How many times have you worked in a high performing team?

‘Not very often; maybe once or twice in my career’, is the answer I’ve heard most often when I’ve asked this question. I've asked it quite a few times over the last 6 months in exploring where I want to focus as a coach supporting teams and people in business. Rather than being surprised I was reassured by this insight as it meant my own experience was actually the norm and we all like to feel normal, don't we....? 

As with most of the respondents to these questions my time working in a high performing team coincided with the most enjoyable and rewarding periods I’ve had in my working life. So, if it’s such a great environment to work in and usually delivers either more, or faster, or cheaper, why don’t we manage to create these fabulous high performing cultures more often?

In my experience it’s because it takes effort and personal investment in establishing relationships, ways of working and being disciplined (or brave) enough to be open, honest and extend trust to fellow team members. All too often teams just focus on doing the work they need to do rather than considering how they are going to do it. Then when something doesn't feel right they fall into the mindset of not wanting to upset someone but calling it out.  This can be because the team members simply don't know where to start as much as them thinking they don't have the time or not realising the value they will derive from the investment in it.

I see so many lessons for business from the world of sport not least in the way that the coaches make such a huge difference. The England 1 Day Cricket team have had a great summer ending as world champions achieved in no small part by focussing on their goals and how they were going to ‘be’ as a team - as portrayed recently in the film, The Edge. Personally I can’t wait for the Rugby World Cup this autumn and as a proud welsh fan I’m praying for a Webb Ellis cherry to go on Warren Gatland’s cake. But when it comes to international rugby it's hard to look past the The All Blacks when you consider high performing teams. New Zealand has enjoyed the last 8 years as world champions and I’ve no doubt that agreeing their 15 'team' principles contributed to their success (alongside testing the rugby laws to their full extent!). They were able to articulate these principles in gloriously colourful rugby parlance with an elegant symmetry to a starting line up. This was a great first step building alignment through co-creation, however their difference was that they then had the discipline to hold each other to account if their principles were ever broken.

I recently heard Sam Allardyce speaking on Alan Brazil's Talksport breakfast show. You may have different views relating to 'Big Sam' but I recall him saying something that resonated for me when he asserted in a somewhat patriarchal way 'you don't achieve anything without discipline' and the more I thought about it, the more I had to agree. It's a view strongly borne out by Jim Collins in 'Good to Great', disciplined people, disciplined thinking and disciplined actions.

This for me is where some of the teams I've worked in didn't achieve everything they could have. It wasn't so much that we didn't have similar views of how we wanted to work, even when we hadn't spent time co-creating them. It was that that we didn't have the discipline to stand up for them and even allowed our own values to be trampled from time to time. I can think of times when I didn't speak up when I knew, deep down, that behaviours weren't quite right. I now know that in doing so I allowed this to become a norm slowly contributing to an environment that wasn't fostering high performance for me or the rest of the team. Does any of this provoke some thought or maybe sound familiar?

If so, why not spend a little time reflecting (maybe during your well earned summer break) on whether you want to be 'normal' and experience the wonders of working in a high performing team once or twice in your career, or whether you want to break from the norm and make this part of your every day working environment. We all play different roles in the teams we are part of and can choose the part we play in creating or maintaining high performing teams. You might even to go on to enjoy 8 years (or more) as world beaters in your particular arena.