A dream team would have people with the best combination of soft and technical skills along with empowering team dynamics to emerge as the ultimate winner, as compared to any similar competing teams in the fray.
Creating a dream team is every leader's number one organisational objective in any sphere of human endeavours. The logic is simple for such focus and drives towards creating dream team, because such teams are instrumental in exceptional achievements, even impossible looking goals, against all odds.
A good example to visualise the concept of 'Dream Team' would be from the Bollywood movie Lagaan. In this movie, the villagers are forced to play an alien game Cricket against the ruling class, as part of the wager to avoid the taxes, in colonial British Raj. We would talk more about this movie in the article to illustrate the dynamics involved in creating and leading dream teams.
As a disclaimer, real life may not be as dramatic and exciting as in movies, but the challenges and opportunities to create exceptional value exist in any given business context.
While every dream team is unique, there are few structural elements as described later, which a leader should consider for formation and performance of such teams. Let's classify these structural elements into the 4 Ps of Dream Team Architecture.
Purpose
Average goals excite average teams, but a dream team gets inspired by exceptional goals bordering on the impossible.
As a leader, it's your job to get a shared vision in place. In this context, team competitiveness is important too, which pushes people to give their personal best out of sheer peer pressure.
In the Lagaan movie, while no villager has played cricket ever, let alone heard of it, the leader motivates team members by equating alien Cricket game with Indian game of 'gilli-danda'. Needless to say, the village cricket team was trying to punch much above their weight by challenging the experienced British Ruling Class Cricket team.
Personalities
As Gallup Strengths Finder research suggests, the greatest opportunity of growth is building on one's strength, not in covering for some weakness. A leader would do well by leveraging what motivates any team member and what their individual strengths are. Lack of such knowledge on work styles & personality types will affect your leadership of even an average team, forget about leading a dream team.
Camaraderie is important, a leader has to find occasions and reasons to promote it. Remember selfishness and jealousy are normal human emotions, but you have to channelize such negative emotions towards improving performance. A supportive culture helps achieve that.
In this movie, it's entertaining and inspiring to watch how the leader picks up his team from diverse backgrounds: a poultry farmer as the best fielder, a former Sepoy as a fine all-rounder, a stone throwing Goli with ridiculous, but effective bowling action, and finally another man with a crooked arm as a deadly Spinner.
Process
The challenge in creating Dream Team is about understanding a fundamental underlying process and managing it. The key process has four distinct phases: Form, Storm, Norm and Perform. 'Forming' is simplest of all - putting together a bunch of people and call them a team. However, once team formation is in place, as a natural process different work styles and priorities result into a scenario of 'storming', where there are disagreements, conflict and pure non-cooperation resulting in widespread frustration and resentment. Post such storming phenomenon, a 'norming' phase should follow by bringing to the fore assumptions, expectations and misunderstanding among team members and assigned goals. Most of the time, norming may not be a formal document; but unsaid and unwritten, yet so powerful.
If a team can come this far through a messy, but critical, process in one piece, the team is free to perform and they get into the zone of 'performing'.
In the movie, each character was so different with the diversity of strengths and motivations for such crucial Cricket game. There were numerous moments of conflicts, doubts and breakdowns, yet a dream team under effective leader could overcome all of those dark moments.
Persistence
It's not a cakewalk even for dream team with an all-star cast. The goal is so daunting and demanding, that everyone has to throw in their weights and remain engaged all along. It's the raw drama of blood, sweat and tears, mostly behind the scenes, which take the entire team forward steadily.
Remember in the movie, the team was playing a test match, not a T-20 Cricket match. Every cricketing day used to bring in its own set of challenges, and the team had to run the whole course to claim their victory.
In summary, trust is the foundation of everything else in team dynamics, which gives the leader power to create the context for mutual collaboration and effective problem-solving. As an illustration, a great business example here would be the first Macintosh team of such misfits, who trusted Steve Jobs to make Apple a legendary organisation. More importantly, the Apple company example also shows, Dream team rises and declines over time, given Nature's desire to keep the balance in the Universe.
Finally, in the movie, all team members were rookies, but such an impossible goal galvanises them into a Dream Team to eventually defeat the experienced British team and win their tax relief. End of Story!