Teams are built with love.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do is leave teams or get kicked out. Teams, groups, whatever you want to call them. The lone wolf ideology is just a horrible idea. You’re going to die cold, and alone. You don’t have to, you could die in a pile of brass and grenade pins surround by men who swore to never leave you, and are actively protecting you, and your family. Which of those is a better option?

It’s pretty plain to me at least. But it’s not easy. Team dynamics are something that take years, and even then priorities can change. It’s essential to get behind the program at all levels, get everyone united on the same front and driven by a mission.

Mission

Whatever your groups purpose is, everyone needs to know it and drive toward it. If your goal is to support and train each other, come together for your community, and feed widows and orphans, then everyone better be on board and know it. They need to know what, and how the team accomplishes this goal. The what can be anything you all agree upon. Things I recommend are: Feeding widows and orphans, liberating the oppressed, we can accomplish all of these Together Only.

What your mission is needs to have such a deep and resounding impact every team member goes to bed shivering and cold in their sleeping bag happy to be there. Because they know it’s worth it. They know the pain and suffering they’re enduring will keep their family safe, give them the mental fortitude to push through, and bring them closer to their team.

Being able to train for a specific mission is essential to any team. No team is a mission less team. If the mission is accomplished there is always the general mission because there is always a reason for the team.

How?

Leadership is the key to any Team. It’s a living breathing active organism and it needs a brain and heart to work. Teams don’t just materialize, they have to coalesce. Come together and be lead. Everyone thinks they want to be the Leader, the Leader position is cool. Without followers, leaders are lost. With followers, everyone accomplishes great things. Without leaders, followers are lost. Each rely on the other, each builds on strengths and each supports the other. It is a TEAM effort.

There is one category I have difficulty describing or explaining and that is the role of someone on the team, in the team, and yet separate from the team. This small paragraph is a place holder until I can define that idea more.

The best structure for teams is decentralized leadership. This provides maximum value to everyone. Making decisions from the ground up, with missions being lead from the top down.

Here’s how it looks best, from a subject matter expert: Jocko Willink. Your team structure should mimic that. The over arching mission is derived from those at the top, and the execution the “how” is designed by those at the bottom. Those that execute it must have ownership of it.

Train accordingly, guide your less experienced guys through the mission planning sequence. Show them what needs to be done. Get reps in every time you go to train. Develop the leaders from the bottom up.

Training to build a team

Teams, especially Prepper type groups usually have a hard time coming together or agreeing on things. Principals should matter vastly more than politics, however politics have become identity now. In my opinion what we must do is come together in Faith first, and everything else second. Be family in Christ, and train as brothers.

If we’re going to be in this till we see Christ one way, or another, then we better be on the same team metaphysically as well. Build your team around deeply rooted beliefs, let all the other stuff become things you raz each other about. Like how one guy can’t stop eating, or the other talks so fast your ears smoke, or there’s twins that aren’t twins, and that one dude who’s really handsome but man he’s old. That kind of thing bonds you together.

Doing things, working together, training together bonds you as a team. It takes reps, which means you have to meet together. Everyone needs to prioritize it.

The scheduling conflict

Having a single day of the week, every Saturday morning for example, and staying on that schedule is critical to keeping the team together and doing life together. We all have lives, and busy schedules. Getting together twice a month at a minimum will keep a team cohesive and running. And it’s a prioritization of the team for the greater good. Eventually, people (spouses) will understand, Saturdays are for the boys.

Have a schedule and structure events. Mentor the young leaders in the team to take over that task and start identifying the teams weaknesses and strengths. Develop a training plan based on those criteria. Accomplished outdoors-men may not need a two day course in bushcraft, they may need a computer course. Having the whole team communicating digitally, and having some members who struggle with computers not able to contribute can build resentment in some cases.

Each member needs to be dedicated to the process, and willing to show up. It has been my experience that showing up consistently is 90% of being a good team member. Simon Sinek, someone who I think is brilliant, and explains things so I can understand them. He illustrated this chart in a talk. This is the Team you want to build. You want High Trust individuals.

Roles and Specialties

High trust individuals all have something to contribute. Regardless of performance, these people are worth keeping on your team. Performance can be trained, and even some serious physical and mental disabilities can be over come and a role assigned.

My style is to let roles develop naturally. People tend to be leaders, or followers, or that weird outside third position I am looking to define. These roles can be best expressed in people’s specialties. I have a friend. He has dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. What that means is: Letters float, change places, and rearrange themselves; numbers flip themselves back and forth; he has difficulty learning things that have to do with letters and numbers. Of the three learning inhibitors, he got all of them.

He’s also had multiple guns he hand built in Guns and Ammo, is a CNC and manual Machinist, and has run a successful gunsmithing business himself. I can hand him just about any gun and he can fix it, build parts for it, and diagnose it’s function problems. I have a very high level of trust in him. Is he physically a specimen? Nope, he gets winded walking up stairs, his posture is horrendous (as I sit up straighter in my chair), and his fashion sense is even worse. But he is a valuable member of our team.

Every person of high trust, adds value to the team. Every team member needs to be of high trust. The gray beards can train the performance part. They just need the team to be able to trust each other.

Breaking Trust

Everyone screws up, we forget stuff, miss time hacks, say stupid things, or can just be jerks. Trust is broken when it’s habitual, and intentional, remorseful. That’s when trust breaks most. Abandonment is another one, when a person is abandoned by his brothers, that breaks trust and it’s almost impossible to get back.

But there has to be a road back. There has to be forgiveness. Egregious breaches of trust are situation by situation. A real world example would be: A guy I knew in Korea lived off post with his wife. They were living the Korean adventure together. He lived across the hall from his squad leader, they were really good friends. His squad leader was late a few times to PT, no big deal, it happens when you live off post sometimes. 9 Months later my buddy is a Dad. A year and a half later, it’s REALLY obvious, that’s not his baby; I think his wife confessed as well. That breach of trust, isn’t getting forgiven anytime soon, and that relationship probably isn’t going to be healed either.

That level of breached trust, is next level.

For anything else, have a way back for the truly repentant. Those that know they screwed up, admit they screwed up and are actively making an effort to be forgiven.

Team

That’s a word that means a whole lot to me. It’s family tangent. In many ways it’s as deep and equally as loving. Team is a group that you’d live for, and die for. Mostly live. Dying is easy. Team is something that has to be built, and needs to be given room to grow. Team is a place and a group of people who said “We choose our family and what is worth fighting for.”

Team is a four letter word. Just like love.

It takes a lot of love to push your family behind you and take a step toward the demons of this world that roar hate at them. It takes even more to stand beside someone and do it. There are all kinds of reasons to be a member of a team. Least of all is: You don’t have to be alone. I am very much introverted. I’ve learned to take time whenever I can to just be by myself. Sometimes it’s 10 minutes, sometimes it’s hours. But I need that time. I also need a team. I need people to love and support me, to be by me when things are horrible, or when I’m horrible and call me on it. Team is extremely important and is only going to be more important moving forward.

God bless you and keep you!