Teams

What a Team Actually Is

The word "team" gets used in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it means a group of people who work together. Sometimes it means a formal reporting structure. Sometimes it means a collection of people with shared goals. Sometimes it means people who collaborate closely on projects.

For TRM, we need to be more precise. Because the word "team" can obscure something crucial about how accountability actually works.

Here's a glimpse of the next level: high-performing teams are always a collection of 1:1 relationships.

A Team Is an Organizing Element

In TRM, a team is simple: it's the group of people you've recruited to help you deliver your responsibility.

You own an outcome. You assessed the work. You realized you couldn't deliver it alone. So you recruited people to help with specific pieces. That group of people—whoever they are, wherever they sit on the org chart—is your team.

It's your team if you've activated them through clear individual responsibilities. It's your team if you're monitoring their progress and governing fairly. It's your team if you're shaping how they work together in service of the outcome you own.

The org chart might or might not recognize this team. You might have an org chart "team" that isn't really your team in the TRM sense. If your only role is to approve their timesheets and annual reviews, but they're not directly helping you deliver a specific outcome, that's not a team. It's an administrative relationship. That's important, too. But it's not a performance team.

Conversely, you might have recruited people from across the organization (formally or informally) to help you with a project or outcome. They report to other leaders on the org chart. But from your performance-based point of view, they're your team. In this context. For now.

This is the same for a sports team. It's a "team" because the individuals who are members contribute to the owner's, the manager's, and the coach's specific responsibilities. Individual members come and go. But whoever's there to help deliver a higher level responsibility - that's the "team".

The word "team" describes an organizing structure around a responsibility you own. Nothing more, nothing less.

A Team Is Not a Unit of Accountability

Here's where precision matters.

The team doesn't own the responsibility. You do.

Each person in the team owns a piece of it—a supporting responsibility that feeds into your larger outcome. But the team itself doesn't own anything. It's not accountable as a unit. It doesn't make decisions collectively. It doesn't have shared responsibility.

This is fundamental because accountability requires clarity. And clarity requires that one person own each responsibility.

Even in highly collaborative teams, where people work closely together and depend on each other's work, each person must own a distinct piece. They might collaborate intensely. The work might be interdependent. But structurally, each person owns their contribution.

It's your job as Lead to make these distinctions clear. "You own X. They own Y. You're working together, but I need you, specifically, to bring your unique combination of experiences as both an accountant as an engineer. You'll surface ideas about production line design that no one else can." That clarity is what enables accountability.

Why Individual Ownership Prevents Coasting

When responsibility is shared or vague, something predictable happens: high performers carry the load, and everyone else coasts.

The high performers are committed to delivering the team outcome. They'll do what it takes. They'll fill gaps. They'll work nights to make sure things succeed. They may even override each other's decisions.

The other team members, knowing they're not personally accountable, do the minimum or wait for someone else to step in.

Over time, this breaks down. The high performers burn out or become disenchanted. They realize they're carrying people who aren't pulling their weight. They leave. Or they stay but lose their spark.

This isn't a people problem. It's a structure problem. You didn't make individual ownership clear.

When you're precise about who owns what, structural alignment takes over. Each person can see their contribution. They know what they're accountable for. If they fall short, they know others won’t be carrying them. And, conversely, they know they're not responsible for compensating for someone else's work.

High performers still perform at a high level. But they're not burning out because they're carrying extra weight. They're being recognize for their contributions. Everyone's doing their piece.

That's the difference clarity makes.

Activation Happens 1:1, Not in Meetings

Team meetings are useful. It’s where you brainstorm to take advantage of the diversity of skills and backgrounds. They're where you share information. They're where you problem-solve together. They're where you answer questions in a way that everyone sees and hears the same things. 

But activation doesn't happen in meetings.

Activation—clarity of responsibility, specific alignment on what ‘done’ looks like, commitment to ownership—happens in 1:1 conversations. This is where each person sees their unique piece and how it contributes to the larger outcome. This is where they understand your specific needs and their decision space. This is where they commit to owning their responsibility.

A meeting can reinforce that clarity. But it can't create it. In fact, a meeting can diffuse responsibility more easily than it clarifies it.

The team's performance needs individual conversations. When you activate each person through clear 1:1 relationships, they learn what ownership looks like. They learn what it means to own a responsibility. They learn to exercise autonomy within boundaries. They learn to escalate when something's not working.

That's how you build a high-performing team. Not through team meetings. Through consistent, clear 1:1 activation.

You're Shaping Culture, Intentionally and Unintentionally

Here's something to be conscious about: you're shaping your team's culture through what they see you doing.

How you activate people. What you prioritize. How you handle problems. What you tolerate. What you ignore. How stressed or calm you seem. How fairly you treat people. How you handle conflict.

All of it shows something about what matters and how performance works in this team.

Sometimes this is intentional. You're deliberately modeling ownership by being clear about your own responsibilities. You're deliberately showing fairness by documenting agreements and renegotiating when needed.

Sometimes it's unintentional. You're stressed about a deadline, and people interpret that as "speed matters more than quality." You're focused on a particular outcome, and people interpret that as "this is what really matters." You handle one person's mistake harshly and another's leniently, and people draw conclusions about fairness.

The culture that emerges in your team is also unique. Even if you're the same leader across multiple teams, the culture will be different because the outcomes are different, the people are different, the contexts are different. But in each team, you're shaping that unique culture through how you show up and what you model.

This is worth being conscious about. You're doing it whether you intend to or not. So you might as well be intentional about it.

You Don't "Protect" Your Team—You Own the Responsibility

There's a lot of talk in leadership circles about "protecting your team." This language is problematic because it implies something that isn't true: that the team owns something and needs defending.

The team doesn't own the responsibility. You do.

If criticism comes about the team's overall performance—"your team's delivery was late," "your team's quality is slipping"—that's criticism of you as a Contributor. You own it. You address it. You take responsibility for how the team performed.

You don't hide behind the team. You don't make excuses. You don't diffuse accountability by acting honorable and protecting 'the team' from criticism.

Remember - you can never abdicate a responsibility that you’ve accepted. You own the responsibility. Full stop.

Another thing you own, as leader, is fairness. You ensure that outside criticism of anyone’s performance while they’re supporting you is specific, fair, and based on what was actually observed. Then you discuss it directly with the people involved.

Or, if you have a concern that someone is failing to meet their responsibility to you, address it with them. Not in team language. Specifically, fairly, based on the responsibility agreement and the key results. Your role is to help them understand what went wrong. You figure out together how to improve.

But you don't use "the team failed" as a way to avoid addressing anyone's responsibilities. We each need to be accountable for our own responsibilities. And only our responsibilities. 

The distinction is simple and clean:

• If it's about the overall outcome (your responsibility): you own it. Address it with your own boss.
• If it's about an individual's performance (their responsibility for their piece): address it directly and fairly with that person.
• Ensure no one is subject to unfair criticism. But don't hide fair criticism in team language.

The Foundation Is Always the Same

Whether your team is large or small, collaborative or independent, co-located or distributed, the foundation never changes.

Clear alignment and accountability through 1:1 relationships is your activation approach.

That's how teams become high-performing. Not through team-building exercises or mission statements. Not through meetings or collaboration frameworks. Through consistent, fair activation of each person's responsibility.

You show them what ownership looks like. They learn to own their piece. They learn to make decisions autonomously. They learn to escalate when something's not working. They learn fairness through how you treat them.

That's the culture you need to build, whether you're doing it intentionally or not.