---
title: Building winning teams - Linus Murphy
description: Values that cost something, what attitude can and cannot do, and
  how high-performing teams hold morale when it is tight.
url: https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/
language: en-GB
type: article
author: Linus Murphy
author_url: https://linusmurphy.com/about/
---

[The Leadership Guide · Chapter 8](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/)

# Building winning teams: core values, attitude and morale under pressure

By [Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/) • 19 min read

Focus areas 16, 17, 25: Core values of winning teams; Attitude: what difference does it make?; Build high-performance teams.

![Empty stadium seats in a curve of light, pitch out of focus below](https://linusmurphy.com/images/guide/ch08-hero.webp)

Google’s Project Aristotle: how the team works beats who is on the sheet — with psychological safety as the floor.

Winning teams are not a mood, a poster, or a collection of impressive names. They are a small number of people who still tell the truth, keep promises, and hold a standard when the week is ugly. Core values, attitude and high performance sit together because none of them works alone. Values that never cost anything are decoration. Attitude without a system is a pep talk. High performance without morale is a quarter you will pay for in the next one.

I have led teams across more than twenty countries and I have sat with executive tables that could not. The difference was rarely intelligence. It was whether the room had a few things it would still do when those things were expensive — and whether people could stand the load without turning on each other.

This is a harder year to fake that. In 2024, [the share of engaged employees worldwide fell from 23 per cent to 21 per cent](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659279/global-engagement-falls-second-time-2009.aspx). [Manager engagement fell from 30 per cent to 27 per cent](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659279/global-engagement-falls-second-time-2009.aspx), while individual contributors stayed flat at 18 per cent. Gallup published those figures in April 2025. I read them as a climate report, not a reason to hire a morale vendor. The people who set the weather in your building are tired. If your answer is another offsite about winning, you have not heard the room.

Three focus areas, one job. Name values that still bite. Understand what attitude can and cannot carry. Then build a team whose performance is a way of working, not a coincidence of talent. I wrote the previous chapter on [getting good people around you](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/getting-good-people-around-you/) because a table of pretenders cannot hold any of this. This chapter assumes you are willing to do that work — and still need the team, not only the names.

## Core values of winning teams

A core value is a trade-off you will still make when it is expensive. If it has never lost you a hire, a deal, a comfortable silence or a rainmaker exemption, it is not a value. It is interior design.

I am impatient with value lists that could belong to any company in the park. Integrity. Excellence. Respect. Collaboration. Nobody is against them, which is why they do no work. A winning team’s values are specific enough to create an argument. They tell you who you will not hire. They tell you which miss is survivable and which is not. They tell you what you will say to the board when the comfortable option is the dishonest one.

Write them as verbs and costs, not as nouns and hopes. Not “candour”. “We put the downside on the table before the recommendation — even when the chief executive is in love with the option.” Not “accountability”. “A miss has an owner, a date and a next proof within seven days.” Not “customers first”. “We will kill an internal favourite if it fails the user, and we will do it in the meeting, not in a side chat.”

Then use them where they hurt. Hiring. Promotion. The first time a senior person misses. The first time a client asks you to pretend. Values that only appear in the induction pack are a tax on the people who believed them.

Winning teams do not have more values. They have fewer, held more tightly. Three to five is enough. More than that and you have a catalogue. Catalogues are how you avoid a decision. I would rather a team argue about two real trade-offs than nod through twelve adjectives.

The test I use in the room is simple. Take the value you put on the wall. Ask: when did we last pay for this? If nobody can name a payment — a deal walked, a hire blocked, a public correction, a bonus adjusted — you do not have a value. You have a wish. Wishes are fine in January. They are useless in a tight September.

Values also have to survive [change, not only steady state](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/). A team can look aligned while the market is kind. The same team will tell you what it actually worships when a forecast breaks. If the value was “one company” and the first cut is a blame story about another function, you have learned something. Write that down. That is the real list.

I do not ask teams to be saints. I ask them to be consistent. Inconsistent values are worse than none, because they train cynicism. Cynicism is not an attitude problem. It is a rational response to a standard that moves.

![Thick coiled rope on a worn wooden deck, one end ready to take load](https://linusmurphy.com/images/guide/ch08-body-1.webp)

*A value is a rope. It only counts when it takes weight.*

What this looks like in the working week. Before the next hire, write the value as a veto: “We will not take this person if they fail X, even if they make the number.” Before the next steering meeting, pick one value and ask where it was expensive this month. If the room cannot find a cost, the value is idle. Idle values should come off the wall. A shorter list that still bites is a gift to the people who have to execute.

