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Developing and Sustaining High-Performance Work Teams

A "high-performance work team" refers to a group of goal-focused individuals with specialized expertise and complementary skills who collaborate, innovate and produce consistently superior results. The group relentlessly pursues performance excellence through shared goals, shared leadership, collaboration, open communication, clear role expectations and group operating rules, early conflict resolution, and a strong sense of accountability and trust among its members.

This article explores:

• Factors required for a high-performance work team.
• Common stages of team development.
• Causes of team dysfunction.
• Primary types of teams organizations establish to achieve specific work goals.

In addition, the article offers suggestions for ways HR can help teams achieve high performance. These include recruiting the right team members, training, conflict resolution, and assessments and facilitation of results, pay and incentives. The article does not cover matters such as employee engagement and employee involvement, which are encompassed in the Employee Relations Discipline, nor issues related to employee staffing or employee retention, which are covered in the Staffing Management Discipline.

Work teams are the backbone of contemporary work life. Executive teams run corporations. Project teams create new products and services. Matrix teams help develop everything from pharmaceuticals to the delivery of services in consulting firms and charitable agencies. Marketing and sales teams deliver products and services to customers. High-performance work teams are essential to the way most organizations organize and carry out their work, resulting in superior performance, which translates into a significant competitive advantage.

A team is a group of people who work together to accomplish something beyond their individual self-interests; however, not all groups are teams. A simple but effective description of what is meant by "a team" comes from Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith's book, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization : "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed in a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable." 1

What distinguishes high-performance teams from other groups is that a team is more than a collection of people simply following orders. To function effectively, a high-performance team also needs:

• A deep sense of purpose and commitment to the team's members and to the mission.
• Relatively more ambitious performance goals than average teams.
• Mutual accountability and a clear understanding of members' responsibilities to the team and individual obligations.
• A diverse range of expertise that complements other team members' abilities.
• Interdependence and trust between members.

The use of work teams is widespread in all types of organizations throughout the world—with good reason. High-performance work teams have an advantage over the work of individuals because each member can offer new ideas, talent and viewpoints. In addition, high-performance work teams predictably execute strategy, meet goals and need little management oversight because they are empowered and responsible for their functional activity and accountable for performance.

Compensation and incentives are usually tied to the achievement of team and individual goals, respectively, with a heavier emphasis on collective team performance. Because superior team performance is so highly valued, these teams do not tolerate marginal and underperforming individual contributors.

Business Case

The use of teams has expanded dramatically in response to competitive challenges and technological changes. Team structures allow for the application of multiple skills, judgments and experiences that are most appropriate for projects requiring diverse expertise and problem-solving skills. Teams can execute more quickly, make better decisions, solve more complex problems, and do more to enhance creativity and build skills than an individual can. Their use also increases productivity and morale; well-functioning teams can outperform individuals and even other types of working groups.

Four key reasons why teams work:

• A group of individuals brings complementary skills and experience that exceed the abilities of a single individual.
• Teams support real-time problem-solving and are more flexible and responsive to changing demands.
• Teams provide a unique social dimension that enhances the economic and administrative aspects of work.
• High-performance teams generally have more fun at work than low-achieving teams or individuals.

Characteristics of High-Performance Work Teams

Although there is no simple measure of performance effectiveness for groups, and no team is identical, there seems to be a shared understanding of what makes an effective group work. High-performance work teams are generally composed of a combination of purpose and goals, talent, skills, performance ethics, incentives and motivation, efficacy, leadership, conflict, communication, power and empowerment, and norms and standards.

Team Purpose, Goals and Roles

High-performing teams are synergistic social entities that work toward the achievement of a common goal or goals—short term and long term. They often exemplify a total commitment to the work and to each other. Team members do better work when their roles are clear: They know how to do their jobs and why they are doing them. Each member must understand and support the meaning and value of the team's mission and vision. Clarifying the purpose and tying it to each person's role and responsibilities enhances team potential, as does the inclusion of "stretch" goals that increase the challenge necessary to motivate team members.

Talent, Skills and Work Ethic

High-performance teams begin by recruiting and retaining their best talent while quickly helping low-performing members find other places to work. Morale typically increases as performance increases. After selecting for talent, it is critical to ensure that the team members possess complementary skills (e.g., technical, problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills). Team members must exhibit a sustained commitment to performance excellence, exercise candor and mutual respect, and hold themselves and their organizations accountable at both the individual and team levels.

Incentives, Motivation and Efficacy

Both monetary and nonmonetary systems that encourage high performance have a positive impact on tactical implementation of the team's goals. Over the long term, intrinsic motivators such as personal satisfaction at work and working on interesting projects provide the greatest impact on performance. In addition, a belief in one's self and abilities encourages people to take more strategic risks to achieve team goals.

High-performing leaders generally accompany high-performance work teams. Essential leadership qualities include the ability to a) keep the purpose, goals and approach relevant and meaningful; b) build commitment and confidence; c) ensure that team members constantly enhance their skills; d) manage relationships from the outside with a focus on the removal of obstacles that might hinder group performance; e) provide opportunities for others without seeking credit; and f) get in the trenches and do the real work required. There is widespread agreement that effective team leaders focus on purpose, goals, relationships and an unwavering commitment to results that benefit the organization and each individual.

Conflict and communication

Conflict management is an essential part of becoming a high-performance team. Open communication in such teams means a focus on coaching instead of on directing and a focus on the ability to immediately address issues openly and candidly. The key to team performance is open lines of communication at all times to provide motivation, maintain interest and promote cooperation.

Power and Empowerment

Empowered work teams increase ownership, provide an opportunity to develop new skills, boost interest in the project and facilitate decision-making. Researchers refer to the ideal situation as being "loose-tight," such that specific decision-making boundaries are constructed with enough room for individuals to make empowered choices.

Norms and Standards

Like rules that govern group behavior, norms can be helpful in improving team development and performance. Norms for high-performance teams include open lines of communication, early resolution of conflict, regular evaluation of both individual and team performance, high levels of respect among members, a cohesive and supportive team environment, a strong work ethic that focuses on results, and shared recognition of team successes. The key is that high-performing teams actually discuss and agree to their operating rules—standards that each team member agrees to uphold and for which they hold each other accountable.

Stages of Team Development

Dr. Bruce Tuckman, an early psychology researcher focused on group dynamics, developed a four-phase model of team development that included forming, storming, norming and performing. Refinement by other researchers has resulted in a well-known team development process that provides a useful framework for leaders and team members seeking to understand the nature of group dynamics and their evolution.

The four typically recognized stages of the process include:

• Forming. Individuals are trying to get to know each other and the organization and have not formed a commitment to the team. In consult with HR, project leaders provide direction and outline expectations. In addition, HR might use DISC or Myers-Briggs assessments and then facilitate a discussion about the results to help the group understand each other's differences and operating styles.
• Storming. In this typically rocky stage, team members may challenge the leader and each other. The leader coaches members on how to manage conflict and focus on goals and may ask the HR team to help facilitate related training.
• Norming. After individuals have worked through conflicts, the team begins to develop. People begin to appreciate their differences and start to work together. The leader begins to serve as a facilitator, offering encouragement and guidance. HR serves as a continuing support and can facilitate discussions or offer training as needed.
• Performing. At this stage, the team is fully functional, and members are able to manage their relationships and work toward shared goals. Team members feel accepted and communicate openly with the leader. The leader focuses on delegating responsibilities and must identify when the team is moving into a different stage.

