Building a truly high-performing team is not for the faint-hearted. Many organisations mistakenly believe that simply grouping talented individuals together or having a team that gets on well will automatically create an effective team. The reality is far more complex. While teams may produce good work, they often fail to achieve their full potential.
Recently we’ve been approached by several clients to tackle this issue. In most cases, the Leader(s) are looking ahead and recognising that those big projects coming down the track, or changes ahead, require greater levels of communication, collaboration and trust than they are currently seeing and they want to move their team from good to great.
What is a High-Performing Team?
Authors of “The Wisdom of Teams” Katzenbach & Smith, define this as:
“A small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance, goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
They identify the following as key to what makes a team high-performing:
- They have a really deep sense of purpose
- They have relatively more ambitious performance goals compared to the average team – they really stretch themselves in terms of their goals
- They have better work approaches (called complete approaches) i.e. they agree on how they work together
- They have mutual accountability
- Complementary skill sets, and at times interchangeable skills – not everyone can do everything so they focus on strengths
- Commitment to one another and helping each other grow and be successful – this includes being comfortable, challenging each other and being open and honest about challenges.
Our recent work with clients has revealed a critical insight: most teams don’t pause to consider what highly effective teamwork actually looks like. They dive straight into tasks without establishing clear communication, collaboration, and the foundations for trust.
The most successful teams recognise that becoming high-performing demands better teamwork than they currently demonstrate. Through working with our clients we’ve found a highly effective starting point for building a high-performing team can be to apply the following 4 key questions.
Ready to transform your team’s potential? Let’s discuss how we can help you build a high-performing team. Schedule a discussion today.
The 4 Key Questions to Start Building A High Performing Team
1. What is your Team Purpose?
Before anything else, teams need to consider their basic purpose for example:-
- Why do you exist as a team?
- If you’re a support function, who are you here to support?
- What does that support actually look like?
These might seem like obvious questions, but they’re often overlooked in the rush to get things done.
2. What are your Team Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats?
Within your team, it’s worth having open conversations about strengths and weaknesses and performing a team SWOT Analysis. For instance, someone might say “Excel spreadsheets really aren’t my strength. I can do it, but don’t expect it to be quick.” That kind of honesty helps the team work more effectively.
Let me share a real example: When I worked in a team at British Airways, we recognised that we were great at starting things, we had fabulous ideas and would get very excited about what we could achieve, but we weren’t brilliant at completing them. We’d get three-quarters through a project and whilst we always delivered, we wouldn’t necessarily challenge each other, hold ourselves mutually accountable to tie up the loose ends, go back and review what worked and what didn’t. Recognising this gap in our team helped us put something in place to address it.
3. What are your Team Values and Behaviours?
To handle the ups and downs of teamwork, you must decide what values are most important to you and what behaviours you will strive to demonstrate identifying:
- What do you stand for as a team?
- How will you treat each other and others outside of the team?
This means when times get tough you’ll more easily know the right decisions to make based on agreed values and behaviours.
4. What are your Team Expectations?
Discussing what you expect from each other as a team will help solidify accountability:
- What do you need to do to be successful?
- What do you need to do to contribute towards the success of this team and the organisation?
Your Team’s Transformation
Once you’ve started on the journey to becoming high-performing, you’ll begin to see some of the benefits, including:
- Increased productivity through clearer decision-making processes and better resource allocation
- Higher engagement as team members understand their purpose and contribution
- Improved problem-solving capabilities with defined roles and complementary skillsets
- Reduced conflict through established values and behavioural expectations
- Greater innovation as team members feel secure enough to challenge ideas constructively
- Better project completion rates with clear accountability measures
- Enhanced adaptability to change with strong foundational trust
Getting Started
Remember: This isn’t about creating rigid rules. It’s about being thoughtful and intentional about how we work together to get the best results. When we first start having these conversations, they might feel a bit awkward. That’s normal. The value comes from having the discussions, agreeing expectations committing to decisions together and creating clearer ways of working together.
A Final Thought
Working well as a team doesn’t just happen by accident. It comes from being mindful and intentional about what good working together really looks like for your specific group of people.
Are you ready to transform your team’s potential? Schedule a no-obligation discussion with us today.