Connect this to the rest of [team and culture performance](https://linusmurphy.com/team-culture-performance/) as a practice, not a department. Culture is what the table does when the CEO is on a plane. Values are the few things that table will still do.

| Poster version | Costly version | Payment you can name | If you will not pay |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Integrity | We correct the pack before the board does | A slide you kill in the room, with your name on the miss | Take it off the wall. You have a narrative standard |
| Excellence | The night-shift test: one lead, one lag, visible weekly | A pet project you stop because it cannot be inspected | You have taste, not a standard |
| Respect | Dissent in the room; no corridor rewrite | You interrupt the joke that landed on the speaker, not on the issue | You have manners. Players will not stay |
| Collaboration | A joint scoreboard and a kill date | Two functions share a miss and a recovery, in the minutes | You have meetings. You do not have a team |
| People first | Fair load, even standards, honourable exit | You hold a rainmaker to the same miss protocol as a junior lead | You have sentiment. Captivity will follow |
| Customer first | Kill an internal favourite that fails the user | A launch you delay in public rather than ship a story | You have a slogan for the conference |

If a value cannot survive that table, do not print it. Printing is how you train the building to stop believing you. Belief is morale. You will need it in the next section, when attitude is asked to do a job it cannot do alone.

## Attitude: what difference does it make?

Attitude is the stance you take towards the load. It is not a substitute for skill, strategy or sleep. It can recover a miss, hold a room, and stop a standard turning into bitterness. It cannot replace a pretender, fix a dishonest brief, or survive championship week forever.

I care about attitude because I have watched two tables with similar talent produce different Fridays. One treats a miss as information and a next proof. The other treats a miss as an identity threat. Same market. Different stance. The second table will talk about resilience and then eat itself.

What attitude can do is specific.

It can shorten the distance between a miss and a clean sentence. “We missed. Here is what we owned. Here is the date.” That sentence is a stance. Without it, you get weather reports.

It can keep energy from becoming a moral contest. Tired people still have to be decent. Attitude, in a serious team, is the decision not to use exhaustion as a licence to be careless with colleagues. That is different from pretending you are not tired.

It can hold morale when the quarter is tight — if, and only if, the standard stays even. People will run hard for a leader who is also in the weather and still fair. They will not run hard for a leader who calls for attitude while exempting themselves from the miss protocol.

What attitude cannot do is just as important, because this is where companies waste years.

It cannot compensate for the wrong people. A pretender with great energy is still a pretender. Cheerfulness is not ownership. If you are asking attitude to cover a classification you will not make, you are being cruel to the players.

It cannot compensate for a dishonest strategy. You cannot attitude your way through a brief nobody believes. If the numbers only work on a slide, the stance you want from the team is candour, not grit.

It cannot compensate for load you refuse to design. I have written that [energy is a leadership system](https://linusmurphy.com/articles/why-executive-energy-is-a-leadership-system/), not a slogan. Endless intensity is not attitude. It is a failure to periodise. In a bike race you do not peak every week. In a company, treating every month as a launch is how you burn the people you will need in November.

Gallup’s 2024 figures should sit here, not in an HR appendix. [Global engagement fell from 23 per cent to 21 per cent](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659279/global-engagement-falls-second-time-2009.aspx). [Managers dropped from 30 per cent to 27 per cent engaged](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659279/global-engagement-falls-second-time-2009.aspx); managers under 35 fell by five points, and female manager engagement dropped by seven. Individual contributors stayed at 18 per cent. The climate is not “people have forgotten how to try”. The climate is that the people who set the weather are running out of stance. Asking them for more attitude without redesigning the role is how you get posters and quieter resignations.

[I have no interest in executives copying sport heroics](https://linusmurphy.com/articles/what-elite-sport-taught-me-about-boardroom-performance/). Heroics are how a team learns not to come through. Attitude that serves a team looks like taking a pull, then rotating off. The coaching page for that translation is [From elite sport to the boardroom](https://linusmurphy.com/services/from-elite-sport-to-the-boardroom/). The rider-to-company files are in [From the peloton to the boardroom](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/).

Nice attitude can also be a hide. The person who is always “fine”, always “happy to help”, always smoothing. Sometimes that is character. Sometimes it is a refusal to put a downside on the table. Harmony is not a winning-team value. Usable dissent is. If your most “positive” person is also the last to tell you the truth, you do not have a culture of attitude. You have a culture of manners.