Other researchers have described a similar process yet attributed different names to the phases (e.g., working group, pseudo team, potential team, real team and ending with a high-performance team). Regardless of the identifiers used, high-performance work teams develop over time in roughly similar ways. As a result, this four-phase model serves general organizational purposes well, although some researchers have suggested that a fifth stage occurs when the group is disbanding: adjourning or mourning , the feeling of sadness and loss as a successful team separates.

Common Types of High-Performance Work Teams

Though they vary in duration, purpose and ultimate goals, organizations commonly establish five types of teams to achieve work goals.

Work teams are continuing units responsible for producing goods or providing services. Their membership is typically stable, usually full time and well-defined. Work teams are found in both manufacturing and service settings and are traditionally directed by supervisors who make most of the decisions about what is done, how it is done and who does it. Self-managing teams involving employees making decisions that were formerly made by supervisors are gaining favor.

Parallel Teams

Parallel teams pull together people from different work units or jobs to perform functions the organization is not equipped to perform well. They exist in parallel with the formal organizational structure, have limited authority and can only make recommendations. Parallel teams are used for problem-solving and improvement-oriented activities (e.g., quality improvement teams, employee involvement groups, quality circles or task forces).

Project Teams

Project teams are typically time-limited and produce a one-time output (e.g., a new product or service, information system or plant). Project-team tasks are not repetitive and involve considerable application of knowledge, judgment and expertise. As a result, membership is usually diverse, drawing from different disciplines and functional units, so specialized expertise can be applied to the project.

Management Teams

Management teams coordinate and provide direction to their subunits and are responsible for the overall performance of a business unit. The management team's authority stems from the hierarchal rank of its members. At the top of the organization, the executive management team establishes strategic direction and manages the company's performance by applying its collective expertise and sharing responsibility for the overall success.

Virtual Teams

A virtual team is a group of individuals who work together in pursuit of common goals across time, space and organizational boundaries. They are linked electronically by webs of communication technology (e.g., the Internet, Skype, WebEx, internal networks). Members of a virtual team coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies to accomplish specific organizational tasks and may never meet face to face.

Virtual teams allow companies to obtain the best talent possible for a specific project without geographical restrictions. They are also generally viewed as more efficient in expenditures of time and related travel costs.  See How to Collaborate with Global Teams and Making Stronger Connections Virtually .

Common Barriers Faced by High-Performance Work Teams

Given the importance of team-based work in today's economy, experts have focused on using evidence-based organizational research to pinpoint the defining attributes of high-performance teams.

Despite varying approaches to describing high-performance teams, some common characteristics seem to be strong indicators of a team that is not functioning at its peak or that needs intervention:

• Nonparticipating leadership. Team members fail to use a democratic leadership style that involves and engages team members.
• Poor decision-making. Team members make decisions too quickly without a blend of rational and intuitive decision-making methods .
• Infrequent communication. Lines of communication are closed and infrequent.
• Diversity not valued. Team members do not value the diversity of experience and backgrounds of their fellow team members, resulting in a lack of diverse viewpoints and less successful decision-making and solutions.
• Lack of mutual trust. Team members do not fully trust each other or the team as an entity.
• Inability to manage conflict. Not dealing with conflict openly and transparently and allowing grudges to build up can destroy team morale.
• Lack of goal clarity. Team members are unsure about their roles and the ultimate team goals, resulting in a lack of commitment and engagement.
• Poorly defined roles and responsibilities. Team members are not clear about what they must do (and what they must not do) to demonstrate their commitment to the team and to support team success.
• Relationship issues. The bonds between the team members are weak, which affects their efficiency and effectiveness.
• Negative atmosphere. An overall team culture that is not open, transparent, positive and future-focused results in a failure to perform at high levels.

See Viewpoint: How to Motivate Your Team When People Keep Quitting and How to Handle Employee Conflict on Your Team .

HR's Role

As a chief resource to any organizational team effort, HR can support managers most effectively through a focus on several critical elements. See 11 Ways to Build Stronger Teams .

Selection of team members and support of team cohesiveness

Organizations can be strengthened by leveraging differences that mirror the diversity of their employees. Surveys have demonstrated a positive impact on high performance by teams with a diversity of ages, ethnicity and gender. A diverse workforce can also improve organizational productivity and creativity.

Managing a diverse workforce can be a challenge, though. When people from different backgrounds come together, there is potential for both great accomplishment and great conflict. Managing diversity requires creating an environment in which differences in perspective can be valued and allowed to positively influence and contribute to the organization's work.

The HR team can support new team development by helping to select the right mix of individuals with the requisite skills and expertise to complement the knowledge, skills and abilities of other team members. 

Communication

Communication within high-performing teams requires the free flow of information, a shared agreement that no topic is off-limits, and frequent and respectful interactions among team members and other individuals in the organization. The HR team can work with team members to provide communication skills training to help members stay in close contact with each other through transparent transactions.

Conflict resolution

One of the central differences between an average team and a high-performance work team is the capability to handle conflict in a constructive way. Any conflicts that surface must be depersonalized and dealt with early, either between individuals or among the collective team. Instead of viewing conflict as a negative, a high-performance team views it as a strength of the collective group. Diverse views help improve thinking, learning and overall performance.

Task conflicts can actually improve team performance if managed collaboratively. Such conflict fosters a deeper understanding of task issues and an exchange of information that facilitates problem-solving, decision-making and generating ideas.

Conflict arises from differences, and when individuals come together in teams, their differences in power, values and attitudes contribute to the creation of conflict. To avoid the negative consequences that can result from frequent disagreements, most methods of resolving conflict stress the importance of dealing with disputes quickly and openly. Conflict is not necessarily destructive; when managed properly, conflict can result in significant benefits for a team.

See Viewpoint: The Art and Science of Conflict Management .

To support effectiveness within high-performance teams, an understanding of individual working styles is important. HR can assist with this by using the DISC assessment, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (or similar assessments for which they are qualified), so each individual better understands the behavior, personalities and thinking styles of his or her fellow team members.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the basis for bringing together the knowledge, experience and skills of multiple team members to contribute to the development of a new service or product more effectively than individual team members could. It involves a commitment to a shared goal and an interdependence that comes from understanding that what is accomplished together is greater than what can be accomplished individually.

Collaboration is a discipline that requires an understanding of the practices that make it successful. HR can help facilitate discussions about positive ways to collaborate in a group setting to achieve maximum effectiveness. See How to Collaborate with a Hybrid Workforce and 6 Tips for Balancing Collaboration and Concentration in Remote Work .

Team member training

To maximize the individual contributions of employees to a team, HR must provide advance training on effective teams, the typical stages of team dynamics, role expectations, conflict resolution, communication and similar issues. This training can help team members better understand issues that may occur and how they can best respond to those inevitable problems.

Assisting new and departing team members

HR can help integrate new team members as they are selected. This process is especially valuable if someone joins the team late, which can disrupt the group dynamics. Helping new members understand the group norms and expectations will help them acclimate more quickly. 

HR can also help manage the departure of high-performing team members and the disbanding of a team. Sensitively managing departures is vital. Recognition of members' contributions and achievements is a fitting end to their team service.

HR Business Planning

As business leaders, HR professionals can also add value by understanding, communicating and influencing the manner in which teams are deployed in the organization.

Advising management when to use teams

HR can help the organization determine when the use of teams would be advantageous. Examples of situations in which teams can be beneficial include building a product or service, organizing rituals or ceremonies, increasing sales and marketing performance, enhancing profitability, and improving a product or service.

Advising management at team startup

HR can help management structure and source the right personnel for membership in a team based on personality profiles and expertise (knowledge, skills and experience) when the team is first organized, as well as after the team's objectives have been established.

