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Individual heroes won’t be what grows your company, and they should not be the foundation of your culture. It’s the team. How your teams behave and what they do will define the success of your company. You may have all the right people, but not have high performing teams. Given the importance of team-based work, understanding what makes a great team and helping your teams build towards high-performance is one of the the most important things you as a leader can do to move your organization forward.

Key Traits of High-performing Teams

• Trust: Having psychological safety within the team is the key foundational element. No group of people will be a team, much less a high-performing team, until there is some level of trust among its members.  Team members need to be able to learn from their mistakes and have mutual respect for each other in order to function at its peak.
• Clear and Open Communication: Teams that have established ways to communicate and collaborated with each other is essential for working together. In addition, being able to challenge each other, raise issues, have healthy conflict management is a sign of team that will grow together.
• Clarity of roles and responsibilities: Knowing who is responsible for what is of course helpful when making sure work product gets done. As the tasks or activities change, who leads and contributes can change. Therefore, to make sure each member of the team has clarity of their role, the team needs to align on the execution plan and who does what continuously as new work comes in. This ensures everyone has a strong sense of accountability for their work and they know exactly what they need to do.
• Shared understanding and vision: Alignment on purpose and understanding of the meaning of work is key for motivation within the team. Leaders must ensure the team understands their mission. In addition, the team goals are not only aligned among team members, but the team also understands how their mission lines up to the overall organizational mission and goals.
• Results and Impact: The goals and outcomes are understood by the team for each working cycle and milestone, and the team is focused on its collective success (over personal status and individual goals).

Understanding your Team Health: a quick Team Diagnostic

To build a high-performing team, it does not happen by accident. When setting up a team or wanting to improve results of an existing team, it helps to start with an understanding of the health. Here are some questions to ask in each area to help your teams determine where they can work on improving.

• Trust and psychological safety: Do individuals feel comfortable taking risks without fear of punishment? Are people comfortable talking about what is not working without embarrassment?
• Communication: Does everyone understand each others preferred method of communication? Do team members challenge each other openly in meetings? Do members strive for early conflict resolution over avoiding confrontation?
• Role clarity: Are roles on our team clear? Do we discuss who is responsible for tasks when we set execution plans? Do all members of the team have a sense of accountability?
• Shared vision: Are we aligned on the purpose on ultimate outcome of the team? Is the team focused on what matters? Does the team believe the work we are doing matters to the organization?
• Results and Impact: Does the team understand the execution plan and desired outcomes for the upcoming working sprint? Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?

If you really want to work on team health and accelerate your results, consider brining in a team coach. They can perform an objective, thorough diagnostic and work with teams and individuals on constructive ways to improve team performance. In addition, working on improving teams will also help team members and create growth within individuals of the team.

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