![Blank metal locker tags hanging on hooks above empty wooden benches](https://linusmurphy.com/images/guide/ch08-body-2.webp)

*Attitude is not a slogan on a door. It is what the tag does when the number is ugly.*

Practical habit. In the next miss, listen for the stance, not the adjectives. Do they go to ownership or to weather? In the next tired week, watch whether you use your own fatigue as an excuse to be sharp. In the next “we need more energy” conversation, ask what load you will take off the table before you ask for a better mood. Attitude is a response to a designed week. It is not a personality transplant.

I will not tell you that attitude is 90 per cent of the game. A team with the right people, a few costly values, and a stance towards the miss will outrun a more talented table that treats every ugly number as an insult.

| Ask | Attitude that serves | Attitude that hides | What to do instead of a speech |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A miss | A clean sentence, a date, a next proof | Weather, blame, or theatrical grit | Open the meeting with the miss. Write the owner before anyone stands |
| A tight quarter | Fair load, even standard, no exemption for the rainmaker | “We all need to want it more” | Name one thing you will stop. Periodise. Do not peak every week |
| A tired manager | Decent under fatigue; asks for help without dumping | Sharpness dressed as honesty, or withdrawal dressed as trust | Redesign the role. Gallup’s drop in manager engagement is a design problem |
| A silent table | Someone puts the downside in while it is still cheap | Smiles, then a corridor meeting | Downside first, recommendation second. Close before the corridor starts |
| A win | Credit that is specific; recovery that is scheduled | Heroics; championship week extended | Name who took the pull. Then come down. Adaptation happens after the session |
| A pretender | Will not cover for them with energy | Uses positivity to avoid classification | Return to players versus pretenders. Attitude is not a disguise |

If you want one sentence for the team: attitude is how we stand on the miss, not how loudly we talk about winning. Then prove it the next time the pack is ugly. Morale is watching.

## Build high-performance teams

High-performance teams are interdependent groups that can tell the truth, keep promises, and still like the work enough to stay in it when it is tight. They are not work groups that meet to hear information. They need one another to get the work done. That distinction is not mine. It is the starting point of [Google’s Project Aristotle, as set out on re:Work](https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness).

Google studied 180 teams — 115 project teams in engineering and 65 sales pods — and tested both who was on the team and how the team worked. The finding that still earns its keep: what mattered was less who was on the sheet than how the team worked together. In order, the dynamics were psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact. Colocation, extroversion, individual star power, seniority, team size and tenure did not carry the same weight in that research. I do not treat Google as a church. I treat that list as a diagnostic that has survived contact with executive tables that do not write software.

Charles Duhigg’s [2016 account in the New York Times Magazine](https://web.archive.org/web/20160301200613/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html) is the human version of the same research. He opens with Julia Rozovsky, later on the Aristotle team, living the finding before Google named it. Her Yale study group had similar people and felt unsafe: she had to prove herself, people talked over one another, mistakes felt expensive. Her case-competition team was mixed — army officer, think-tank researcher, nonprofit director, refugee-programme consultant — and could say anything. “No one worried that the rest of the team was judging them.” They won. The lesson was not “hire nicer people”. It was that the norms of the room beat the resemblance of the CVs.

Psychological safety sits first because nothing else in the list works without it. Amy Edmondson defined it as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking — a question, a miss, a half-formed dissent — without punishment. [Harvard Business Review’s 2023 explainer](https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety) is still the clean public account of what the phrase does and does not mean.

At an executive table it is not niceness. It is not equal airtime. It is whether a CFO can put a downside on a favourite option without paying with the next mandate. I have a separate field note on [psychological safety at the executive table](https://linusmurphy.com/articles/psychological-safety-at-the-executive-table/). The short version for this chapter: if the truth cannot enter the room that can act, you do not have a high-performance team. You have a talented audience.

Dependability is the unfashionable sibling. People do what they said, on time, at a quality the others can build on. Pretenders are undependable in a specific way: they are present, even impressive, and still not someone you can build the next step on. A team that cannot depend will spend its intelligence on hedging.

Structure and clarity is job expectations, the path to meeting them, and the consequence of missing. Google often uses objectives and key results for this. You can use a one-page scoreboard and decision rights. The form matters less than whether a night shift could read it. Ambiguity feels like autonomy to a chair who likes improvising. It feels like danger to everyone else.

Meaning is personal: why this work is worth the load for this person. You cannot assign it. You can stop crushing it — by lying about the strategy, by using people as spare parts, by celebrating heroics that make the work feel pointless.

Impact is the belief that the work makes a difference to a real outcome, not only to a slide. Teams that cannot see impact start performing the meeting. Performance of the meeting is how morale dies while the dashboard still looks busy.

> How the team works beats who is on the sheet — with psychological safety as the floor, not as a mood.