Development of a team project plan

Business planning builds from an organizational or departmental strategic planning process. It provides clarification of shorter-term actions necessary to achieve goals. With the assistance of HR, a newly formed team can develop a clear business or work plan to help it focus on the appropriate goals and objectives and think about how to best achieve those goals.

Team building and motivation

Team building is an ongoing process that helps a workgroup become a cohesive unit. The team members not only share expectations for accomplishing group tasks, but they also trust and support each other and respect individual differences. HR's role as a team builder is to help the team become more cohesive and productive. Teams often lose their motivation or focus midway through a project, so HR must nurture and support members along the way. HR can assist in planning a team-building event to help members clarify their focus and renew their energies to complete the project successfully. See Building Team Bonds . 

Virtual teams coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies and may never meet face to face, so having the right technological resources and support is essential. Other teams also rely on technology, but none as much as those working in a virtual team environment. See Are Employees Overwhelmed by Too Many Apps?

Teams need a clear understanding of where they want to end up and how to find the most efficient way to reach their goals. Most teams will require a measurement system that enables every member to understand what is expected of him or her and also provides a way for members to assess their progress.

As a result, the measurement system used to determine relative team success will need to include:

• A statement of the results the team wants to achieve with measures and performance standards for each result.
• Statements of each individual's results, with measures and performance standards for each result.
• A clear picture of the priorities and relative importance of team and individual results.
• A plan for collecting and summarizing performance data so the team and individuals will know how they are performing.

Global Issues

Increasingly, organizations operate in a global competitive environment, and members of high-performance work teams live and work in numerous countries. Employers must take this into account and determine appropriate strategies (e.g., communication, technology, pay, recruiting) based on the culture, laws and customs of each region . See Viewpoint: How to Empower a Diverse International Team .

Endnotes 1 Katzenbach, J. R. and D. K. Smith (2006). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization (Collins Business Essentials) . New York: HarperCollins.

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How to Build a High Performing Team | The Complete Guide

In this article, unravel the characteristics that distinguish high-performing teams and how to nurture these traits. Looking to evolve your organization's approach to performance management?

Take realistic steps to evolve your approach to employee performance

Table of Contents

What is a high performing team, characteristics of a high-performing team, what are 5 things high performing teams do differently, building a high-performing team, how performance management software can help you scale your high performing team.

Why do some teams perform better than others? What sets these teams apart from the rest?

Building a high-performing team requires more than just pulling together a group of talented people with the right skills. It requires careful development and the nurturing of key characteristics, behaviors, and best practices.

In this article, we’ll cover what a high-performing team is, what their characteristics are, how to build a high performing team, and how to scale your strategy with performance management technology. 

Let’s dive in!

A high performing team is an elite group of individuals who leverage their collective skills, diverse perspectives, specialized expertise, and complementary skills to accomplish challenging goals. 

These teams are hyper-focused on achieving clear, outstanding results. They thrive on a foundation of trust, collaboration, and a shared sense of purpose. By harnessing their collective talents and aligning their efforts, high performing teams consistently surpass benchmarks and set new standards of excellence.

But high performing teams aren’t made by magic. With the right approach to performance management , you'll empower them to collaborate, innovate, and produce work at the highest levels.

While every team is different, there are common characteristics that high-performing teams share.

1. They have clear goals tied closely to team and organizational priorities.

High-performing teams are aligned in their focus, purpose, and priorities. They set team and individual goals that support this shared vision so that their work drives achievement. Goals are not only aligned, but they are clearly defined so everyone knows exactly what they need to do and how to get there.

Our research found that employees who have clearly defined goals are 2X more likely to be engaged at work.

2. They understand how their work fits into the organizational mission.

When employees understand how their job fits into the context of the overall goals and mission of the organization, they are more engaged and productive . High-performing teams know their “why” and work together to support a shared vision.

In fact, 98% of highly engaged employees are 98% favorable on the item “my job helps the organization achieve success” and 94% favorable on “my performance goals are aligned to our organizational goals.” 

3. They have defined roles and responsibilities.

Conflict can quickly derail an otherwise talented and productive team. High-performing teams minimize unnecessary conflict by defining each person’s role and responsibilities clearly. This prevents confusion over project ownership, keeps workflows and deadlines organized, and ensures accountability across the board.

4. They communicate clearly and respectfully.

When communication breaks down, conflict arises and performance suffers. High-performing teams set clear expectations and channels for communication so everyone knows when and where to communicate and who they need to connect with. Conflict is normal, but high-performing teams know how to navigate it in a healthy way that doesn't create more obstacles.

5. They thrive on two-way feedback.

High performing teams foster a culture of continuous improvement through open and constructive two-way feedback . Team members feel empowered to share their ideas, concerns, and suggestions without fear of retribution. Managers actively seek feedback from their employees, valuing their perspectives and using the insights gained to drive team growth. 

This feedback-driven approach not only enhances individual performance but also strengthens team dynamics, leading to increased collaboration and adaptability. Not to mention, collected feedback can be translated into further development opportunities for employees.

6. They manage work and deadlines based on priorities.

High-performing teams focus on what matters most and spend their time accordingly. They understand that not all work has equal importance or urgency and they manage projects based on what tasks have the highest priority and highest impact. This keeps work aligned with organizational goals and ensures everyone is focused on work that drives growth.

7. Managers and employees feel aligned and connected.

One-on-one meetings serve as a cornerstone of high performing teams, promoting clarity and communication between managers and employees. These meetings go beyond mere status updates, providing a dedicated space for personalized discussions on goals, progress, and challenges. 

Managers use this opportunity to understand employees' aspirations, offer guidance, and provide the necessary support to overcome obstacles. By nurturing a strong manager-employee relationship, high performing teams create a sense of belonging and commitment that fuels team success.

8. They trust and respect each other.

The level of collaboration and teamwork required for high achievement depends on trust and mutual respect. Employees on high-performing teams value each other and trust each person to do their job. They respect diversity of thought and experience and recognize those differences make them stronger. This culture of trust helps everyone:

• Bring their full selves to the job
• Share ideas
• Innovate together

9. They celebrate success together and recognize contributions.

High-performing teams understand that success results from team effort. They celebrate wins together and take opportunities to recognize and show appreciation for each employee’s contributions. This builds a strong culture of collaboration and helps everyone feel valued and connected.

Our research consistently shows that ratings, rankings, and pay-for-performance do not drive employee engagement. But recognition does.

That’s why highly engaged employees were 70% favorable on the item “If I contribute to the organization’s success, I know I will be recognized”.

10. They practice continuous learning.

Even the best teams have room to grow. High-performing teams value feedback and learn from their mistakes. They look for opportunities to grow by nurturing a feedback culture and investing in ongoing employee development. Continuous learning propels growth and keeps teams striving for higher achievement.

11. They balance short-term priorities with long-term growth

High performing teams strike a delicate balance between short-term results and long-term growth. While focused on achieving immediate objectives, they also invest in learning, growth, and development to stay ahead of the curve. 

Talent reviews and succession planning are integral components of this approach, ensuring that the team's future leadership remains robust and ready for upcoming challenges. 

By prioritizing both short-term wins and sustainable growth, high performing teams are well-positioned to adapt, innovate, and excel in a dynamic business landscape.

What sets high performing teams apart from the rest? 

In their pursuit of excellence, these teams go beyond the ordinary - consistently achieving remarkable results. 

