This morning I read with interest Australian Cricket Vice Captain Shane Watson sharing his thoughts on Australian Cricket Coach Darren Lehmann. Watson reported that a big reason for the Australian Team’s Ashes Whitewash over England was the fact that Lehmann had created an environment where the players were having fun. Watson believed that this key element had been missing over recent years.

Fun. The word itself makes you smile!

International cricket is serious business. Whole nations thrive on the success of their sporting heroes. The media presence and diagnosis of performance is never-ending. While success is public, so is failure. You could easily understand that ‘fun’ was something you did outside something so serious.

Yet humans yearn for fun. We love it.

When I work with teams one of the first questions I ask them to discuss is, “If we were a high performing team we would…?”.

The vast majority of teams have included ‘fun’ as part of their answer to this question. To be clear a high performing team does not exist to have fun. Rather, having fun is one of the critical elements that contribute to creating a high performing team.

The fact remains that if you are not having fun, at least some of the time then you are unlikely to be a high performing team.

When was the last time that you and your team had some fun? If it has been a while, do something about it. A simple suggestion is to celebrate your successes.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.