A short history

In 1965 Bruce Tuckman published a short paper in *Psychological Bulletin* describing how small groups tend to move: forming (polite and unclear), storming (conflict about power and task), norming (rules appear), performing (the work can finally be the point). He later added adjourning. It is a weather report, not a workshop agenda. Plenty of executive teams get stuck in storming and call it passion, or freeze in forming and call it alignment. Amy Edmondson named the floor that performing actually stands on. Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk — a question, a miss, a half-formed dissent — without punishment.

Google’s Project Aristotle, reported on [re:Work](https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness) and in [Duhigg’s 2016 *New York Times Magazine* piece](https://web.archive.org/web/20160301200613/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html), put that construct first among the dynamics of effective teams. You do not skip storming by printing Tuckman’s words. You get through it by making it safe enough to have the conflict in the room that can act, then keeping the promises that make performing possible.

What this means for a CEO this week is less mystical than the literature.

You design interdependence on purpose. If the table can succeed as a set of solo acts, it is a work group. Give it a problem that cannot be solved in one function. Score it jointly. Kill dates in public.

You put safety in the agenda, not in a speech. Open with the miss. Thank the first challenge and answer it last. Close the decision before anyone stands, so the corridor cannot become the real meeting. Rotate a red-team role so dissent is a job, not a personality.

You make dependability inspectable. Minutes name the owner and the date. A miss protocol within seven days: facts, cause, next proof. No new numbers sprung in the room. Late items wait. That is not bureaucracy. That is how adults keep promises.

You keep meaning and impact from becoming posters. Once a month, the table says out loud who the work is for and what changed because of last month’s calls. If nobody can answer, you do not have a motivation problem. You have a work problem.

Morale under pressure is the test of all five. When the quarter is tight, unsafe teams go quiet, undependable teams start hedging, unclear teams improvise, and meaning collapses into “just get through this”. High-performing teams get shorter, not faker. They cut load, keep the standard, and tell the truth about the weather without using it as a personality.

That is why [who you put around you still matters](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/getting-good-people-around-you/), even though Aristotle found that stars on the sheet were not the main driver. Google was not saying hire at random. It was saying that a stack of impressive people with rotten norms will lose to a less decorated group that can risk a sentence. Get players, not pretenders — then build the norms. Skip the first and the second becomes a workshop. Skip the second and the first becomes a crowd.

I do not promise a high-performing leadership team. I do insist on inspectable behaviour in the room we are actually in. If you want that work done with the table, not only with the chief executive, that is [executive team coaching](https://linusmurphy.com/services/executive-team-coaching/) on a live problem — not bonding.

| Aristotle dynamic | Failure at the exec table | Practical move | Signal it is working |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Psychological safety | Downside waits for the corridor; the chief executive defends the first challenge | Downside first, recommendation second; chair answers last | A named risk in the minutes before the vote |
| Dependability | Impressive meetings; work that cannot be built on | Owner, date, next proof; miss protocol inside seven days | Someone else can start from what was promised, without a translator |
| Structure and clarity | Improvised calls; decision rights live in the CEO’s head | One-page scoreboard; which calls the chief executive will stop snatching | The night shift could read the plan |
| Meaning | People cannot say why this load is worth it | Tell the truth about the strategy, including what changed | Someone can connect their week to a sentence they still believe |
| Impact | Activity without a visible difference | Once a month: what changed because of last month’s calls | The table can name a user, a number, or a kill — not only a slide |

If you only install one ritual, install the close. Log the decision, the owner and the assumption before anyone stands. Most “team problems” I see are unclosed meetings wearing a culture costume. High performance is often just the discipline of finishing the room.

The argument

**Common objection.** “We do not have time for psychological safety. The quarter is tight. People need to toughen up. Google is not our business.” It sounds like seriousness. It is often a way of keeping the chief executive as the only person allowed to be incomplete.

**Counter.** Safety is how you get the miss while it is still cheap. Duhigg’s account and Google’s own write-up agree: how the team works beat who was on it, and safety was first. A tight quarter is exactly when hedging, corridor meetings and silent packs get expensive. Toughness that cannot hear a downside is not toughness. It is fragility with a loud voice. You do not need to be a technology company to need a room that can risk a sentence.

**When the opposite is true.** Safety without a standard is a salon. If the table uses “psychological safety” to avoid a classification, a firing, or a decision, you have imported a phrase and left the work. Edmondson’s construct is interpersonal risk in service of the task, not comfort. There are also hours — a live incident, a market window measured in days — when you narrow the room and decide. Do that in the open, with a named owner, and return to the full table when the window closes. Emergency is not a personality, and it is not an excuse to skip the close.

