Building a High Performance Team Culture

Long to-do lists and work plans packed with projects keep a team busy, but not necessarily productive. Too often the hustle and bustle of busy teams masks effort that is diffused, scattered, wasted. People tire, not just from doing too much but from doing too much that feels like it doesn’t matter. More time and talent can be lost to frustration and conflict if teammates find themselves working at cross purposes, unable to decide together what’s wanted versus truly needed, what’s nice versus necessary, or what must be done now versus what can wait. Energy for moving forward together soon fades as demands pile up. The satisfaction that should accompany any gain made is quickly overwhelmed by a looming sense of more left to do.

In high performing teams, members feel a strong connection to the course they intend to follow together. They share a common FOCUS, a clear picture of what the team intends to accomplish held upfront in team members’ minds, propelling purposeful action and sustaining everyone’s energies. Team focus is typically defined by...

• Purpose – a compelling reason why the team exists, the value to be created for stakeholders outside the team.
• Vision – a shared picture of success in the future, the specific results, outcomes, or conditions to be produced together.
• Path – realistic goals and planned next steps, clarifying how the gap between the current reality and their shared vision will be closed.
• Priorities – identifying the few things that matter most, right now, amongst the many things that should or could be done.

Focus is not accomplished by executive mandate or holding an annual strategy off-site. Any team can lose connection with their intended course over time if their focus becomes muddled or efforts mis-aligned by emerging possibilities, competing agendas, or distracting side projects. Staying the course is an ongoing challenge, team members regularly having experiences that clarify and reinforce their shared intentions. Seeing evidence their teammates and stakeholders are in ALIGNMENT with them on a shared path forward, it becomes easier for individual members to subordinate their personal interests to success as a team, doing what they can with, and for, each other. Serving the team's purpose becomes more important than power, politics, popularity, or what each member prefers.

Even groups of very capable people can fail if team members choose not to contribute what they can, becoming disconnected from the work of the team.

The connection between people and their work is not merely rational, a simple transaction where they do what’s required to get extrinsic “rewards” or avoid punishment. There is potential for stronger connection, an emotional ENGAGEMENT that elicits discretionary effort, risk-taking, and loyalty to the team. Higher levels of engagement happen when team members feel their deeper, “intrinsic” needs can be satisfied by doing their best work. Everyone is unique, but most people are more fully engaged when their work and working conditions arouse feelings of…

• Significance – their contributions matter to the team, and will be acknowledged and appreciated.
• Affiliation – bonded with their co-workers in a way that makes them feel respected and “safe” in interactions with them.
• Mastery – striving toward and realizing their full potential as a person and performer.
• Autonomy – having the freedom to do their best work, their way, free of unnecessary oversight or control.
• Achievement – experiencing a sense of accomplishment and success as a result of their efforts.
• Purpose – believing that their efforts contribute toward something worthwhile, bigger than themselves.

Individual engagement is reinforced when ACCOUNTABILITY is high within the team, individual members accepting responsibility for the team’s success, not just their own. On these teams, simply “doing your job” is not enough. Team members choose to lift their focus beyond their own activities believing the job is not done until intended results for the team are delivered, or everything reasonable has been tried in order to do so. Accountability is not simply reporting or justifying what happened after the fact. It is proactively taking ownership of what’s happening in the team now, constantly aligning their activities with the team’s priorities as if their own, making only promises they intend to keep, speaks up candidly about what they see going on around them, and persisting in problem solving with their peers to overcome breakdowns and obstacles whenever they have something worthwhile to contribute.

Things change quickly today. Whether competitive pressures, emerging technologies, or escalating expectations, demands to improve and adapt are relentless. A team’s “best” work must always be getting “better” to keep performance high. Over time, once capable teams and performers can slip into a comfort zone, becoming complacent, stuck in old ways, resistant to new possibilities, disconnected from the emerging requirements of their work. Achieving and sustaining high performance challenges everyone to stretch beyond limits and barriers that have become familiar, especially their own.

The raw material of team performance is the competence, commitment and capacity of individual team members. A team can't perform better until team members are capable of doing so. Ongoing DEVELOPMENT of individual capability must be a priority, ensuring everyone has opportunities to acquire new knowledge and skills, experiences that test and stretch existing competence, and coaching to ensure confidence builds as competence does.

Having capability is a start, but not enough unless team members have the freedom to fully apply that capability to their work connect with their work in an empowered way. In a busy, ever-shifting workplace, performance cannot be controlled as it was in the past, overseen by “bosses” with superior technical skills who closely monitored and meddled in the work of their “subordinates”. Team members today often work at a distance, where they alone are positioned to choose what will be done, out of sight of those supposed to be in charge. And increasingly, their job-related knowledge, skills, and experience exceed, or are at least more current, than those expected to “supervise” their efforts. Performers in the modern workplace do not have to be “given” power over their work - they already have it.

