Secrets of High-Performing Teams

High-Performance Executive Newsletter: Greater success with less stress.

New challenges bring satisfaction and impact. Your current skills and methods might not be enough for your next advancement, or they can be costly in time, energy, and relationships. Upgrade with our newsletter, full of tools and insights based on extensive research in business performance, neuroscience, psychology, and more, to enhance and sustain your high performance.

The three essentials for high performance are neuroregulation (to get and stay calm), clearing negative self-talk and the beliefs that create it (including imposter syndrome), and creating new success habits.

This week, we're looking at the secret to high-performance teams.

……………………………………

Creating a High-Performance Team

A high-performance team starts with hiring people with the right skills, experience, and aptitude. You already know this, and you also know that it does not stop there. Next, you need to provide the right environment to allow them to flourish, and I don’t just mean an ergonomic office.

There are three aspects to high-performance teams that, once created, will make your team outstanding; physiological safety, team communication and eliminating the blocks to success.

Physiological Safety

You may already be aware of psychological safety – an environment in which individuals have freedom of self-expression (but not the freedom to be abusive). People can trust that their thoughts and ideas will be listened to and considered respectfully, even if they are disagreed with.

Physiological safety is an environment in which peoples’? nervous systems are not triggered to the greatest degree possible. The brain is always on the alert for potential threats to survival, and when it detects a threat, it triggers the nervous system to respond with physiological changes in the body – changing heart rate, digestion, blood flow, blood pressure and creating an emotional reaction. It flips people into a fight/flight/freeze nervous system state, and it’s a perfect way to prepare to handle a life-threatening situation.

Although life-threatening situations at work are vanishingly rare, people’s nervous systems can be triggered in the same way by more modern survival threats—loss of job, income, or status, or physical intimidation, humiliation, or bullying. The solution is to create a work culture that does not tolerate bullying and ridicule.

This is essential for a high-performance team because the physiological changes in the fight/flight/freeze state have a massive impact on performance. Blood flow is diverted away from the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s centre for logical thinking, strategic planning, and emotional regulation. When your nervous system is triggered, your decision-making ability suffers, your IQ temporarily drops by 13 points, your creativity drops by 50%, and you are more emotionally reactive (confrontational or anxious). You literally cannot perform at your best. So, for your team to perform at their best, create physiological safety.

Team Communication

I sing in a local choir, which is fascinating to observe. We have some incredible singers who are a joy to hear. However, we are not a bunch of soloists, each waiting for our turn. Making the best music involves listening to and tracking the other singers and adjusting to each other so that collectively, we produce a complete, harmonious sound.

My friend and Tech Team Communications expert Julie Hutchison talks about the groups of super-smart individuals she meets. Despite all their knowledge and experience, they often have never been taught good team communication skills and it significantly impacts performance.

Without a cohesive team, you have a bunch of soloists who do not harmonise, wasting time and energy and creating a less-than-great result. Great team communication needs education, training and practice to develop into a high-octane skill.

Removing Blocks

Probably the most common block to peak performance is imposter syndrome, which affects over 70% of high achievers. It is unjustified self-doubt or self-criticism, feeling that you’re not quite good enough or that you don’t belong, and it undermines performance. It is like driving a car with the handbrake on—harder, more stressful, wasting energy, and causing long-term damage to health and mental well-being.

One myth is that imposter syndrome is a personality trait, part of who you are that you just have to put up with. Nothing could be further from the truth. Imposter syndrome is an internal misconception, a false belief that your worth as a person varies according to what you do. This belief is endemic in all societies globally and shows up in high achievers as imposter syndrome.

It creates physiological stress and negative and repetitive thinking about the self, driving unproductive behaviours such as procrastination, perfectionism, over-preparing, comparing, and pushing through. In the long term, it can lead to burnout and career quitting.

Tackling imposter syndrome takes two steps – changing that internal belief in the individual through targeted training, for example, my Inner Success programme (shameless plug!), and creating an external environment that is carefully non-judgemental. By this, I mean not judging a person by their actions. Making a mistake does not make someone a bad person, or indeed stupid, lazy, or any other personal attribute.? Separate the actions from the person as much as you can.

Foster belonging by encouraging people to look for similarities when they compare themselves to others. Our brains are wired to look for differences (another survival mechanism looking out for danger), but noting too many differences from colleagues will make someone feel isolated and that they don’t belong. An active search for similarities between them and others does wonders for feeling connected and engaged.

If you have ranking or internal competition, especially in sales, be sure to emphasise that someone can be better at this, but it doesn’t make them better than someone else. Again here you separate out who the person is from what they do. Their worth as a human is always unconditional.

Creating a work culture where your team has physiological safety, great team communication, and the means to remove blocks ?(internal and external) will empower the high-achieving people you hired to work at their best. You’ll also notice reduced absenteeism, improved energy and mood, high resilience and improved retention. People love doing their best and being stretched (without overstretching). Why not create that environment for them?!

……………………………………

What I've loved this week:

Transparency!

Many business gurus have taught me that I should onboard (sell my Inner Success programme) via a one-to-one conversation, spending ages listing the benefits and the transformation, and finally revealing the investment cost.

I have followed this advice, and my fees do not appear on my website. Yes, I get that people need to understand the offering and the value before they decide, especially as this is not standard coaching work. But I’ve never felt comfortable with this approach.

This week, I had the epiphany that one of the best ways to foster trust is through transparency. It resonates for me because honesty is a core value of mine.

So, here are the fees for my Inner Success 1-2-1 programme that eliminates imposter syndrome and elevates you to your highest potential.

￡7500 + VAT to work with me

￡5000 +VAT to work with a coach I have trained

￡ 975 + VAT to be a confidential case study in a research programme I’m about to launch (announcement next week)

?

This is now on my LinkedIn profile, and my website is being updated too. I have to say, this feels so much better!

……………………………………

An action step you can do this week …

I’ve discussed what you can do for your team here. You can turn this analysis on yourself too. Take some time to reflect on these questions;

How is your physiological safety at work?

Is your nervous system frequently triggered?

How is your communication with your team?

What internal blocks do you notice?

Do you feel accepted, supported and like you belong?

Work to find solutions to any of these points, an your own performance will soar.

……………………………………

We'll cover more peak performance strategies for your team in future issues.

Do subscribe and share!

I'm Dr Tara Halliday, specialist Imposter Syndrome Coach and best-selling author. I run the 5-star Inner Success programme for executives that eliminates imposter syndrome for good. Message or email me for details.

If you think you may have imposter syndrome, take this free quiz:

https://bit.ly/ImpostorQuiz

If you get over 62%, then it’s causing enough stress that it’s worth addressing. You’re worth it!

Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend!

Tara

P.S. Thank you for reading to the end of the newsletter, I appreciate your interest and attention!

?

?

?

?

?

?