As a leader, one of the greatest challenges you will probably ever face is building and maintaining a high-performance team that stays motivated and inspired to accomplish more every day. In a previous article, I broke down the concept of “high-performance teams” and what draws them apart from their less efficient counterparts. Therefore, it’s about time to go deeper into the topic and establish some actionable steps to create such a team within your organization:
Hire for attitude and train for skill
This sounds like conventional HR speech, but it’s true – the wrong attitude can sink even the most talented employee, while a team with diverse skill sets often outperforms one full of “rock star” employees who think they know everything. Second, make sure that everyone on your team understands how they fit in with the company as a whole and that they feel like they have an essential role to play in that big picture.
When it comes to building a high-performance team, personal compatibility matters more than skills and know-how. A CIPD survey found that 44% of workplace conflict comes from personality and working style differences.
Provide small and quantifiable challenges often
The feeling of succeeding provides momentum for people to work hard and motivates them to achieve more as individuals and as a group. Moreover, challenges determine people to rely on each other and collaborate to tackle them. Plus, if your team proves the ability to accomplish small challenges easily, chances are they’ll be able to handle more significant responsibilities down the road.
Protect the team from interruptions
To do its best work, a team needs to have uninterrupted time to get into the groove of working together – a process often hindered by bureaucratic barriers. Leaders should strive to remove obstacles and bureaucratic barriers that prevent team members from staying focused on their tasks. They should have a system in place to ensure that the team can communicate with each other and with the leader if they need something.
As a manager, you could eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy by reducing the organizational structure hierarchy wherever possible, decreasing the number of hands an issue must pass through before coming to a solution. Especially if the organization is small, a flat structure may work best to cut down on the number of layers between management and front-line employees. An inspiring example is Haier, a Chinese appliance maker who implemented an almost zero-bureaucracy model.
Provide strategic direction and purpose
It’s tempting to define success in terms of numbers, but what ultimately drives good performance is the passion for a common cause. If you want people to rally behind a goal, it has to resonate with them — and that means taking into account what matters most to them personally. Then make the vision one they can own by engaging them in its creation. A “top down” strategy will fall flat if people feel disconnected from it or don’t see how their personal goals align with your company’s larger purpose.
What’s more, without an inspiring vision leading the way, you’ll find it much harder to build a high-performance team. As Edie Goldberg, author of The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Across Boundaries Unleashes Organizational Capacity mentioned, teams that perform at the highest level need “well-defined vision/purpose, and specific, measurable goals, as well as an agreed-upon approach for problem-solving and decision-making.” Clarity, structure, direction, and purpose are vital ingredients.
Provide chances for physical interaction and outside of work activities
A difference between a good, high-performing team and a bad team is if there is any connection between the team members outside their shared tasks. Not necessarily friendship, but at least a nodding acquaintance or the ability to talk about something other than work (and enjoy the conversation).
Research shows that high-performing team members build friendships and are more likely to view their teammates as kind and trusting. Moreover, members of high-performing teams typically receive twice as much appreciation from their mates and managers compared to other teams. At the same time, they are 66% more likely to support a colleague experiencing a health issue.
In conclusion, even if we are past branding workplaces as a family, as it’s proven that such claims lead to negative outcomes rather than positive ones, you can still nurture healthy relationships between the team members more subtly. You can see your team as a sports team and focus on building empathy and a sense of belonging while defining a performance-driven culture that stays to the transactional nature of each professional relationship.
Trust your team
Trust is the foundation of every healthy relationship, regardless of context. If you don’t trust your team, you will fall into the trap of fear-based management, where you micromanage and control instead of leading, motivating, and inspiring. Fear-based management may get the job done in the short term but kills innovation in the long term – something you don’t want to do when building high-performance teams.
As a leader, you also need to be aware that individuals may require different behaviors to trust you and their colleagues based on their personal and cultural beliefs. However, there are some generally available principles you could stick to: sharing thought processes and involving the team in decision-making, creating clear and transparent methods of working, showing interest and providing constructive feedback, dealing with conflict by searching for solutions instead of scapegoats.
The bottom line
As always, there is no silver bullet or foolproof way to build a top-notch team. But using a combination of the steps above can help you develop and grow a productive, results-oriented team that will bring your business closer to success. With the right people on your team and a little bit of effort on your part, you can build a competitive advantage that will lead to more positive results for your business in the future.