4 Ways to build high performance team

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”—Steve Jobs

The above proverb by Steve Jobs can very well emphasize the importance of working together in teams. Teams play a vital role in organizations as well as our personal life. It is more than just a group of workers doing their jobs. The motive of building a team is to highly focus on the company goals and to achieve superior business results. There should be a good balance of skills, abilities and aspirations. Team members should have a clear understanding of each individual’s role in achieving overall team objectives.

Teams and teamwork represent very powerful mechanisms for getting results and achieving significant change in organizations. Over the years, much has been learned about the development and implementation of teams--what works, and what does not. A class of team is evolving that has the potential of replacing traditional hierarchical structures with very flat, self-directed, cross-functional, organizations. Such teams are referred to as High Performance Teams. They are highly adaptive, difficult to build, expensive to maintain, and glorious to behold. 

To build a high performance teams we should have a competent leadership. Having an adequate team leadership leads to teams effectiveness. There are no shortcuts to team effectiveness. Leader plays an important part in building teams.  He is the one to understand what it takes to build a high performance team. High performance team is equipped with a high performance culture.

To successfully have a superlative teamwork, there are certain points which needs to be understood

You don’t form teams, you build them.

Leaders are the one who serves the team, and not the one to be served. Leadership is the position which needs to be released and shared and not something that needs to be hold and control. They should have a deep understanding about the fact that it is very important to build trust among the team members because real teams are interdependent. That means they rely on each other to get the job done. Developing supportive environment will help in building teams with trust, understanding, courtesy and acceptance. Building teams results in gaining productivity and increase the level of quality, reduces the costs and faster the time to market the product.

Productive communication

 A team trust is built with open and honest communication. A high impact leader lets others speak first i.e., letting your team members to open up their mind and express their views about the development of the company freely. This develops a strong bond between the team members and the team leader. Another quality is to listen what your team members wants to convey and understanding how it will have a good impact on the progress of the company. A team leader should have a clear vision of the team. Every individual should have a space to express their thoughts and views regarding their projects. There should be strong discussions sessions on enhancing the growth of the company. Powerful conversations will surely effect in building strong performance team.

Team Diversity

 Having a team with a common taste, preference, liking, and attitude is simple to deal with but handling a team which is diverse is a real task. Solid leadership figure out the fact that the more differences that exist on a team, the smarter it can be. A potential leader understand the different qualities like functions, gender, personality, ethnicity, experience, perspective and knowledge of the individuals in the team and know how to exactly use these differences in a positive way to get extraordinary results. Having diversity in a team leads to more innovative solutions which results in delivering great performance. Team leader focus on teams interests and needs and encourage extracurricular activities for team member to counterfeit close knit, relationships and build levels of mutual trust and friendship to use diversity of team in a positive way. A strong leader believes in the power of diversity among the team members.

Motivation

Appreciating one’s work is a way of making them realize that their hard work is being count. It not only motivates the team member to keep up their good work but also helps in inspires the other team members. Appreciation can be in any form either by announcing their good work among the team or just by sending a letter of appreciation. They should know their team’s strengths and talents. Motivation and positive attitude is important than experience and negative character to build high performance teams. Moreover the team understands each member potential and how they help in achieving the objectives of business. The team generates a sense of belonging. The leader should not only appreciate the high impact member of the team but also encourage the non performing member and motivate them to perform great work. This will develop a good balance among the team member. A strong leader is someone who believes failure is the first step towards success. He do not remove the members just because they fail to perform well. In spite, he work equally towards the progress of each and every team member. Consistent feedback about the good work of the team members helps in building team spirits.

Team work not only helps in solving complex problems but also generate new ideas.it provide support and help to team members and enhance their communication skills. It results in coordination of individual activities towards achieving a common bigger goal and help people to learn from each other and develop their professional skills. The high performance team motivates and trains the individual. It helps and develops the less experience team members. The high performance team emphasize the development of the team, learning through successes, but particularly through mistakes. A team with a culture of continuous improvement and where members are motivated to develop their skills and knowledge are high-performing teams.