Let’s uncover the five key things that high performing teams do differently than other teams that enable them to outshine their peers and drive extraordinary success. From fostering a culture of continuous learning to embracing innovative technology and promoting collaboration, these practices can help to unleash the full potential of your teams and propel your organization toward greater achievements.

1. High performing teams embrace innovation and adaptability

The only thing that’s certain at every organization is change. But that won’t scare a high performing team. These teams are not afraid to challenge the status quo. Instead, they actively seek out new ideas, encourage innovation, and adapt swiftly to changing circumstances. By embracing flexibility and being open to change, they stay agile, resilient, and capable of seizing emerging opportunities.

But in order to do that, high performing teams need the space, buy-in, tools, and technology to learn big and make mistakes. That’s why high performing teams aren’t always judged by arbitrary KPIs - but on their organizational impact. 

2. High performing teams collaborate cross-functionally with other teams and departments

Organizational silos are no match for high performing teams. In fact, these teams are notorious for breaking down silos to encourage collaboration across departments, disciplines, teams, and sometimes even countries. 

They achieve this by fostering an environment where individuals can freely and willingly share knowledge, leverage each other’s strengths, and work synergistically toward their shared goals. This spirit of collaboration is amplified by the team’s collective impact and strengthens their relationships.

3. High performing teams focus on recognition and achievements 

And we’re not talking about old-fashioned sales bells. High performing teams know that meaningful recognition may look different to each individual employee. That’s why they use data to celebrate milestones - both big and small - to proactively and reactively recognize contributions to the larger team. 

By doing so, they create a contagious culture of recognition and appreciation which motivates everyone to work smarter and strive for excellence. Not to mention, this supportive work environment makes it easier for the team to share constructive feedback - because these employees know that mistakes are just opportunities to perform better in the future. 

4. High performing teams leverage engaging, easy-to-use performance processes & technology.

High performing teams know that their success is only as strong as the processes and tools that enable them to maximize performance. These teams can’t be bogged down by disparate systems, siloed departmental data, and complicated access issues. To optimize their performance, these teams used tools that enable seamless collaboration, data-driven reporting and analytic capabilities, and automation of repetitive tasks. 

These tools free up valuable time to focus efforts on what really matters: strategic growth. 

5. High performing teams have mutual accountability

These teams are never going to throw another team member under the bus - figuratively speaking. High performing teams embrace collective accountability by holding each other - and themselves - accountable for the team’s performance. 

Their commitments to these high standards are made much easier because of the other aspects we’ve covered - like collaboration, goal setting, and access to tools to help them stay on track. 

Building a high-performing team doesn’t happen overnight. It takes commitment and an investment in continuous growth and development. Use the following tips to get started:

Create a shared sense of purpose.

In order for employees to feel connected to a team, they need a unified purpose. This is where clear goals and team alignment come into play.

Managers of high-performing teams are always evaluating priorities and team goals to ensure they are effective and aligned. Keep organizational goals top-of-mind by regularly communicating and connecting those goals to the team’s work.

Take advantage of one-on-ones to check in with team members on their progress, identify key priorities, and ensure their work aligns with the overall team goals. This helps create a shared sense of purpose and ensures the team is pulling together in the same direction to drive performance.

Streamline communication.

High-performing teams have to be nimble and focused—so clear, streamlined communication is essential. Keep everyone on the same page by establishing clear processes and expectations for communication.

For example, teams might use Slack channels for water cooler chats and team updates but rely on project management tools like Asana to house project data, define responsibilities, and track progress and assignments.

Having set communication processes helps prevent conflict and ensures key information is shared with the right people, assignments and responsibilities are clear, and nothing falls through the cracks.

You might also consider creating opportunities for team members to share their expertise and learn from one another. Encourage cross-functional collaboration by organizing workshops, team-building exercises, or knowledge-sharing sessions where employees from different departments can collaborate on projects or discuss industry trends. 

This cross-pollination of ideas and skills enhances creativity, problem-solving, and builds a sense of camaraderie.

Empower decision making at all levels.

High performing teams empower their members to make decisions and take ownership of their work. These teams don’t feel nervous to present a new idea, solution, or option to their management team. Instead, managers recognize that the best way to achieve maximum performance is by encouraging employees to take initiative whenever they see the opportunity to do so. 

Encourage team members to contribute their ideas, provide input, and make autonomous decisions within their areas of responsibility. This fosters a sense of ownership, accountability, and fosters a culture of trust and empowerment.

Remember that regular recognition for this kind of contribution to the larger team can help employees connect to how their work benefits the larger organization. Which brings us to…

Recognize and reward achievements.

Acknowledging and celebrating individual and group achievements is crucial for building and sustaining a high performing team. Recognition and rewards not only boost morale, but they can reinforce desired behaviors and motivate team members to excel. 

Regularly express your appreciation by taking the time to acknowledge the efforts your team members make. Weekly one-on-ones provide an opportunity for you and your team to stay closely connected on the team’s goals, tasks, and achievements. But don’t just recognize big wins. Recognition can happen during key milestones, steady performance, or instances where teams have gone above and beyond their job description. 

Remember that the kind of recognition your employees like may differ from employee to employee. Be sure to center the kind of recognition your employees like best by evaluating their preferences over time. 

Managers aren’t the only team members who can participate in recognition. Encourage team members to recognize and appreciate each other’s contributions with a “team shoutout” Slack channel or weekly email. This helps to foster a positive and engaging work environment at every level. 

Invest in employee development.

If you want consistent outstanding results, build a culture of continual learning and improvement. High-performing teams are curious. They ask questions, explore possibilities, and adapt based on what they learn. When teams are continually building on their knowledge and learning from past mistakes, they are more effective, efficient, and innovative.

Drive team performance by investing in your employees’ growth and development. Identify relevant development opportunities that focus on team needs and priorities, as well as individual goals. Employee development opportunities help employees feel motivated, empowered, and better equipped to do their job.

Building a high-performing team is a marathon, not a sprint. But when you bring together the right mix of skills and experience and nurture these fundamental characteristics of a high-performing team, the payoff will be worth it.

Quantum Workplace has developed a suite of performance management tools that are designed to help you grow, manage, and scale your high performing teams. 

Here are some of the key features:

1. Move teams forward with goal-setting tools.

2. increase clarity and communication with 1-on-1 meetings., 3. celebrate success with real-time recognition., 4. boost trust and performance with employee feedback., 5. sustain your high performing teams with succession planning., 6. scaling high performing teams with talent reviews.

Want to see how our tools can help support your high performing teams? Check out our performance management solution here .  Or, request a demo today.

Published July 25, 2023 | Written By Kristin Ryba

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10 Tips to Help You Boost Team Performance

• 26 Mar 2020

The ability to bring out the best in yourself and others is essential to being a leader who cultivates high-performing teams. According to a study by consulting firm Deloitte , organizations have increasingly shifted from hierarchical to team-based structures to be more agile and efficient. Among those undergoing such transitions, 53 percent have reported a significant increase in performance.

In keeping with this trend, there’s a growing need for leaders and managers who can foster cross-functional collaboration within their organizations and guide colleagues through complex business challenges.

If you want to enable your employees to unleash their potential and help your organization succeed, here are 10 ways to boost your team’s performance.

Access your free e-book today.

How to Improve Team Performance

1. delegate.

To cultivate an effective team, you should know how to delegate . By entrusting team members with key projects and responsibilities, you can make them feel more engaged and valued.

When delegating, play to your employees’ strengths and ensure they have the knowledge and resources to complete their assigned tasks. Be willing to let them fail, too. Coming up short on a project or initiative could serve as a valuable learning experience that spurs continued growth and development.

