Pillar One: Purpose

But purpose goes beyond just having an ideal everyone is striving toward. Purpose includes an understanding of how the roles and responsibilities of each team member contribute to the achievement of the mission – a lesson we can learn from great blue herons. A powerful sense of purpose helps prioritize individual goals and imbues even the dullest of tasks with some sense of meaning.

One of the most powerful side effects of having a strong sense of purpose is the willingness of individual team members to forgive one another for having a bad day. When every member of the team feels like they have a reason to be on the team that is bigger than themselves, then the grumpiness or quirks of coworkers feel smaller and are consequently forgiven faster. As everyone on the team feels a sense of ownership for the results, the tendency to get derailed by drama is thwarted; after all, who has the time to focus on something small and petty when the mission matters more?

Pillar Two: Positive Engagement

Pillar Three: Communication

Now that we have defined a high-performance team, and have a solid understanding of the three essential pillars, how do we go about building this team?

Before you can begin any effort to build your team, you must honestly evaluate the teams current state to determine if it is in a state of complete chaos, stability, or already in a high-performance state. We recognize and thank Preston Pond at the Center of Organizational Design for the work in identifying these three levels.

Too often teams put together at work would never be mistaken for a real team. They exist in a state of barely controlled chaos and are, in fact, just a loose group of individuals, each doing their own thing and rarely working together.

Chaotic teams are notable for their lack of consistency. One day they may provide top-notch work, but the next few deliverables are underwhelming. If any of these traits sound familiar, your team may be operating from chaos.

If this sounds like your team, you must accept that it will take time to shift this team into a high-performance mode, and you need to set your goals accordingly. This must go beyond setting goals within the team, it needs to apply to every goal your team is asked to achieve. Far too often strong, promising leaders fail to deliver because they underestimated the amount of effort required to shift their team out of low performance. Know that moving the team to a stable foundation will take time. This is a great resource to get started.

That can be a lot of pressure. If you aren’t up for it, take a moment to consider whether or not you want to be a leader. Certain circumstances, like replacing a beloved manager, can make the role even more difficult at first.

Assuming that you are not only ready, but that you also feel, in some sense, called to a leadership role, then know you must be the model for the behaviors and operating principles you require of your team. If you need them to trust each other, you must start by trusting them. If you need them to respect each other’s roles, you must demonstrate what that looks like. Your attitude toward opportunities, challenges, and everything in-between sets the tone for the team. Make sure it is the tone you want everyone to have.

This is the moment you and your team decide HOW you are going to work together. What are the specific behaviors your team is agreeing to, and how will you hold each other accountable for this work?

We have found that a short series of team building activities with an emphasis on participation is the quickest way to establish operating principles.

Once you have developed and agreed to operating principles, use the document as a guide to hold yourself and your team members to this standard. Solicit feedback on your behaviors and whether or not they live up to and exemplify the behaviors associated with your operating principles. Encourage each team member to call out good behaviors and candidly discuss the bad in each other.

Knowing what you are expected to do, and what you can count on your team members for, are critical in keeping employees happy and engaged while forming a high-performance team. This is more than general team rules or operating principles. This clarifies functional and technical responsibilities for initiatives, budgets, and day-to-day activities. It also clarifies who needs to be informed or consulted about certain topics or decisions and who has single or shared decision-making authority.

In most teams, the stakes aren’t as high, but the impact of clearly defined areas of responsibility can be just as dramatic. Here are some ground rules to get you started:

• Identify the single or shared points of contact for each project or initiative
• Clarify who has decision-making authority for each effort and who else needs to be informed or consulted before a decision is made
• Structure leadership roles by how value is created in the organization (by customer, product, geography, function, or combination)
• Identify the competencies required for success and create roles designed around the competencies rather than existing individuals
• List out the behavioral markers required for success in each role; resist the temptation of designing roles around existing team members

One of the most common goals senior leaders share with us is a desire for their managers to collaborate more, but overusing and overvaluing collaboration can create disengagement, loss of productivity, and cynicism. All of which are warranted when collaboration becomes its own goal, done simply for the sake of saying it has been done.

When used effectively and in the right situations, collaboration can help teams accomplish amazing results. The Focused Collaboration Model, developed based on the ideas shared by Morten T. Hansen in his 2009 book, Collaboration, can be used to help you know when and how a collaborative approach should be used.

