Extreme Teams … The All Blacks are the all-conquering team from a small island, who lock together in their Maori haka before going to work. What can we learn from such teams?

May 13, 2024

Richie McCaw, the former captain of New Zealand’s “All Blacks”, is regarded by many as the greatest rugby player of all time.

His teams won a remarkable 89% of their 110 matches in which he was their leader, including two World Cups. He even played through one cup final with a broken foot, knowing that he was a key component of the team. Whilst he recognises that the team is always more than any individual, he also believes that a leader defines a team, brings together and creates great individuals.

After lifting the World Cup in 2015, McCaw said “We come from a small Pacific island, a nation of only 4.5 million, but with a winning mindset. At the start of each game, when we lock together in our traditional Maori haka, we know that we are invincible”.

Create your “Kapa o Pango”

The All Blacks have a bold and unwavering ambition to win, working on a 4-year cycle with a common team, and setting mini goals along the way to retain sharpness and evaluate progress. They search out the best players who bring each technical specialism, but equally who will work best together, whilst also retaining a search for new talent and skills.

Being part of the team is everything, with a sacred induction, and commitment to the higher purpose.

As a team they constantly evaluate, challenge and stretch, themselves. They search the world of sport and beyond for new ideas, ways to improve physiological fitness, mental agility or technical skills. Like most sports, whilst they have a coach to guide them and captain to lead them out. Their approach once in the game is that every one of them is a leader, all equal, all responsible, and all heroes when they win.

In his book “Legacy” James Kerr says describes some of their team beliefs

“A collection of talented individuals without personal discipline will ultimately and inevitably fail.”
“A sense of inclusion means individuals are more willing to give themselves to a common cause.”
“The first stage of learning is silence, the second stage is listening.”
“High-performing teams promote a culture of honesty, authenticity and safe conflict.”
“If we’re going to lead a life, if we’re going to lead anything, we should surely know where we are going, and why.”
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation or talent, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

Richie McCaw talks about some of the distinctive beliefs which the team has embraced. These include many concepts from Maori culture, such as the “Kapa o Pango” which is the name of the haka, the traditional dance performed by the team before every match, and reflects the diversity of the nation’s Polynesian origins. Such rituals become important in bonding the team, but also in creating its identity to others.

Another Maori concepts is “whanau” which means “follow the spearhead” inspired by a flock of birds flying in formation which is typically 70% more efficient than flying solo. And finally “whakapapa” which means leave a great legacy, or translated more directly, plant trees you’ll never see by being a good ancestor.

The team always wins

Netflix has built a culture of “freedom and responsibility” which has helped it to dare to innovate more radically, and transform an industry. Pixar’s teams work together in wooden huts as an individual but collective workspace, embracing an openness of debate to turn initially mediocre ideas into billion-dollar hits.

Teams are where innovative ideas are most often conceived, futures shaped, projects implemented, and where employees experience most of their work. But it’s also where the biggest problems can arise in limiting the effectiveness of organisations.

Alphabet recently set about investigating what makes a great team, in what they called Project Aristotle, a tribute to Aristotle’s quote, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Effective teams, they concluded, have a high degree of interdependence, more than just a group working on a project, or functionally aligned. They have a distinctive identity, and loyalty to each other. They plan work, solve problems, make decisions, and review together, and know that they need one another to achieve success.

Alphabet found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together. In order of importance, they found that effective teams are:

Safe: this relates to people’s perceptions of the heightened risks of taking part, or reduced risks of acting together, determined by their confidence in each other.
Dependable: participants trust each other to embrace their individual responsibilities, deliver work of quality and on time
Structured: there are clear goals, with clear responsibilities of each participant, and an agreed way of working together.
Meaning: the team has its own sense of purpose, which is relevant to the organisation, but also to the values and ambitions of the team
Impact: each participant’s contribution is seen as important, whilst the real measure of impact is what the team can achieve together.

Each Whole Foods store manager can act largely autonomously, aligned by clear metrics but responsive to local communities and the passions of their local team. Zappos, the online fashion retailer, also now part of Amazon, embraces “weirdness and fun” as the ingredients to sustain their team success.

Fearless and fearsome

Amy Edmondson’s book “The Fearless Organisation” focuses on Alphabet’s top priority, that teams need to have psychological safety, and how teams create safe spaces in organisations for people to be open, creative and grow.

Organisations can easily become paralysed by fear, which reduces people to conformity, to easy compromises, to incremental developments, and mediocre performance. Leaders are responsible for creating such cultures of fear, and are equally responsible for creating an environment where people can be fearless, or even together, fearsome.

Psychological safety is created through 3 factors:

Positive tension: It’s not about always agreeing, about being nice for the sake of harmony, or constant praise. Creating an environment where tensions are constructive not destructive requires trust, allowing and respecting people for talking openly, with different perspectives, and conflicting opinions.
Complimentary styles: Team members will have different styles of behaviour, some extroverts and others introverts, some visionary and others pragmatic, some starters and other finishers. The team values these styles as complementary and equally important.
Collective attitude: Whilst trust is important between participants, the key aspect of safety is that it is valued by each person as important to the group’s ability to function well. Whilst team members are individually different, they acknowledge they are much less without the whole.

Extreme teams, like the All Blacks, take these traits to the limit. They seek great individuals who are prepared to work collectively, with commitment and courage. They seek more diversity, bringing together differences of capability and opinion. They thrive on dynamic conversations that can embrace extreme ideas. And they have a profound belief, that together they can achieve amazing results.

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