Building That High Performance Team: Tips and Tricks

TAKING your business to the next level - five ways to build a high performance team

Being a member of a high-performance team involves more than just dedication and hard work - it requires good leadership.

It takes a special kind of leader (as well as other team members) who can make the work both fun and exciting - and also be willing to ‘have your back’ in any situation.

High-performance teams do not just happen by themselves.

Their leaders have a special range of qualities that not only charge the team with energy - but also encourage you to accomplish goals you might otherwise have thought impossible.

In a recent Forbes carticle, leadership expert Joseph Folkman outlines the results of some key research carried out by a large team involving more than 66,000 respondents.

The questions involved respondents rating a series of leadership behaviours in their teams - along with their satisfaction, engagement and commitment.

After analysing the results, five essential leadership elements were identified:

1. Inspiring your team

Leaders of high-performing teams invariably know how to create energy and enthusiasm in their team by inspiring their team members, rather than simply pushing or driving them to achieve better results. In other words, when employees feel they are on a mission of great significance or importance, they usually perform better

2. Quickly resolving conflict

Conflict can quickly tear teams apart, so this factor is vitally important. Fortunately, high performance leaders are skilled at resolving any conflict quickly - and promoting cooperation. Of course, this does require a certain level of maturity from team members. But when these people realise their leader trusts them and is doing all they can to make things better, they usually comply

3. Doing something extraordinary

Team members nearly always do better work when they know that what they are striving for is going to stretch or challenge them. So, high performance leaders are adept at goal setting: or setting ‘stretch goals’ to create an internal drive within the team to ‘achieve the impossible’. Of course, when seemingly impossible results are achieved, employee morale soon rises, along with staff engagement, loyalty and pride 

4. Focusing on the vision

High-performance team leaders are excellent communicators who stay on message, and constantly keep their people focused on the vision and mission to achieve. The onus here is on keeping people informed, up-to-date and on track with all the latest developments. It is also essential to keep the vision uppermost - and ‘communicate, communicate, communicate’

5. Make trust a priority

If a team leader cannot be trusted, they can’t inspire their followers, resolve conflict, or succeed in any of the above areas. Indeed, a lack of trust basically kills any authority you may have as a leader. There are three basic pillars that help to build trust:

·     Relationships

Building positive relationships increases trust - as does encouraging friendship and getting to like your colleagues

·     Knowledge or expertise

We trust people who have the right answer, can provide insight, or help solve our problems

·     Consistency

 When you promise something and do it, people trust you. ‘Walking the talk’ soon helps you gain trust from your team members.

Of course, without trust, your team isn’t really a team at all, and all of the other factors pale into insignificance.

That is why building a culture of trust based on integrity is so important for high performance leaders.

And let’s face it: we would all rather be part of a high-performing, successful and happy team, than a dysfunctional, ineffective and underperforming one!