When engaging collaboratively with your team, remember that there will come a point when a decision needs to be made. Let your team know that you will be held accountable for the decision, which means you must be responsible for the decision. This will help negate the tendency to make decisions by committee or achieve full buy-in before moving forward.

Listen to your team when they collaborate, voice your opinion last, and choose the solutions that respect the entire process, but that match the need best. Sometimes this means you will be disappointing your team by not using every suggestion offered. Sometimes this means you may have less support for your decisions at first than you would like.

With every change there will be a period of time where everything feels uncomfortable. Set the expectations around collaboration and final authority up front and keep your word. When you act knowing that you will be responsible for the results, and your team sees your willingness to be accountable for the work, then you will earn a team of collaborators focused on achieving the same goals.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that conflict is either all bad or all good. In some prominent start-up cultures, confrontational employees are rewarded with the thinking being that conflict spurs innovation and innovation spurs growth. In other business cultures, confrontation is understood as something to be avoided in order to ensure every voice is heard.

In highly confrontational cultures, it’s relatively easy to slip into creating hostile work environments where many employees hide in their shell. These cultures promote a winner-take-all culture that often leads to reckless behavior. In teams with high conflict levels, the short-term tends to take a greater share of the attention as conflict generally revolves around what can be solved right now. This is great for increasing sales and growth, but terrible for creating long-term sustainability.

If you desire fast problem-solving, increased innovation and creativity, and a higher level of engagement with the mission, you can get there much faster by intentionally including diverse viewpoints and perspectives.

Teams populated with individuals who have different viewpoints and come from different backgrounds are much less likely to be mired in groupthink. They solve problems faster because they bring a variety of ideas, which enables them to choose the best solution sooner.

So how can you foster this sense of inclusion? Return to Pillar Two: Positive Engagement, and build those relationships. Create a space for your employees to get to know each other as well. Know that checking in on your employee’s well-being is the most powerful way to tell them you care, and to keep them engaged with the mission. You cannot achieve amazing performance without putting in the effort to build the relationship. Checking on team member’s well-being, and specifically getting a sense for how included they feel, is the most powerful way to tell them you care.

As you build a diverse, inclusive team, you will need to set the tone for respectful dialogue. As the team leader, you have a responsibility to create a space in which everyone can feel respected. One of the most effective ways to model this is to demonstrate self-respect. A self-respecting individual doesn’t feel the need to criticize other teams or individuals, and when you demonstrate how to do this, your team will follow your lead. Remember, although you may not be responsible for the overall culture of your organization, you create your team culture.

Most high-performing teams don’t start out that way. In fact, leading a disengaged or disorganized team is a more common leadership experience than leading a high-performance team.

First identify if you have a down and out team or a disorganized team, and be prepared to speak frankly with your team about its current state and how to move forward.

In the case of a discouraged team, deal head-on with whatever has caused the team to lose heart. Let the team know that you understand where they are coming from before you ask them to leap into high gear. Often, a discouraged team feels unappreciated or under-valued and when you begin your tenure as their team leader, identifying the good things and demonstrating that you are willing to go to bat for the team will smooth your transition. Managing a down-and-out team is not a quick fix, and you will need to cultivate a focused type of team leadership to manage past disappointments while motivating the team to continue.

In the event you are taking over a disorganized team, you must spend time working on the fundamentals before you can soar to great heights. A disorganized team has a greater need for structure so begin by following these seven steps.

When the Covid-19 Pandemic hit millions of organizations became fully remote in a matter of weeks and the challenges of leading a remote team quickly became apparent. Everything from celebrating success to having difficult conversations was thrown into a world we could see coming, but were not fully prepared for. We had a crash course in mastering behaviors required of successful remote leaders, and how to maintain our sharpness and sanity while working from home.

As we move forward we can expect that some teams will remain fully remote and many will function in a hybrid manner. Knowing how to approach and lead remote teams will be critical for team success.

These are the top 3 teaming dimensions we have identified as crucial to developing a remote high-performance team.

We have all had too many experiences being a part of a bad or mediocre team. Let’s create teams that offer an enlivening experience. If you are committed to creating an amazingly high-performing team and achieving the remarkable results you desire, you can and will achieve it.

Over the years in working with thousands of leaders we created a ten-point list you can use to establish accountability for yourself and all the team, and set expectations. You can refer to this list to identify problems, find solutions, and celebrate team wins.