Building High Performance Teams

Are you leading an Organization, division, section, function or a team and wants to bring complete transformational change by building high performing teams, then this article is for you where you can learn how to easily build high performing teams using very simple but a powerful matrix called as Skill Will Matrix (Introduced by Max Landsberg in his book-The Tao Of Coaching). This matrix is going to change your views and will give you new dimensions towards people's management. This will give you new techniques that you can use to enhance the productivity and efficiency of your team resulting in better performance and increased profits.

This matrix will help you to realize the real potential of your team, organization and yourself. As the name suggest, this matrix is based on two matrix, Skill & Will.

Skill depends upon experience, expertise, training & understanding whereas will depends upon desire to achieve, motivation, energy & engagement.

Please refer to the matrix below. I am going to elaborate each quadrant separately.

In Quadrant A, there are employees with high level of will but low level of skills. They are most probably those people who are either in their learning phase (new joiners) or recently moved to a new role or a project with high level of revolutionary desire to do something great and take it to the next level, but lacks experience or understanding. Following would be the remedies to deal with them and take them to Quadrant B that is Star Performer-High Will High Skill.

• Invest on their training & guidance in relevant areas where they need necessary skills
• Give them opportunities, so they can develop skills through experience
• Allow them to make mistakes and learn from it
• Keep less stringent controls since they already have a strong desire
• Be supportive

However, it is leader's duty to maintain their high level of will, which can be destroyed if they are mistreated or don't find opportunities to take initiative, ownership or responsibility or get misguided by someone. Therefore, apart from skills development, it is important to sustain their level of energy, motivation and engagement.

In Quadrant C, there are employees with low level of will as well low level of skills. These are most probably new recruitment (fresh graduates), or moved from another department but a misfit to the department or function, that is unlikely but there is a possibility. They might be overwhelmed with the tasks given to them and they are not able to cope up with it. It is a challenging task for the leader to deal with these team members but it is possible and take some times to take them to the Quadrant B-High Will High Skill. Following are the remedies to deal with them and take them to Quadrant B.

• You need to be extremely straight, be very specific and direct to them. Set clear expectations, what is required from them. Be very directive.
• Give them short-term goals and supervise closely
• Maintain frequent interactions with them
• For their skills development, as oppose to Quadrant A employees, you need to be more detailed oriented and give them training not only to develop their skills but also to build up their energy and engagement level,
• Maintain efforts and results score card and measure their performance, whether they are taking initiatives/responsibility/ownership of work and performing it well.
• As a last resort, where despite long constant efforts, they are not performing well, then it is the time to fire them otherwise they will become liability on your balance sheet rather than an asset.

However, it is important to understand the reason behind low level of will before formulating any strategy to deal with it. Low level of will could be due to several reasons including lack of energy (spiritual, physical, mental or emotional/social). Figure out the reason for low level of will and deal with it accordingly. Do not pursue same technique for everyone. It varies from person to person for example, it could be due to some past experience of that person in an organization where he/she didn't find opportunities to take initiative or ownership and that adversely affects his/her emotional energy, or conversely may be that employee has low level of spiritual energy (beliefs, values etc ) which is keeping his/her will at a low level. There is also a possibility that the job/task they are being assigned is against his/her vision/mission or core values that is preventing him for doing such job. In these cases, personal coaching is highly recommended. Whereas, sometimes, due to lack of recognition of efforts, people are reluctant to perform, therefore, culture of an organization plays key role here and you being a leader needs to transform it and bring culture of recognition and reward.

In Quadrant D, there are people with high level of skills but low level of will. These are mostly experienced/seasoned employees in the organization or may be Head Of Departments or Sections or some senior level staff, who have experience, expertise and understanding but due to some reason their level of will is very low which prevents their high performance. Therefore, as mentioned in last paragraph above in Quadrant C, it is highly important and recommended to investigate the reason for low level of will and then formulate your plan to deal with it accordingly. Following would be the remedies to cope up with people in this quadrant D and take them to Quadrant B-Star performers.

• Investigate the reason for low level of will as explained above in Quadrant C and take actions accordingly.
• Provide recognition for their efforts and skills-since effort that is recognized gets repeated.
• Reinforce positive behavior
• Evaporation or purification as explained in below paragraph.

Further, intense care is required where there is possibility of Quadrant A & C employees being interacted with, and monitored by, people in Quadrant D because mostly experienced and senior people falls into Quadrant D who might be in a supervisory role like Head Of Section/Head Of Departments etc...If Quadrant A employees (who are usually new joiners) interact with Quadrant D, there is a fair chance that their level of will gets affected and ultimately will affect their performance. Also, if Quadrant C employees interact and work with Quadrant D people, there is a fair chance of forming a negative political nexus which is harmful for the entire organization. In this worst case scenario, visionary leaders , who are in Quadrant B (High Skill High Will) will be required to take immediate action by following steps as mentioned above. According to Jack Wai, people in Quadrant D could be most dangerous to your organization. Therefore, Visionary leaders should either do evaporation or purification of these people in Quadrant D. by breaking such nexus which could hamper the performance of an entire organization.

In Quadrant B, there are people with high level of skills as well as high level of wills and called as star performers. The primary objective of a visionary leader is to bring their team members into this Quadrant by taking steps as explained above. If you have team members who falls into this Quadrant, you can delegate them maximum work and strive for the accomplishment of long term vision of an Organization as well as work on employees who are in other three quadrants.

There is a possibility that only minority of your staff falls into this Quadrant B (may be 20%), in that case you need to apply pareto principle where 20% of your staff will be responsible for 80% of your department/Section or organization's performance and results.

You need to make sure:

• To bring maximum staff / team members into this star performers Quadrant
• To not to over-manage them
• To apply 80:20 principle
• To delegate authority
• To give them freedom
• To develop trust & recognition
• To treat them as partners because employees in this Quadrant are not only star performers but they are the back bone of your business.

That's all. I hope you find this article useful in building high performing teams. Your comments and feedback shall be highly appreciated, I will try my level best to convert your feedback into feed forward.

Thank you and stay tuned to my weekly article series.