Five Shares. One Team

What’s this about

To work as one, a team needs five core characteristics demonstrated through behaviours and practices. These five characteristics were first described in Graham Winter’s Think One Team as the ‘Five Shares’: share the big picture, share the reality, share the air, share the load, and share the wins and losses.

Why is it important?

The five shares describe the most important practices you can use to build team collaboration, as well as those that are most likely to hold you back. These elements form the basis for a primary tool, Five shares (above the line / below the line).

The tool offers a:

• shared language to describe what working as one means

• simple and elegant way to identify team strengths and potential derailers

• scalable framework to take across the team of teams in your organisation.

How does it work?

Use Five Shares to build a shared understanding in your team, or wider team of teams, about what working as one team means and the potential strengths and derailers of collaboration. Read the background to Five Shares in Chapter 12. Collaborate as One, and then Download the Five Shares model and print it or show on screen to introduce the tool to your team.

Step 1. Explain how people and teams who collaborate within and between teams do five things differently from those who are less connected.

Step 2. Walk through each of the five shares and their respective shadows, encouraging people to add insights on the team’s current behaviours and practices and the impacts of these on team relationships, effectiveness and outcomes.

Step 3. Guide the team to identify three strengths to continue and three behaviours or practices to start (or do more) or to stop (or do less).

Step 4. Facilitate a conversation that draws out agreed priorities to sustain or improve your team collaboration.

Keep a copy of the Five Shares model and use it as a reference to keep track on your team’s strengths and development priorities.