To help empower your team, it's a really useful experience to get them to audit their collective ability; to benchmark themselves against some of the world's best. This tool is based on research originally conducted by Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman who studied the behaviours of some of the world's greatest teams:

• The Apple Mac design team - invented the Apple computer operating system, which is the basis of all user-friendly graphic interfaces

• The ‘skunkwork' team of international scientists that designed and built the first atomic bomb

• The Lockheed Blackbird Spy plane design team - the first plane that could avoid radar or any ground based detection

• The ‘Bill Clinton' first  election winning campaign team

Great Creative Groups is best used by teams, that:

1. Are charged with delivering a brand that is highly dependant on brand experience and the behaviour of people.
2. Have something to prove - this could be internally to the company e.g. by successfully bringing a new product or application to market, or externally in the marketplace by changing accepted conventions.

The 12 characteristics shared by the best, most effective management teams:

1. Superb people and an ability to know where to find them

• The leadership has the know-how to attract people better than themselves.

2. Great groups and great leaders create each other

• Collaboration is a necessity.  Command and control style do not work.

3. A strong leader who organises the genius of the others

• The leader is only able to realise his or her dream if the other people are free to do exceptional work. The leader is the steward, keeping hope alive in the face of setbacks.

4. Talented people who can work together

• Tolerance of personal idiosyncrasies, sharing of information and ideas. Colleagues who advance the common cause are essential.

5. The right person has the right job

• Truly gifted people are not interchangeable. People do the work they were born to do.

6. A group of people on a mission from God

• Everyone gets it; it's a crusade not a job.

7. An island but with a bridge to the mainland

• Creative groups create their own worlds, their own customs, and dress code, jokes, private language; they treasure their secrets; they have a great deal of fun, but are still connected to the commercial world.

8. A self perception as the winning under-dog

• Building on team insecurity as positive energy.

9. There is always an enemy

• The enemy is external not internal.

10. Optimistic not realistic

• A belief that they will be able to do things not done before. They don't know what they cannot do and  are not sure that the impossible exists.

11. The leadership gives the talent what it needs and frees it from the rest

• Most of all people want a worthy challenge, a task that allows them to explore all of their talent. They are low on bureaucracy.

12. They are part of a real marketplace

• Great Creative Groups are places of action. They make things that need to be sold.

How to use the tool

Step 1

• Get the existing team together, either in a dedicated team working session, or as part of a regular meeting cycle.
• Explain the importance of and requirement for exceptional team performance. Give examples so everyone knows what they're aiming at.
• Using the AUDIT SHEET (see PDF download below) ask each team member to rate the team against every characteristic.

Step 2

• When the team reconvenes, draw a grid on a flip chart (or whiteboard) and ask each team member to mark up their scores for each characteristic.
• Debate areas where there are significant variances in the scores.

Step 3

• Gain consensus and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the team around each characteristic.
• Draw up an action plan to correct the most important characteristic needed to deliver the current project.
• Reinforce and celebrate the characteristics on which you feel your team can make the most impact upon.
• Decide upon tangible examples that can bring these defined specific characteristics to life.