What they need is space, an opportunity to use all their capability doing their best work, their way, on behalf of the team. Working free of unnecessary supervision and controls, they should experience just enough structure to ensure they do what is expected while having access to the support they need to do it confidently. This does not mean they have free rein to “go it alone”. The price of empowerment is…

• Demonstrating task-related capability, both competence (ability) and commitment (willingness) to do what is needed;
• Coordinating and collaborating responsibly with teammates and others who have an interest in what they do; and,
• Accepting reasonable risks and the likely consequences, good and bad, of their choices.

At the most basic level, teams are groups of individuals coming together to complete a task, solve a problem, or achieve a goal. If everyone does their job well, each focused on their responsibilities while communicating and coordinating with others, their efforts can be additive, the results positive. Commonality and sameness lubricate interaction in these cooperative teams, everyone “fitting in” and “on the same page”. And this may be enough if consistency and stability are critical goals for the team.

But in more dynamic, demanding environments, real strength is not found in sameness but rather in the differences amongst team members. If the diversity individuals bring to the team can be captured and combined effectively, the team’s potential to produce, improve, and create is enriched by accessing a larger, deeper pool of life experiences, information, perspectives, talents, and styles.

Collaboration requires teammates to connect more fully as people, not just performers, interacting in ways that are both…

• Considerate – is rooted in caring about others, seeking to know them on a personal level and respecting them as they are. It takes listening to understand not just to hear, flexing to accommodate diverse opinions or preferences, and following through on commitments made.
• Authentic – demands team members be the “best” of who they really are with each other, genuine, speaking freely and honestly, candidly revealing both strength and weakness as necessary, and disagreeing openly rather than behind each other’s backs.

Consideration is not an excuse to be soft on people; authenticity is not permission to be insensitive. When done in balance, a team culture becomes challenging, but socially safe. Feeling respected for who they are, individuals experience less pressure to “fit in” by trying to be someone they are not, and become more willing to risk revealing what they really think, feel, or want. Trust amongst team members grows, allowing communication to happen more quickly and transparently, with less time and energy lost to misunderstandings and politicking.

Of course, differences can also be a source conflict. Collaborative teams though get their disagreements out in the open more quickly, before they create disruption or hard feelings that can undermine the fabric of the team. Resolving conflict on these teams becomes easier when everyone is confident their colleagues will say what they mean and mean what they say, will give back as much as they get to find mutually satisfying solutions, and can be counted to keep their commitments reliably.

There are moments on any team when members are challenged to adjust to the behaviour of others, put collective interests ahead of selfish interests, and do the hard things high performance requires. Choices made in these moments reveal who each team member really is, their intentions, competence, and reliability. Other team members watch those choices, then make their own: Can I count on this person as a teammate, or not?

If “yes,” the connections amongst teammates deepen. If the answer is “no”, the team cannot gel.

Some simply miss their moments to do right by the team and their teammates. They don’t notice, don’t know what to do, or don’t care. Others are unwilling to risk putting themselves out there, paying the price teamwork occasionally requires. Instead they step back, staying uninvolved, hoping to remain comfortable bystanders. Especially in the most challenging moments, some simply react, doing what they have always done or what feels right for them in the moment, seeming to care little about how their actions impact others or the team’s capacity to perform. If challenged, this group often claim they had no choice, that something or someone else is to blame or exclaiming “that’s just the way I am.”

Personal responsibility is a core element of high performance. It starts with recognizing however you respond to happenings around you, you had a choice. Perhaps you can’t change what’s happening, but you can choose what you do about it, stepping up to challenges rather than stepping back from them, or considering how others are impacted rather than ignoring them. Responsible team members care more about delivering results and working effectively within the team than keeping themselves comfortable. They choose say what needs to be said even if it is unpopular, act rather than make excuses, and adapt to things they truly cannot change. Where there is opportunity for change, they take the necessary steps and risks to make things happen themselves, or influence those that can. Those good choices earn them credibility in the eyes of their teammates, a personal brand as a trustworthy partner worthy of support.speaks up candidly about what they see going on, persists in problem solving with their peers to overcome obstacles, and does what they say they will do to demonstrate their commitment to succeeding together.Blaming, complaining, or hoping others take care of problems become unacceptable team behaviour.

Perhaps the most critical aspect of responsibility in a high performing team is willingness to learn, to abandon beliefs, attitudes, or habits that limit the the individual or team in favour of acquiring and implementing new ways to succeed together. Change is constant in modern business – what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. And each team member brings with them a unique set of needs, beliefs, and preferences. Inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, and creativity serve a team both in responding to external threats and opportunities, as well as managing the internal stresses and strains that inevitably accompany unique individuals working to find common ground together. Teams work best when everyone is ready to learn how to do what’s right and required now, rather than sticking with what has worked for them in the past.