I had the fortune of participating in many sports in both high school and college. One of my favorites was track and field. However what always intrigued me no matter the sport was how the individual personalities and behaviors gelled.
Many of my teams collaborated well, while others floundered. As you can imagine there are numerous reasons such as personality, behavior leadership etc. I find it interesting that team collaboration parallels much of what happens in business.
In my experience high performance teams:
1. Function well when there is consistent and relentless communication.
2. Individuals sacrifice much for the benefit of the team.
3. Leadership actively seeks out talent.
4. There is a seamless culture.
Moreover, teams function well when good leaders exude a culture of collaboration and communication. Leaders also help members create the dream, embrace the dream and live the dream. They understand the use of goals, rewards and recognition to ensure that members maintain focused to the end.
Further helping to stimulate the high performing team is culture. Managers are the link to ensuring that members have a mission and purpose, gain valuable feedback and understand all procedures to ensure organizational goals are met. To help create the culture numerous activities are involved. Here are just a few:
1. Strategy- High performing teams operate better in proactive status. This requires leaders communicate the mission, vision and values of the organization. Leaders must inform members of the organizations driving force. This provides the statement of purpose so that members realize whom they work for and why. Answers to these questions create more passion and collaboration.
2. Hiring - High performance teams operate better when leaders hire for talent. The right people must be hired to more properly fit the organizational profile. Simply put the proper people must be on the bus. Teams cannot have all drivers or passengers. There must be a proper balance of personnel.
3. Mentorship - No organization survives without proper coaches. Many sports teams use an array of coaches to help with a variety of performance aspects. This is necessary in business too. To be at the top of the game and to ensure members meet and exceed all goals, mentorship is needed.
4. Communication - No organization can exist without proper communication vehicles. High performance teams use all means necessary to communicate effectively. In fact, with the numerous tools available today non-communication is poor. Leaders must constantly walk around and get to know staff. They must understand issues in the field and even provide objective and timely feedback. This is especially important when working with virtual teams. Leaders do not lead and teams cannot perform when communication lacks.
5. Feedback - There is a correlation between work performance and the relationships leaders have with teams. Relationships are built from two notions 1) an ability to provide consistent and relentless feedback and 2) having crucial conversations. Leaders must strive to provide candid feedback to staff. Moreover, employees cannot interpret feedback as anything but constructive. More importantly feedback must be timely and accurate. Waiting to long to provide proper feedback is not only rude but also does not help correct observed behavior. Leaders also modify mandatory reviews so that feedback is provided weekly or even monthly.
6. Reward and Recognition - Individuals need to know that they matter and their work matters. High performing teams do so when leaders provide commendations and reward effort. Of equal importance is the need to personalize recognition. Individuals provide personal efforts and recognition should be similar. Providing generic rewards will ruin credibility and relationship.
7. Support - Leaders must be available to provide constant support. This requires that leaders must constantly walk around communicating frequently with staff to ensure performance plans are understood and measured. When leaders see immediate flaws they are available to help eliminate issues. The notion also requires leaders to be readily available. The door is always open must be valid and not a trite statement meant to appease staff.
8. Decisive - High performing teams and their leaders are decisive. More importantly once they make the decision they stick to it with conviction. High performers never second-guess they believe in their direction and get all to agree.
9. Trust and Ethics - No other issue in business is as important as ethics. Ethics are the backbone of organizational culture. Ethics continues to change rapidly as more firms recognize the benefits of improving conduct especially the link between good behavior and productivity. Building an ethical reputation among employees, customers and stakeholders is not only helpful it is necessary. Among the rewards is increased efficiency in daily operations, greater commitment, less turnover, better customer service and improved return on investment.
Building high performing teams is not only helpful it is required. There is a reason why some organizations thrive and others simply survive. High performing teams align staff with the goals, organizational strategy and direction. When all work collaboratively towards the organizational purpose there is better motivation, productivity and performance.