Are You on a High Performance Team?

The distinction between good and great can hinge on the subtle yet profound characteristics of a team’s performance. It is the power of high performance that sets apart the leaders from the pack.

High Performing versus High Performance

As we have the value of strong teams in mind, let’s first look into the differences between a high performing team and a high performance team.

The quick take-away is that high performance teams operate on principles that go beyond achieving goals, focusing also on how those goals are achieved and how to continually redefine the standards of success. A high performing team is more focused on “just” the outcome.

• High performing teams excel in execution; high performance teams excel in innovation.
• Leadership in high performing teams directs; in high performance teams, it inspires.
• High performing teams meet expectations; high performance teams exceed them continuously.
• Resilience is the response of high performing teams to challenges; for high performance teams, it's the strategy.

A Simple Assessment for Your Team

Now, I would like to share a simple exercise crafted to assess to which level your team is a high performance team.

See the image and then grade your team on a scale from 1 (low) to 6 (high) on these five questions.

1. Collaboration:

How effectively does your team engage in broad-based collaboration, integrating efforts within, across, and beyond organizational boundaries?

2. Empowered Decision-Making:

To what extent are team members entrusted with decision-making authority, fostering innovation and proactive change?

3. Continuous Improvement, Growth Mindset:

Is your team’s approach characterized by a constant search for improvement and a mindset that welcomes challenges as opportunities for growth?

4. Psychological Safety, Experimentation:

How strongly does your team’s culture support psychological safety, and to what extent are team members encouraged to experiment in various ways?

5. Speed and Agility:

How quickly and effectively does your team act upon decisions, adapt to changes, and maintain momentum in achieving results?

Let’s Go Deeper on the Elements of High Performance

To better understand the elements from the assessment, let’s dive deeper on these five elements for high performance teams:

1. Cross-functional Collaboration: High performance teams excel in working across the boundaries of traditional departments, fostering a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing. This ability to draw on insights and perspectives from various parts of the organization encourages the synthesis of new ideas, leading to solutions that can improve processes, products, and customer experiences.

2. Empowered Decision-making: The empowerment of team members to make decisions and act autonomously is a defining characteristic of high performance teams. This empowerment encourages members to experiment with new approaches within their functions, leading to the development of practices that enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

3. Continuous Improvement Culture: At the heart of high performance teams is a relentless pursuit of excellence through continuous improvement. This isn’t limited to refining existing tasks but extends to rethinking and reshaping broader processes, strategies, and even organizational norms. By always seeking ways to do things better, smarter, and faster, these teams drive incremental and breakthrough innovation.

4. Psychological Safety and Experimentation: A culture of psychological safety, where team members feel safe to propose novel ideas and experiment, is crucial. This environment encourages taking calculated risks and exploring uncharted territories, making it possible to challenge the status quo and experiment with solutions without the fear of failure or repercussion.

5. Speed and Agility: Perhaps one of the most impactful outcomes of the aforementioned characteristics is the remarkable speed and agility with which high performance teams can operate. Their ability to quickly pivot, make decisions, and implement solutions positions them to capitalize on new opportunities and respond to challenges with innovative solutions rapidly. This velocity is not just about moving fast but about being adept at navigating change, which in itself is a form of innovation.

High performance is more than just good results; it's about how a team works together, makes decisions, improves, and adapts. By focusing on these key areas, any team can aim higher, work smarter, and move faster. The real measure of your team's ability lies in taking the next step towards these goals.