A Guide to Creating High-Performing, Happy Teams

The secret to building a high-performing team goes beyond just hiring skilled people. It involves creating an environment where team members feel appreciated, motivated, and genuinely happy. Here at Secret Source, we understand the importance of building teams that companies trust and we achieve this by creating an environment where happiness and performance go hand in hand.

What does this look like in practice?

Well, happiness is a complex, nuanced subject but there are some basic rules.?

If we take our own experiences and the human needs in the US Surgeon General’s guide to wellbeing, here are five key areas that we believe are needed to keep your team happy and performing their best.

1. Ensuring Safety and Security

This is the most important one. Your team needs to feel they are safe at work. Safe against bullying or discrimination and that their job is secure. Feeling safe to speak up - the feeling of psychological safety (psychological safety - you should read up about this).

Arguably, without a feeling of safety, nobody can feel happy. This is based on the human need for safety and security.

There are four stages of psychological safety:

1. Included
2. Safe to learn
3. Safe to contribute
4. Safe to challenge the status quo

2. Creating Connection and Community

Everyone needs to feel part of a team and part of a community. Your team needs to feel that they belong and have support around them.

Feeling part of a team is actually the most powerful driver of happiness in the workplace, so if your team feels close to their colleagues, that is a great start. This is based on the human need for social support and belonging.

3. Promoting Autonomy

Your team needs to feel they are trusted by their employer and they won’t be blamed if anything goes wrong. Each individual in your team needs to feel some sense of ownership. This is based on the human needs for autonomy and flexibility.

4. Providing Purpose and Recognition

Your team needs to feel their work has meaning, or at least understand why they are doing it.

You’ve all heard the story of the bricklayer:

One day in 1671, Christopher Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold, one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, working very hard and fast. To the first bricklayer, Christopher Wren asked the question, “What are you doing?” to which the bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family.” The second bricklayer, responded, “I’m a builder. I’m building a wall.” But the third brick layer, the most productive of the three and the future leader of the group, when asked the question, “What are you doing?” replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral to The Almighty.”

Each member of your team needs to feel that their work has some kind of meaning and that they are recognised for the work they do.

Think of those volunteers on the frontline of war zones; they can sacrifice all the other essentials for happiness because they have purpose. Don’t underestimate purpose and recognising achievements, it’s more important than you may think. This is based on the human needs for dignity and meaning.

5. Offering Opportunities for Growth

Finally, your team needs to feel that they are challenged and are going to grow personally and professionally in their career. You often hear the term dead-end job.

This can be avoided by..

1. Providing a clear understanding of what a career in your company looks like and clear steps on how to advance in that career.
2. Providing support along the way.

?This is based on the human needs for learning and a sense of accomplishment.

By focusing on these five areas, you can build an environment for a team that is not only high-performing but also happy and fulfilled. Obviously, there are hundreds of factors that will influence a team’s happiness, and every team is different, so this only scratches the surface. But if you intentionally focus on these five areas, reflect on what you already do well and look at what you can improve, you’ll be off to a pretty good start.

Here at Secret Source, happiness is at the heart of what we do. Through our focus on wellbeing, our high-performing teams stay together longer and collaborate better and feel as good as, or better than, an in-house team.

If you’re looking for a quality IT team this year and like the idea of speaking to a company that’s a little different from your standard nearshoring options, we’d love to chat.

Secret Source events:

• April 25 - Breakfast networking - We’re hosting a networking breakfast for our network in central London. We’d love to see you there - more details and registration on the event page.

• May 15 - Dinner central London - Supercharge your IT team’s performance using the science of wellbeing - we’ll be speaking at this event. More details and registration are on the event page.

Our recommended reads:

• AI at work - Everyone is trying to work out how to integrate AI into their companies, this article on using GPTs at work offers some great inspiration - You should be playing with GPTs at work.
• Should we be mandating our teams to return to the office? - The research seems to suggest we shouldn’t but the data is far more nuanced - this article from Make Work Better is a great summary of the latest findings.
• The science of happiness at work - Each week our founder, Richard,? gives one small behavioural nudge you can use to help your team feel happier and perform better at work. This month he talks about changing the coffee machine to boost community and a simple trick to give your team purpose. You can subscribe at happyteams.substack.com.??

Secret Source highlights:

• Latest project - Asda produces a lot of packaging and they struggled to maintain control of the change requests on their label designs. Over the last six months we have built a new platform for them that went into production in February. Congratulations to our team! Case study to come next month.
• Upgrading legacy systems - If you’re interested in seeing how we work, in January we published a case study explaining our process for upgrading an out-of-date Laravel platform.

Don't forget to subscribe to receive quick, easy, science-backed insights to boost happiness in your workplace.

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