Key takeaways

-   A core value is a trade-off you will still make when it is expensive. If it has never cost you, it is decoration.
-   Attitude is a stance towards the load. It can recover a miss. It cannot replace a pretender, a dishonest brief, or a week you refuse to design.
-   Google’s Project Aristotle: how the team works beats who is on the sheet. Psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, impact — in that order.
-   Tuckman described weather (forming, storming, norming, performing). Edmondson named the floor performing stands on. You do not skip the storm with a workshop.
-   In 2024 global engagement fell from 23 per cent to 21 per cent, and manager engagement from 30 per cent to 27 per cent. The people who set the weather are tired. Redesign the week; do not print a poster.

### Reflection questions

1.  Which value on your wall has actually cost you a hire, a deal, or a comfortable silence in the last year?
2.  When the last miss hit, did the table go to ownership or to weather?
3.  Where are you in Tuckman’s weather — forming, storming, norming, performing — and what conflict are you calling by a nicer name?
4.  If the CEO were on a plane this week, which of Aristotle’s five dynamics would fail first?

The chapter before this one is the bench: [Getting good people around you](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/getting-good-people-around-you/). The chapter on [leading change](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/) is what this table then has to do when the ground moves. Values, attitude and morale are how it survives the move without becoming a crowd.

If you want to put a live team on the table — one miss, one value that might be decoration, one dynamic that is failing — [book a 30-minute strategy call](https://linusmurphy.com/contact/). Bring the room as it actually runs, not as it is described on the wall.

The series

1.  Part 16 of 30[Core values of winning teams](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/core-values-of-winning-teams/)
2.  Part 17 of 30[Attitude: what difference does it make?](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/attitude-what-difference-does-it-make/)
3.  Part 25 of 30[Build high-performance teams](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/build-high-performance-teams/)

One in-depth article per focus area. [See all 30 parts](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/#series).

## Questions I am asked

**How many core values should a senior team actually hold?**

Fewer than you have on the wall. Three to five that still cost something when they are inconvenient is enough. If a value has never lost you a hire, a deal, or a comfortable silence, it is decoration. Write the trade-off, not the adjective.

**Can a team with the wrong people still win on attitude?**

Not for long. Attitude can recover a miss and keep a standard from turning into bitterness. It cannot replace a pretender, fix a dishonest brief, or survive endless intensity. Get the people right first, then ask attitude to do a job it can actually do.

**What is psychological safety at the executive table, in practice?**

A shared belief that you can put a miss, a dissent or a half-formed risk on the table without paying with status. It is not niceness and it is not equal airtime. It is whether the truth can enter the room that can act. Open with the downside. Answer last. Close before the corridor meeting starts.

**Does Google’s Project Aristotle apply outside a technology company?**

The research was done at Google, on 180 teams. The finding was that how the team works mattered more than who was on the sheet, with psychological safety first. I have watched the same five dynamics hold or fail in operating companies that do not write software. Use them as a diagnostic, not as a religion. Your table still has to name its own standard.

**How do I rebuild morale after a hard quarter without lowering the standard?**

Tell the truth about the load, keep one or two promises in public, and hold the next miss evenly. Morale is not a speech. It is whether people still believe Friday’s standard will be the same as Monday’s. Do not buy energy with a slogan. Buy it with a working meeting and a fair call.

**Should we run a forming-storming-norming-performing workshop?**

No. Tuckman described weather, not a curriculum. Most executive teams are stuck in storming and calling it passion, or frozen in forming and calling it alignment. Name the stage you are actually in, put one conflict on the table, and do the work. A workshop about the model is how you avoid the storm.

## Sources

1.  [Understand team effectiveness (Google re:Work, Project Aristotle)](https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness) (2015)
2.  [What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (New York Times Magazine)](https://web.archive.org/web/20160301200613/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html) (2016)
3.  [What Is Psychological Safety? (Harvard Business Review)](https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety) (2023)
4.  [Global Engagement Falls for the Second Time Since 2009 (Gallup)](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659279/global-engagement-falls-second-time-2009.aspx) (2025)
5.  [Developmental Sequence in Small Groups (Tuckman, Psychological Bulletin)](https://web.archive.org/web/20180613154229/http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1965-12187-001) (1965)

![Portrait of Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/images/portraits/linus-headshot.jpg)

**[Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/)**

Elite executive coach

[Book a 30-minute strategy call](https://linusmurphy.com/contact/)

In this guide: [Chapter 6: Leading change](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/); [Chapter 7: Getting good people around you](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/getting-good-people-around-you/).

## Bring the live problem into the room

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