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Giving your organisation the competitive edge with Graeme Joy

Graeme Joy, the first Australian to ski to the North Pole, will show you what it takes to transform your business from a group of individuals to a High Performance Team.

Many businesses are learning that the key to quality in an organisation lies not in the success and achievement of individuals, but in the success of a high performance team.

This emphasis on a group effort rather than on individual performance is spreading from the upper echelons of senior management to the employees on the front line with outstanding success.

A high performance team is a group of people with a common vision and the promise of a shared reward at the end. Each team member is equally important as a high performance team should maximise the best attributes of each individual - everyone is working off and with each other. They are more efficient, productive, they are a spawning ground for creativity, they promote harmony in the workplace and they are the quality driver in all business. Best of all, high performance teams achieve results faster. To ignore the concept of the high performance team is to ignore the future of successful business.

There is no greater example of the success of a high performance team than Icewalk- the International North Pole Expedition. The eight person team battled through severe storms, freezing temperatures, communication breakdowns and food shortages on the 1000 kilometre journey. Temperatures plummeted as low as minus 75°c but despite all the setbacks and hardships of the trip, they succeeded in their goal, as a team and as individuals.

Graeme Joy, a veteran of many team adventures was a member of Icewalk. He believes that a high performance team is essential to the success of any expedition, be it a business venture or an Arctic adventure. "Planning, preparation, selecting and building the right team - all these are essential. A commitment to excellence by each team member is vital - if you get it wrong in the Arctic, you die!"

The parallels between the business world and the icy wastes of the Arctic are enormous. In both ventures, a high performance team is integral to its success.

The essential characteristics of a high performance team are a shared vision, excellent communication skills, a common drive, highly developed conflict resolution and organisational skills and an ability to set goals and achieve them. No group of people is naturally equipped with this plethora of business virtues, but these attributes can be instilled through training.

Joy is a renowned trainer of high performance teams. Not only is he in demand in the corporate arena as a speaker, Joy also conducts Corporate Outdoor Training, physically and mentally demanding outdoor development programmes designed for high level decision makers to develop as a high performance team.

Graeme believes that a group of people must be taught to work as a team. Through training and the constant reinforcement of principles learnt in training, Graeme believes that any group of people can become a high performance team.

The future of business success is clear- develop and nurture high performance teams in our businesses and reap the rewards of a business working as a team rather than a mass of individuals. Together, everyone achieves.