The Winning Team: A Victory Guide for Total Team Success

By Sederick Fluker

The Winning Team is a comprehensive victory guide designed to help teams and team-based organizations succeed in winning. In this book, the reader will discover:

fundamentals for constructing a winning team
the correlation between a teams performance and its win-potential
the traits of winning teams
the role leadership plays in the success of winning teams
team destroyers and how teams can defend against them
the importance of keeping a Team over Talent philosophy
how to sustain long-term winning to establish a winning legacy

and much more. This is a powerful resource for any group entity working together to achieve a common goal. Whether a team is sports-based, business-based, or organization-based, the practical concepts revealed in this book can transform average teams into winning teams!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449794026

Sederick Fluker

Sederick Fluker is a prolific writer, teacher, and success coach. He is an Alabama native whose passion is to help others reach their full potential. Sederick’s life has been a legacy of leadership and community service. His service-oriented projects have earned him numerous honors and awards such as “Community Leader of the Year,” and he was inducted into the prestigious Leadership Montgomery organization. Sederick’s educational background consists of a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in counseling. He also holds a Family Development Credential (FDC), signifying his work to empower families in need. His professional experience consists of being an educator in a public school, a counselor-mentor to at-risk youth, and executive director of a nonprofit organization.

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Copyright © 2013 Sederick Fluker.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-9400-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9401-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9402-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908009

WestBow Press rev. date: 5/28/2013

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1  The Assembly Line: Origins of a Winning Team

2  Winning Traits: Characteristics of a Winning Team

3  The Right Stuff: The Role of Leadership in Winning Teams

4  Demolition Crew: Destroyers of the Team

5  The Winning Legacy: Winning That Keeps On Winning

6  The Winning Outcome: Evidence of Victory through Planning, Preparing, and Performing

7  The Challenge

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

To my wife: Sametta, you are an amazing supporter of dreams. Thank you for taking this journey with me and being my number-one cheerleader throughout this project. I love you always.

To my children: Serenity and Samiya, it’s a joy watching you two grow up. I hope my legacy will inspire you guys to greatness someday. Daddy loves you very much.

To my parents: Mom and Dad, thanks for the unwavering support and unconditional love you’ve given me since birth. You embody the true essence of a winning team. I love you both.

To my family: I am grateful to my immediate and extended family members. Your support throughout the years has been priceless. I love you all.

To my teachers: Thanks to each of you for your amazing role in laying the foundation for my success in life. I want to especially thank Mrs. Stallworth for teaching me knowledge beyond the books, and Ms. Blair for inspiring me to write.

To my coaches: I appreciate the countless hours you invested in my growth—not just athletic, but also personal. Coach Boykin, you were a standout.

To my publisher: I want to extend special thanks to the team at WestBow Press for an invested commitment to seeing this project completed. From start to finish, your input has been invaluable.

Introduction

One may wonder how a book about winning teams can benefit businesses, school systems, nonprofit entities, company owners, and professionals in the workplace. Considering that most people associate the word team with organized sports, it’s easy to overlook the application of the team concept to other settings. However, I believe any entity that has a group of people working together to achieve a common goal can be considered a team. And if a team outscores or outperforms its competition in a given period of time, then that team is the winning team. Therefore, the winning team concept should not be restricted to sports teams only but should be embraced by any group-entity that desires to be the best it can possibly be. This book will serve as a victory guide to help teams maximize their productivity, enhance their performances, and reach their full potential as champions.

First of all, it’s important for team organizations to clearly define winning in their own contexts. This is because winning means different things to different teams. A sports team, for example, obviously wouldn’t define a win in the same way as a business team. Because winning can generally be defined by some percentage of measurable success, it can be broadly applied across various team settings. So whether you’re part of a Fortune 500 company or part of a little league baseball team, the concepts in this book can help you and your team become winners.

One concept that recurs throughout this book is total team success. I believe every individual on a team has a valuable contribution to make to the team’s overall success, regardless of how significant or insignificant their role may seem. Total team success is about each person contributing in some way to the team’s victory. In the end, the total team must take responsibility for its successes as well as its failures. That’s why all members of a team must do their part and do it well if a team is to ultimately win.

I also believe teams have to be formulated and crafted for success. Just as cars are crafted for quality performance, a winning team must be skillfully crafted and properly assembled for the purpose of performing flawlessly as a unit. It’s a fallacy to think that a winning team will somehow magically come together. No, winning teams are first designed and then developed over time; it’s a process. Therefore, it is important to understand what goes into the making of a winning team.

The ideas I discuss in this book aren’t all new; what I’ve attempted to do is harness strategies for winning into one comprehensive source. It’s a victory guide for teams