2. Make Decisions Together

Inviting team members to participate in the decision-making process can lead to innovative solutions you may not have devised yourself.

According to the online course Management Essentials , one of team decision-making’s primary benefits is that it invites “constructive conflict,” in which individuals bring different viewpoints to the group and challenge preconceived notions.

By encouraging debate and considering diverse perspectives, you can stimulate more creative problem-solving , help your team make better decisions, and ensure you’re all striving toward a common goal.

Related: 8 Steps in the Decision-Making Process

3. Don’t Micromanage

One of the top mistakes new and experienced managers make is focusing too much on minute details and micromanaging employees.

Research shows micromanagement is one of the main reasons employees resign, and it can fuel:

• High turnover
• Decreased productivity

To avoid micromanaging , let go of perfectionism and empower your employees to experiment with approaches to completing tasks. By doing so, you can carve out more time to focus on larger organizational objectives and instill a deep sense of trust among your team members.

4. Communicate Effectively

Communication is paramount to team performance. According to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit , poor communication can lead to a range of negative outcomes, such as:

• A delay or failure to complete projects
• Greater stress levels

When communicating with your employees, be empathetic and actively listen to their thoughts and concerns. This approach to team communication won’t just create a more open, collaborative dynamic but sharpen your emotional intelligence skills .

Related: 8 Essential Leadership Communication Skills

5. Give and Solicit Feedback

Knowing how to deliver feedback effectively is vital when it comes to team leadership. Make it a point to regularly give informal, constructive comments to your employees—rather than waiting for annual review periods—so you can build more robust working relationships with them.

Treat informal evaluations as conversations, and avoid defaulting to blanket statements like “nice job”—your comments should be specific and actionable.

Don’t forget to ask for feedback, too. Your team members’ observations can help identify areas for growth that you can integrate into your leadership development plan .

6. Have a Purpose

Harnessing the power of purpose is a high priority for many businesses—and for good reason. According to a report by EY and the Harvard Business Review , 89 percent of executives believe a sense of shared purpose drives employee satisfaction, and 81 percent think purpose-driven firms deliver higher-quality products and services.

Imbue your team members with a sense of purpose by providing concrete examples of how their individual efforts further your organization’s mission and tie into objectives that make a positive impact on society.

7. Be Authentic

Authenticity is an immensely valuable leadership trait. A study published in the Leadership and Organization Development Journal found that employees' perception of authentic leadership is the top predictor of job satisfaction and can improve work-related attitudes and happiness.

Among authentic leaders' key characteristics is the ability to inspire faith in others. Whether overseeing an organizational change initiative or leading a critical meeting , be honest and transparent with your employees, and leverage your company’s purpose to boost their motivation and achieve alignment.

8. Pursue Clear, Attainable Goals

Setting realistic goals is crucial to your personal and professional growth. It’s also an important step in management processes, such as strategy implementation .

Research by Google shows that one of the hallmarks of a good manager is having a clear vision and strategy for their team. When setting your team’s goals, establish well-defined objectives to work toward. Then, create a roadmap of smaller, actionable tasks that must be done to achieve them.

By breaking the process down into a set of deliverables, you can help your employees feel more motivated and equipped to succeed.

9. Support Professional Development

Encouraging your employees to continue their education and bolster their skills can be a boon to your organization and drive workplace productivity. A report by LinkedIn found that 69 percent of talent development professionals leverage managers and leaders to promote learning initiatives, and 75 percent of employees would take a course suggested by their manager.

As an alternative to programs held in a traditional classroom setting, online courses —such as those offered by Harvard Business School Online —enable employees to broaden their knowledge while juggling the demands of their full-time jobs .

Focus on your own development, too. Taking a management training course can equip you with the know-how and experience to take your career to the next level.

10. Set an Example

Research by consulting firm Gallup shows managers account for 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement scores, underscoring the integral role you can play in influencing your team’s tone and culture.

When facing business challenges, be a role model by staying calm under pressure . Examine history’s most courageous leaders for strategies you can apply to navigate through hardship, such as polar explorer Ernest Shackleton , environmental activist Rachel Carson, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

By showing courage and setting an example for your employees, you can forge resilience within yourself and among your team.

Motivating Your Team Toward Success

Strong leadership is vital to team performance. By cultivating a dynamic centered on trust, advocating for your employees, and setting an example in the workplace, you can hone the skills to manage others effectively and enable them to consistently perform and deliver.

Do you want to develop the skills to bring out the best in your team? Download our free e-book on how to become a more effective leader, and explore our online leadership and management courses . Access our flowchart to discover which course is best for you.

This post was updated on February 3, 2023. It was originally published on March 26, 2020.

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5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently

• Ron Friedman

New research suggests that the highest-performing teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic to fuel their success. The findings offer important clues on ways any organization can foster greater connectedness — even within a remote or hybrid work setting — to engineer higher-performing teams. Doing so takes more than simply hiring the right people and arming them with the right tools to do their work. It requires creating opportunities for genuine, authentic relationships to develop. The authors present five key characteristics of high-performing teams, all of which highlight the vital role of close connection among colleagues as a driver of team performance.

Hint: It’s not always about the work.

When it comes to building extraordinary workplaces and high-performing teams, researchers have long appreciated that three psychological needs are essential: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Decades of research demonstrate that when people feel psychologically fulfilled, they tend to be healthier , happier , and more productive .

• RF Ron Friedman , PhD, is an award-winning psychologist and the founder of ignite80 , a learning and development company that teaches leaders science-based strategies for building high-performing teams. His books include The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace , and more recently,   Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success . To receive an email when he posts a new article, click here .

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Creating, Managing, and Developing High-Performing Teams

Learn about the key factors high-performance teams share as well as how to create, manage, and develop a high-performing team.

Last Updated

August 08 2022

As a manager, would you rather be in charge of:

• An adequately-skilled team that measures up to basic industry standards
• A high-performance team that surpasses (and often sets) the industry standard

Okay, so the right decision is pretty obvious. Even if you don’t know exactly what managing a “high-performance team” means, it’s certainly better than being stuck with a team that habitually hovers around average.

Unfortunately, Thinkwise found that roughly 60% of leaders and executives believe their teams aren’t performing to their highest potential.

In many cases, failure to reach high-performing status is due to a misunderstanding of what doing so actually involves. This often causes teams to do enough to merely stay afloat — but miss the critical pieces of the puzzle that could launch them toward massive success.

That said, let’s dig into all you need to know about developing and managing a high-performing team.

What is a High-Performing Team?

The term high-performance team refers to a group of specialists who, possessing expert levels of complementary knowledge and skills, work both collaboratively and individually to help the team reach a common goal.

To be clear, “high-performing team” is a specific term reserved for teams that embody certain characteristics, exhibit certain behaviors, and achieve specific results. 

In other words, a high-performing team is not:

• A group of individuals working in isolation toward a common goal
• Multiple individuals doing the same task, in the same way, over and over
• A stale, loosely-aligned team that exists merely because “that’s how it’s always been”

Rather, a high-performance team is one that combines its collective talents in various ways in order to achieve much more than could ever be possible alone. 

(Though the word synergy has been beaten to death in the business world, it’s perhaps the most accurate way to describe the difference between a truly high-performing team and a team that simply “works well together.”)

As we’ll discuss, both nature and nurture are involved in operating as a high-performing team: On the one hand, all team members should come to the table with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in hand. On the other hand, it’s their responsibility (and yours, as manager) to harness these skills to create the synergy needed to reach high-performance standards.

