Lecture Outline:

Definition

Building high performance teams

Stages of Team Development

Characteristics of a High Performing Team

Benefits of a High Performing Team

Definition

A high-performance team can be defined as a group of people with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, who consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation, that produce superior results.

The high-performance team is regarded as tight-knit, focused on their goal and nothing else. Team members are so devoted to their purpose that they will surmount any barrier to achieve the team's goals.

Within the high-performance team, people are highly skilled and are able to interchange their roles. Also, leadership within the team is not vested in a single individual. Instead the leadership role is taken up by various team members.

High-performance teams have robust methods of resolving conflict efficiently, so that conflict does not become a roadblock to achieving the team's goals. There is a sense of clear focus and intense energy within a high-performance team.

Collectively, the team has its own consciousness, indicating shared norms and values within the team. The team feels a strong sense of accountability for achieving their goals. Team members display high levels of mutual trust towards each other.

Building high performance teams

As we strive for competitiveness, high performance teams become even more critical to our success.

Regardless of the stage of your team coming together, these key steps will help you build a high performing team:

Develop a diverse team

Utilise people who have different strengths and are closely aligned to the crucial business functions, customers and stakeholders. The more diverse the team, the more they are likely to be strong in achieving the whole range of thinking, action and people orientated tasks for a successful outcome. Motivation is likely to remain consistently high where team members can focus the majority of their work in areas they enjoy.

Generate the team purpose

Facilitate the group to ensure clarity and accountability to the team’s purpose so that the team are clear of what success looks like and are empowered to achieve it. Focus the team on achieving results by setting explicit goals.

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Develop crucial processes

Developing critical processes will ensure the team have the vital framework to achieve their goals, and break through any existing or new barriers that prevent these processes from functioning effectively.

Share the leadership and accountability

Inspire team members to take full ownership for achieving the team purpose with the assigned resources, proposing solutions and provide performance coaching where needed to address performance issues. Be authentic, work to your own strengths and capitalise on the talents of the team members. Periodically ask the team for feedback on your leadership so that you can adjust to get the most from each team member

Build strong relationships

Plan focused team building events that ensure team members recognise what effective teams look like and the team behaviours for high performance, capitalise on strengths and stimulate continuous improvements. Subject to team location, encourage periodic ‘get togethers’ such as a quick lunch or morning coffee to ensure the ‘human’ team spirit is fostered. Remember, teams do not have to be friends, but there does need to be mutual respect and trust for high performance levels.

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Establish focused communication and review

Ensure the team regularly review progress against their team goals and make the vital adjustments to ensure success. At the outset agree with the team the most timely and effective forms of communication for this specific team.

Recognise key milestones and celebrate success

This could range from a simple ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’ to arranging awards, gifts or bonuses to recognise effort and successful results in the most appropriate way to maintain high performance levels.

Review and learn

Review each major team experience and share these across the business. Record the output and review prior to any new team coming together. This should include questions such as ‘what contributed most to our team outcome?’ as well as ‘what could we do differently next time?’.

High Performance Teams

You should also consider the following:

Have a clear and vision of where they are headed and what they want to accomplish

Are excited about that vision because they took part in creating it Act from clearly defined priorities Have clear measures of success and receive feedback about how they’re

doing Maintain open communication and positive relationships with each

other Identify and solve problems Make decisions when and where they occur Successfully manage conflict Share leadership responsibilities Participate in productive meetings Have clearly defined roles and work procedures

Stages of Team Development

Team development takes time and frequently follows recognizable stages as the team journeys from being a group of strangers to becoming a united team with a common goal.

According to researcher Bruce Tuckman, in both group dynamics and the four stages of team development he popularized (forming, storming, norming, performing), leaders must retain the motivation of team members in order to successfully overcome the challenges of the storming and norming stages (Figure 1).

Stages of Team Development Con’t

The forming stage represents the beginning, the honeymoon period; great expectations are shared from all team members. Relationships are developed, purpose is clear and ground rules are established.

The storming stage is triggered once team members start pushing around for position, stumbling/uncertain from confusion, having arguments about leadership, strategy and goals. This is when team leadership becomes imperative. The leader must succeed at keeping the team motivated, addressing all concerns and clarifying purpose and goals.

Once the storming stage is overcome the team is ready to establish open communications, stable positions and norms – the normingphase. Trust is finally gained, and “when the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.” These are the first steps towards cohesiveness (united).

Once cohesiveness is achieved, teams will move from norming to performing and subsequently to highly performing.

Characteristics of a High Performing Team

Most members of high-performing teams report that it's fun and satisfying to work on collaborative teams because they are asked to contribute at their highest potential and they learn a lot along the way.

Characteristics of high-performing teams include the following:

People have solid and deep trust in each other and in the team's purpose where they feel free to express feelings and ideas.

Everybody is working toward the same goals.

Team members are clear on how to work together and how to accomplish tasks.

Everyone understands both team and individual performance goals and knows what is expected.

Team members actively diffuse tension and friction in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.

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The team engages in extensive discussion, and everyone gets a chance to contribute.

Disagreement is viewed as a good thing and conflicts are managed. Criticism is constructive and is oriented toward problem solving and removing obstacles.

The team makes decisions when there is natural agreement - in the cases where agreement is elusive (vague), the final decision is made by the team lead to avoid disagreements.

Each team member carries his or her own weight and respects the team processes and other members.

The leadership of the team shifts from time to time, as appropriate, to drive results.

Benefits of a High Performing Team

Effective teamwork offers more than just superior performance

A high performing team:

effectively meets and communicates in a way that raises morale and alignment,

engages with all the team's key stakeholder groups in a way that grows performance,

provides constant learning and development for all its members and the collective team,

enhances generative thinking, arriving at solutions that no one individual could have

thought up by themselves.