Teams come together for a purpose. Without a purpose, there is no such thing as a team. Some teams have grand purposes, high standards and ethical mandates. Include teammates with passion and drive and you can put together one heck of a team.
The heart of the team is purpose. A shared purpose to be more exact. Give a person a clear purpose of mission and put the responsibility for the completion of that mission in their hands, give them resources and watch them go off to accomplish what often amounts to the impossible. In fact, tell them that no one has ever done this before, but the time has come for someone to do it and you can be the one to make it happen.
This is the way legendary teams work. Great people come together for the accomplishment of a great purpose.
The leaders of these teams are story tellers. They have other skills of course, but they major in keeping the story alive that motivates team members to accomplish the purpose. Without this living story, the purpose fades and the motivation flutters and the team members fade away.
I used to think that you should pick where you work by the quality of the purpose. I now think that you might do as well to pick the quality of the team first. Find a great team, and the purpose will come to them. Find a great purpose and there may not be a team yet in place to make it so.
Either way, you need both of these factors, passionate team members motivated by lofty purpose.
It would be well for you to think through your own personal purpose before you run off to join a team. Mine has been for many years, To Stretch Others. To get the best out of them. To lead the team to be a more dynamic and high functioning team.
On occasion I’ve succeeded at stretching others. Other times, it was all for naught. But I wouldn’t give up on my mission or alter my purpose because of it. Figure out your mission in life first. Maybe you have some idea already. Test it out, see how it works, keep at it. We need you to be better at it.