Learn the secrets for collaborating "on" purpose and your work will always have meaning. Here's how the best leaders discover common goals that unite people to collaborate "on" purpose.

1. Establish shared clarity.
Discuss the charter, the mission, the deliverables, and the outcome of your team's work until you can articulate together a common and clear description of your purpose.

2. Select teammates for their motivation first, their skills second.
If teamwork is important to you, then look at skills after factors like drive, energy, interest, motivation, and enthusiasm—because it's shared desire, not talent, that creates teamwork.

3. Accept—once and for all—that teammates don't have to like each other.
Encouraging affinity for a shared task-not for each other-is the fastest and surest way to create strong group cohesion. Instead of using exercises and techniques to promote friendships, get everyone to adopt a common focus so that each team member sees good reason to work with the others.

4. Stop trying to motivate.
Why try motivating others when it's nearly impossible? Instead, tap into the motivation that already exists in teammates by asking them about their needs and desires.

5. Determine if your team is "built."
A "built" team has shared direction and energy. To achieve this status for your team, lay the foundation early by asking yourselves a variety of important questions. What is the team's task? What is the benefit to each team member for committing to the team's work? Are agreements in place that allow the team to operate rapidly and efficiently? Do team members share a common goal that inspires them? Do you know what each member brings to the team?

6. Know your most powerful team member.
Your most powerful team member isn't the team leader. Or the most inspired team member. Or even the smartest member. The uncomfortable truth is, your most powerful team member is your least-invested member, as his lack of commitment establishes a low baseline to which other team members may fall. Accept this sad-but-true principle and address motivation issues early, directly, and regularly.

7. Understand and honor the definition of consensus.
Consensus is not about being nice, nor is it about the majority beating up the minority until the minority withdraws. It's 100% agreement to move forward together. For your team to achieve consensus, you must know what to do when there is a difference of opinion, including silencing the majority and giving dissenters a voice.

8. Become a "fast team" by knowing how to arrive at decisions quickly.
Your team can achieve high-velocity decision making by considering more alternatives and generating them together; involving more people and more points of view; communicating and integrating with other parts of your organization; drawing on the wisdom of the "gray-hairs"; and establishing the importance of collective action by agreeing that getting a result and learning from it together is more important than being right.

9. Don't fall into the "common enemy" trap.
Instead of simply rallying to beat a common enemy—a frequent and intoxicating tactic that's more like a cheap trick—look for more sustainable and expansive goals that lie beyond beating an opponent.

10. Reorient the relationship when productivity begins to lag.
The best time to reorient a team is any time you notice that the sense of shared direction has been lost or that the team's energy has decreased. Get the team members back on track by asking them to articulate what the team has been formed to do, what's in it for them to be on the team, what the team rules and agreements are, and what they bring to the group in terms of skill and responsibilities.
Article copyright 2002 Christopher Avery, Partnerwerks, Inc.