a gathering of disconnected parts with the same business card?”

A reality on many “teams” in the sports and business world is that the appearance of togetherness often disintegrates the instant there’s a hint of adversity. Dalton was arguably brought in this offseason as leverage in a tense contract dispute between the Cowboys ownership and top quarterback Dak Prescott. When an injury took Dak out of the lead role, Dalton assumed “leadership” duties despite not truly establishing the trust and support needed to move in concert with the rest of the team. Imagine being a bass guitarist in a rock band and trying to do the lead singer’s customary stage, dive into a crowd that hadn’t fully committed to your rockstar status. Falling flat isn’t solely Dalton’s fault—the team culture is the blame.

Many leaders cannot recognize the difference between a team and a group of people working at the same place. That pain point, for them, sparked yet another passion point, for me, into what makes a truly great team.

My favorite conversation on this question was with a man who, I’d argue, knows more about teams than anybody I’ve ever met. Retired Brigadier General Bernard Banks spent 30 years in the Army, including five years as chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point. He now serves as the Associate Dean for Leadership, Development, and Inclusion at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He and I discussed so many layers of this team concept that we likely have enough to teach a class or write a book—at the very least, an eBook in the near future. But until then, I’d like to frame the leadership lesson for you as one that involves evaluating your team.

“One of the greatest flawed conceptions is that simply because you assign people to a defined group, they’re going to work in a highly coordinated manner because you gave them the title of team… Nothing could be farther from the truth,” said General Banks.

The truth is we can superficially load up our rosters or personnel files with as many all-star players and decorated resumes as possible and then quickly see their incongruence hinder our overall success. In Major League Baseball, we’ve seen the New York Yankees shell out the American League’s highest payroll for 10 of the last 11 years, yet they haven’t won a World Series since the 2009 season.

“You can bring your group of people together, but if they’re just working on individual tasks, you can assign the name ‘Team’ to it; but if they don’t have to work in concert with one another to achieve the outcome, they are not a team,” said General Banks. “They’re just a collection of individuals working on a series of what could be closely related tasks.”

Are you leading a group of people, or are you leading a team? Are you approaching each day to collect a paycheck like your co-workers, or are you helping foster the kind of culture that encourages an actual team environment?

“We see this in business all the time,” added General Banks. “Why is there such friction between operations and sales? Why are we having challenges with implementation? Because they’re not viewing themselves as working in concert with one another. They’re viewing themselves as working in relative isolation and passing actions off from one group to another. But they’ll call themselves members of the same team.”

Everyone loves the idea of a trust fall exercise during a company retreat, but I urge you to make time to build relationships with your teammates now. I say that fully recognizing how much harder it is to do during work from home and social distancing.

Doing so ensures that if your competitors knock you down, you have a team ready to pick you up and help you hit back. Start thinking about what you can do to create the kind of support that transcends any scenario—whether you’re the rockstar, seeing stars, or wearing the Dallas star on your helmet.

Don’t settle for being a “team” in name only.