Before we dig more into this, let’s talk a bit more about the benefits of developing high-performing teams within your organization.

Key Types of High-Performing Teams

Though all high-performing teams should share the qualities discussed above, they can come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.

(Note that the following can apply to on-premise teams, remote teams , and hybrid teams alike.) 

Structural Types

First, let’s take a look at the most common ways high-performing teams are structured.

Manager-Led Teams

As the name suggests, manager-led teams are directed from the top down.

Here, managers are responsible for developing strategic goals and plans, assigning roles, and creating standard workflows to follow throughout an initiative. The team then carries out the plan according to the explicit direction of the manager. 

Throughout the initiative, the manager will monitor team progress and individual performance, stepping in to provide assistance as needed as well as feedback via employee evaluation reports so as to ensure things are running exactly as planned.

This structure is best used to accomplish routine tasks that require minimal departure from the norm. That way, managers can simply provide the necessary instructions, and allow their talented team members to get to work.

Self-Managing Teams

Though self-managing teams have a bit more autonomy, the leader is still responsible for setting the team’s overarching goals. From there, it’s up to the team to create a plan of attack — and to keep everyone on-track at all times. 

Leaders can potentially be involved in the process as equal members of the group, or as facilitators of specific processes. However, they’re typically much more hands-off, choosing instead to defer to the knowledge and experience of their employees.

Self-Directing Teams

Self-directing teams are created by managers, supervisors, and/or executives at the onset — but are then given full autonomy throughout the remainder of their existence.

This means self-directing team members are responsible for:

• Defining both short- and long-term goals
• Creating a strategic plan and accompanying workflows
• Maintaining operations along the path to success

All this being said, self-directing teams are usually formed in order to solve somewhat intangible challenges, or accomplishing goals that are rather difficult to define. For example, a self-directing team might be formed to develop an innovative solution to a common problem in your industry that no other company has even recognized.

Self-Governing Teams

Self-governing teams are created, maintained, and operate on their own accord — most often for the purpose of ensuring objective oversight of a process or situation.

Executive boards, for example, are self-governed teams that oversee all areas of an organization's operations. A company might also create a self-governing team to manage certain aspects of the company, such as diversity and/or inclusion.

To this extent, self-governing teams’ goals usually revolve around determining the best course of action for the company to take in a given scenario. From there, an action team will be formed to get the job done in full.

(Self-governing teams can also be used to objectively investigate workplace harassment and other such issues.)

Thematic Types

Regardless of governance type, high-performing teams can be formed in different ways for a variety of purposes.

Work teams are established to facilitate and perform specific tasks or ongoing operations within an organization.

Work team is a broad term by design, as it can refer to any group that may form or be formed for any number of purposes. For example, a work team may be created to create marketing copy for a company. A separate work team may also be created to develop a specific marketing campaign’s assets.

Remember, though:

The term work team is actually short for high-performing work team. In other words, a marketing team (etc.) is not a work team by default — but only if its members adhere to the high-performance standards we’ve discussed.

Cross-Functional Teams

Cross-functional work teams bring members of multiple teams together, combining their knowledge and skills to complete tasks that are usually rather wide in scope.

For example, a cross-functional team tasked with identifying audience pain points might consist of marketing and sales managers, along with customer service & support team leads.

Project Teams

Project teams are formed with the sole intention of completing a singular, one-off task.

Depending on the task, project work teams may be made up of individuals within a given team, or they may be cross-functional in nature. In any case, they’re short-term arrangements that are designed to dissolve once the task has been completed.

It’s important for members of project teams to be flexible and adaptable — and able to quickly build rapport with one another in order to just as quickly get to work.

Management Team

Management teams consist of the leaders of multiple departments and are created to conduct strategic analysis and planning for the organization.

Management teams, then, are either self-directing or self-governing. Typically, they’re created in response to a systematic issue that needs to be addressed at the foundational level. From there, the management team can communicate actionable goals and instructions to the appropriate work team(s).

Impact of Becoming a High-Performing Team

Again, you probably don’t need to be convinced that high-performing teams are overall better for business than average-performing teams.

(It’s in the name, after all…)

Still, it’s worth taking a look at the more explicit ways in which your high-performing teams will positively impact your organization.

1. Increased Profitability

First and foremost, businesses with high-performing teams are simply more profitable.

As Thinkwise’s data shows, nearly half of organizations with high-performing teams show general increases in profit. In contrast, only 44% of those without textbook high-performing teams can say the same.

Incidentally, this increased profitability stems from the many other benefits of “going high-performance”, such as…

2. Strengthened Team Culture

As we’ll get to, members of high-performing teams are likely immersed in the company culture as it is.

And this immersion and engagement will only get stronger as they work with other dedicated members of their high-performing team. Essentially, becoming more integral members of their specific team in turn means becoming more integral to the organization as a whole. 

What’s more, in nurturing your high-performing team members, they will in time begin to exhibit the exact qualities that represent what your organization is “all about”.

3. Increased (Talented) Employee Retention

With a stronger team culture will come a general increase in staff retention rates.

For one, team members will be more aware of — and celebrated for — the value they bring to the group. This will be reflected not just in the responsibilities they’re given, but also in the autonomy they’re allotted while accomplishing these tasks.

Secondly, members will also be challenged more regularly — and will again be celebrated for innovative (and often controversial) statements and actions. These continuous opportunities for professional growth will keep your talented employees engaged and pressing forward with your organization for the long haul.

Characteristics of High-Performing Teams

We’ve already hinted at some of the key characteristics exhibited by high-performing teams.

Now, let’s define exactly what these qualities are — and why they’re vital to the creation of a high-performance team.

Relentless Commitment to a Common Goal

To begin with, high-performance teams are created with a clear and specific goal in mind.

And it’s essential that all team members:

• Keep this overarching goal top-of-mind at all times
• Work to achieve this goal as effectively and efficiently as possible.

High-performing teams never act simply to check a task off their to-do list — and they never get lulled into just “going through the motions” to get things done. 

Rather, they approach every task intentionally and strategically to ensure that their every effort brings the team closer to achieving its goal. Moreover, teams and team members will always look for ways to create more value for the organization on top of what was expected.

It’s this nearly innate striving for excellence that sets high-performing teams apart from their “happy where we are” competitors.

Complementary Knowledge and Abilities

High-performance teams are intentionally designed to create synergy (ugh!) between colleagues whose skills complement one another.

The ultimate goal here is for all team members to bring their unique backgrounds, knowledge, and ideas to the table. All this will then meld with — and eventually transform — the group’s organizational knowledge and overall abilities over time.

As a simple, more practical example, consider the various roles involved in developing a marketing creative:

• The copywriter knows which words to use, and how to use them
• The illustrator creates a familiar, yet engaging image
• The designer puts both of the above together to create an effective advertisement

Here, each party can provide insight to the others regarding their creative choices, how to best leverage the created assets, and more. Though still responsible for their own tasks, each member can adapt their approach even further based on the knowledge they’ve gleaned from the others.

This complementary knowledge also makes for more informed decision-making (which we’ll return to momentarily). A vast collection of varied knowledge and experiences is needed to go beyond the status quo and achieve that which no other team has before.

(In contrast, a group of like-minded individuals, no matter how talented, will eventually find themselves unable to think outside the box — which will keep them from achieving high-performance status, altogether.)

Shared Leadership and Decision-Making

In some capacity or another, all members of a high-performing team should share leadership and decision-making responsibilities.

Firstly, all team members should generally be apt to take charge, provide guidance, and otherwise do what’s needed to help the team succeed. This goes back to the importance of focusing on the team’s goals over the individual’s — and acting on this in real-time whenever necessary.

