Leading Teams to High Performance

13th February 2010

Teams are universally used in organisations to bring about transformational change, deliver projects and manage operations. The potential of high performing teams to achieve extraordinary things is well known and yet this aspiration is frequently not realised. Team performance remains one of the biggest challenges for organisations and represents a great opportunity to improve.

This short article distils 5 best practices to help leaders to release more of the potential of their people and lead their teams to high performance.

1. Select team members based on skills
Team members are often selected because they represent different constituents, because of their position in the hierarchy, or even because they have particular personality traits.
* Research into team performance suggests that for best results team members should be selected for skill rather than position or personality. When selecting on skills include soft skills such as decision making, problem solving and inter personal skills.
* Skills are not the same as knowledge and experience - Somewhat surprisingly collaborative behaviour, essential for great team performance, is inversely proportional to education and experience!

2. Invest time to build strong relationships
Relationships are the cradle of creativity and are at the heart of a team's ability to trust one another and hold each other accountable through challenge and constructive conflict.
* Take time to build relationships before and during battle - it may feel like a luxury but it is a pre-requisite to achieving performance.
* Make good use of the 'heritage' relationships that exist already (e.g. from previous teams) - Collaborative behaviour has been shown to be inversely proportional to the number of 'strangers' in a team (people who don't know each other well)

3. Nurture helpful team 'norms'
Establish ground rules for the team from the beginning and lead by example. These engender clarity about what behaviour is expected, creating a platform for team members to hold each other accountable.
* Agree ground rules around attendance, time keeping, mobile phones, completion of tasks etc. and enforce them rigorously and promptly.
* Encourage the team to take time out to reflect candidly on different aspects of their performance as this will develop emotional intelligence. An emotionally intelligent team will perform at a much higher level and voicing emotions brings a new level of vibrancy and intensity to team dialogue.

4. Clarify purpose and translate into performance goals
Help the team to clarify their purpose and translate into clear performance goals. This is probably one of the most vital functions of a team leader.
* Teams only become high performing when they are clear collectively about what their purpose is and how this translates into specific goals.
* A worthwhile Purpose Levels the playing field (everyone can get behind a worthwhile goal) and enables the leader to infuse and inspire the team with a sense of drama, urgency and even fear of failure. This can have a galvanising effect!
* Clear Performance Goals and Milestones enables progress to be demonstrated and success measured, boosting commitment and confidence
5. Establish 'Who' not 'How'
Teams become much more effective when there is clarity about who is responsible even when there is ambiguity about the task itself.
* Many team leaders will spend valuable team time discussing how a task should be performed. This is done with the best intentions but research shows that this is unnecessary and a poor use of time.
* Clarity about how a task will be completed turns out to be much less important than clarity about 'who' will do it. As a leader, cut to the chase - be clear who is responsible but don't use team time to tell them how to deliver. Try this and you will be amazed at how much shorter and more productive your meetings become!

David Parkinson is an experienced leadership coach. If you would like to know more about how you can transform the performance of teams in your organisation he would be delighted to hear from you. Email info@farsightleadership.com or call 0161 266 1090.

Further Reading
The Discipline of Teams: Jon R Katzenbach & Douglas K Smith http://hbr.org/2005/07/the-discipline-of-teams/ar/1

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams: Lynda Gratton and Tamara J Erickson http://hbr.org/2007/11/eight-ways-to-build-collaborative-teams/ar/1

Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups: Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B Wolff http://hbr.org/2001/03/building-the-emotional-intelligence-of-groups/ar/1