In a more official capacity, all team members should actively participate in making the “big picture” decisions that will have a major impact on the group. Even in manager-led teams, the process of making decisions should always involve gathering input from all stakeholders.

Communicative, Collaborative, and Innovative

High-performing teams are also highly communicative and collaborative .

(Otherwise, they would never be able to put their complementary skills to good use!)

Individually, team members should be more inclined toward working with others in various capacities. This doesn’t necessarily disqualify introverts and the like; rather, it means putting all team members in a position to communicate and collaborate with each other effectively.

Of course, these skills are needed to actually accomplish tasks and achieve your team’s big-picture goals. But your high-performing team members should also aim to collaborate in more innovative ways that go beyond the scope of the task at hand.

Finally, high-performing teams are masters at conflict resolution — which relies heavily on open and honest communication. Ideally, your team will eventually get to a point where conflict is actually welcomed, as it serves only to strengthen the alignment between all members.

How to Effectively Develop a High-Performing Team

With all of the above in mind, it’s important to understand that building a high-performing team doesn’t happen overnight.

No matter how talented, dedicated, and driven your team members may be, it will take time and intentional effort for them to truly become the powerhouse you’re hoping for. 

Along their path, your future high-performing team will go through four stages of development:

Here, we’ll explain each of these stages in detail — and discuss the best practices to follow as you nurture your team’s evolution.

Some Notes Before Getting Started

Before forming a team of any kind, there are a number of things you can do to make sure everything gets started on the right foot.

Most importantly, you need to nail down exactly why the team is being formed in the first place. In defining both the operational and business cases for the initiative, you’ll ensure that forming a team is absolutely necessary to accomplish the tasks at hand.

(Otherwise, you’re liable to form a directionless committee with little idea of what they’re supposed to be accomplishing.)

You’ll also want to have a clear idea of the roles that will exist within the team — and which of your employees best fit these roles. While this list will likely include your top performers in different areas, don’t overlook those “under the radar” employees whose niche specialties might come in handy.

Finally, now’s when you’ll determine the structure of the team. This, again, depends largely on the issue and overall situation — and may occur more or less organically in certain circumstances. In any case, it’s vital for team members to understand the group hierarchy from the get-go to avoid major problems down the road.

1. Forming a Solid Team

Throughout the Forming stage, you’ll be looking to:

• Get all team members aligned toward achieving a common goal
• Define performance standards and milestones for both the group and each member
• Establish standard operating procedures for integral processes

Creating alignment starts with the collaborative creation of a team mission statement and charter. This doesn’t have to be too in-depth, but should make clear what the team’s purpose is, what roles are involved, and all other foundational information about the initiative.

From there, the team will define the key performance indicators and other milestones they’ll be striving to achieve. Setting SMART goals (again, collaboratively) for the group and individual team members will add more clarity to their assignment — which will further strengthen their alignment from the start.

With clear goals in mind, the team can create standard workflows, procedures, and protocols to follow in order to keep things running smoothly. In all cases, establishing clear lines of communication — and developing SOP for using them — is key to staying connected as a team.

Once all this groundwork has been laid, your team can start working productively — and begin evolving into the high-performing team they’ll soon become.

2. Weathering the Storms to Come

As the team begins to fire on all cylinders, they’ll almost certainly face a fair amount of friction along the way.

And it’s their ability to handle this friction that propels them toward “high-performing” status.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of enablement : If your talented team members haven’t been given the means to perform to their highest capacity, they simply won’t be able to. Open access to all available tools and resources is essential.

(You need the right  knowledge base software  to ensure your team’s collective knowledge is readily accessible, as well.)

Team members should also feel comfortable making their voices heard as they bring suggestions, and even problems, to the table. While enabling open communication is important, you should also have a protocol in place for certain scenarios — especially when it comes to conflict resolution.

Along with these standard procedures for conflict resolution, you’ll need to reinforce the idea that conflict can (and should) be good for the team. In fact, the biggest challenge at this stage is to accept conflict as a natural part of working as a team — and to begin approaching all disagreements as opportunities to learn and grow together.

This is where the “storm” can be most impactful: 

Groups that fail to address and overcome conflict productively will always face blockers to becoming the high-performing team they could be.

The good news?

If you’ve been fostering trust within your team members up to this point, this so-called storm will be nothing more than a light breeze.

3. Creating a New Normal

Once it’s become clear that your team can weather most storms while still keeping a steady pace, you should start to settle into somewhat of a routine.

(Remember: Handling friction will have become part of this routine, by now — and usually won’t throw things too far off course.)

Of course, there’s no guarantee that things will stay this way. Unfortunately, it’s quite possible for teams to revert to their previous mode of operation — especially if the “new way” isn’t continually reinforced by leaders and members alike.

Solidifying the “new way” as the way of doing things involves:

• Consistent monitoring of individual and team performance
• Proactive and responsive celebration of growth and achievement
• Making ongoing improvements to workflows to better enable team members

Employee training (as well as leadership team development ) may be necessary over time — both formal and informal. Ideally, you’ll be able to address team performance issues as they arise, providing guidance and further resources to team members as needed while simultaneously keeping things moving in the right direction.

4. Performing as Planned

This stage is basically an extension of the previous, with all team processes now running exactly as you’d intended from the start.

At this point, you’ll need to start thinking about what you’ll do once you reach your initial goals.

In some cases — such as with project teams — it will already have been decided that the team will disband once the initiative is complete. In these instances, you’ll want to hold retrospectives or post-mortems to review the experience as a whole. This will help with individual development and future team planning — and can open the door for more collaboration moving forward.

Other teams may continue on past the initial goalposts — especially if their efforts have led to major growth for the company. Here, you’ll start the process over, using your new normal as a baseline to improve upon.

Some key things to consider in such cases:

• Do you need to add or change group members, or tweak member roles at all?
• What information and/or knowledge can you reuse and build on throughout this next initiative?
• What’s needed to better enable your team members and the group as a whole?

Zooming out even further, think about how your overall approach to developing high-performing teams has impacted your organization and business. While you’ll have already uncovered a number of advantages to high-powered teamwork, there will always be more ways to use teams for the enrichment of the company.

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Skill-based team building

4 research-based activities for building a high-performance team

How do you create a high-performance team? Here’s what Simon Sinek, who’s studied top-performers, has to say:

(Can’t watch? In a nutshell, Sinek says top performers help others even when they’re completely exhausted).

While Sinek’s advice is inspiring, we wanted to base our recommendations on research. So we reverse-engineered one of the top-performing companies out there: Google.

Related reading :  Team building for startups

Let’s reverse engineer the top-performing Google teams

Even at its enormous size of over 100,000 employees, Google is still delivering growth of over 20%.

A recent Inc article shared what Google found when studying their own teams: Five ingredients are present in most top-performing teams.

• Psychological safety The team feels confident that “no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.”
• Dependability Team members can trust others to “reliably complete quality work on time”
• Structure and clarity Each team member’s expectations, the process for fulfilling these expectations, and the consequences of their performance are clearly defined. "Goals can be set at the individual or group level, and must be specific, challenging, and attainable."
• Meaning Team members find a sense of purpose in the work itself or their output. “It can include factors such as financial security or self-expression.”
• Impact Your team members see that their work contributes to the organization's goals.

Create a simple survey to understand where you might be lacking in each of these areas. Just copy-paste the questions below into any survey tool (we like to use Typeform ). Allow team members to rate each on a scale of 1 to 10, and ask everyone for feedback.

• I feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish me for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea
• I can rely on every team member to deliver quality work on time
• I have specific, challenging, and attainable goals in my role
• I feel a sense of purpose in my work or the output I create
• My work contributes to the organization’s goals

Start building your high-performance team with these 4 activities

Now that you know where you might be lacking, it’s time to pick the right activities. 

It’s always better to make strides in one area instead of little improvements in all five. So try to stick with improving one of these areas at a time before moving on to the next.

#1 Run a psychological safety workshop

At the top of Google’s list of ingredients for high-performing teams was psychological safety. In a nutshell, you want your team to feel like they can take risks and that it’s ok for them to screw up.

We found three providers for virtual workshops and one self-paced course that help you improve psychological safety.

• Industrial Logic’s Psychological Safety Workshop Price: n/a From the organizers: The virtual version of this workshop is over four weeks. Each week there are two sessions, one 2-hour session in which new concepts are introduced and a 90-minute applied learning session to close the week. Between sessions, participants complete assignments to apply new skills to improve their workplace. Participants have access to an Industrial Logic forum where coaches help participants apply the skills. Expect to spend 2-5 hours per week learning and applying, including the class time.
• Blue EQ - Leading with Psychological Safety Price: Starts at $499 for individual sessions, with pricing available for larger groups. From the organizers: This 4-hr workshop is not a lecture or a passive experience. Adults learn best through execution while receiving real-time feedback. At this workshop you will work with a Live Facilitator to learn actionable concepts that have been developed through years of research across all industries and with leaders around the world — But that’s not enough. You will take those actionable insights and work with others in Breakout Sessions to practice and experience Psychological Safety. This is a Discovery Learning Process where you take away the skills and habits that will make the biggest difference for you and your organization.
• Lead by Impact - Psychological Safety Workshop Price: n/a From the organizers: You want your team to be at their best but they need to feel a sense of safety so they can be open and honest with one another, so they can challenge and grow together.  For over the past 10 years, I have helped leaders and teams to create small behavioral and environmental changes through psychological safety training that can lead to a happier and more productive team. Together I will help you learn how to have a safe and strong foundation in your culture so that everyone thrives - yes, you and your entire team. 
• GitLab - Psychological Safety Short Course Price: Free From the organizers: This is a short course designed to help with your understanding of psychological safety, provide pragmatic steps to cultivate a culture of psychological safety within in your team, and reflect on some of your behaviours that may appear psychologically safe or unsafe.

#2 Dependability: Radical candor

A great way to create dependability in your team is to openly discuss who is not dependable, and how it can be addressed.

This approach can easily backfire, but the folks at Radical Candor have some great tips for implementing a culture of honest feedback.

To get started, read this Radical Candor blog post or watch the video below. If you think this is for you, order the book for your team and start having candid conversations.

#3 Structure and clarity + Impact: OKRs

You can tackle many structure, clarity, and impact issues by working on how you set goals as an organization.

The result of bad structure, clarity, and impact might look something like this:

• There are conflicting priorities between employees and departments
• It’s unclear how your work fits into the bigger picture of the business
• You don’t know where your job begins, and where it ends

What has helped us fix a lot of these issues is a popular goal-setting approach: Objectives and key results (OKRs).

Simply put, OKRs force company leaders to focus on the most important business objectives and ask each department to align their OKRs with the company OKRs.

Typically, individuals are assigned OKRs, which makes it very clear who’s responsible and their impact on the business.

#4 Meaning: 1-1s or feedback surveys

As we described above, “meaning” is not as clear-cut as some of the other dimensions of high-performance teams.

Your first step to giving your team more meaning is understanding what is meaningful to them.

• Is it your company’s vision?
• Is it purely financial?
• Do they want to create something they’re proud of?
• Do they find meaning in challenges?

How do you find out? 1-on-1s or weekly meetings with your team members. Set up weekly recurring meetings (start with 30 minutes) and ask your team straight-up: What gives you meaning at work?

Collect your answers in a document, print it out, and put it on your desk so you keep their “sources of meaning” top of mind.

High-performance teams weren’t created overnight

Even the most successful companies had humble beginnings and sometimes years of struggle-bussing before making it big ( check out Nike’s story ).

Yes, a high-performance team is what most leaders strive for. But it takes hard work, patience, and lots of trial and error to get there.

What matters most: Listen to your team and create an environment they can thrive in. That’s the responsibility of the leader, not the team.

If you're looking for more ideas around team building, dive deeper into detailed articles from our experts:

• Activity ideas for in-office teams / virtual teams / free ideas
• Team building for leaders
• Communication team building
• Problem-solving as a team

Julian Schaaf

Head Of Marketing

Large groups

Prep required

Share fun facts and bond with a team quiz

Have your participants choose from a list of questions they’d like their coworkers to answer about them, before watching as they guess the right answer.

share-fun-facts-and-bond-with-a-team-quiz

Run a guided recognition activity

run-a-guided-recognition-activity

Organize a virtual cooking class

Hire a professional chef to help your team cook a delicious lunch or dinner. May be difficult for co-workers with families. To find providers and get tips, read our blog about virtual cooking classes.

organize-a-virtual-cooking-class

Hire a stand-up comedian

hire-a-stand-up-comedian

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The ultimate guide to building high-performance teams in tech.

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The ultimate guide to building high-performance teams in tech - interview with álvaro moya (founder, lidr.co).

Building high-performance teams is far from trivial. 

Your job as a leader is to get the performance metrics right and to spot people who look for growth opportunities from the beginning.

However, you must remember that building high-performance teams isn’t just about hiring; the team and the environment they work in must enable them to make the most of their talents. 

How can you get everything right to build high-performance teams? 

Álvaro Moya , Founder of LIDR.co , shares his approach to building high-performance teams. He talks about the importance of clearly defined values and goals within the company, and he shares which areas can be improved to foster high performance.

This blog post was written based on episode 71 of the Level-up Engineering podcast hosted by Karolina Toth .

This post covers:

• Maximizing opportunities
• Individual effort and teamwork

Employee satisfaction

Business outcome.

• Use the SPACE model for building high-performance teams

Remember that each team is different

• Action items
• Communication and collaboration

Business before technology

• Company values

Intrinsic motivation

Make the effort, promote mastery, set the right challenges.

• Learn time and task management
• Look for balance
• Improve soft skills

Hire slow, fire fast

Entrepreneurial spirit, building a high-performance team from scratch, about álvaro moya, how do you define high performance in engineering teams.

Maximize opportunities

For me, high performance is about getting the most out of possibilities.

It’s different for everyone, and it also depends on your role and seniority level. Being a high performer doesn’t mean the same for a junior developer and an engineering manager. You can get the most out of their talents in different ways. 

High performers vs. high-performance teams

High performance depends on the individuals and the team itself. As a person, you can be a high performer, but you also need a strong team to succeed. 

The role of the manager isn’t just to hire the best people, but it is also to create an environment where they can thrive. High performance is about people who are capable and motivated to reach the highest level of performance by themselves, and it’s about building a great environment for them to thrive in.

What tools and metrics do you use to measure performance in software engineering?

Most companies are too focused on the delivery and the outcome of their team. They measure the performance of their employees through what they deliver and how it impacts the business. 

With this method, they can measure that the team is delivering code at a repeatable pace, and they can estimate what they can get done in the next sprint. If they can improve work quality and velocity by using this metric, it’s great.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t always measure the impact and high performance accurately. I tend to focus on a more holistic approach, and I encourage leaders to create an environment where trust, security, open communication, and autonomy are given. 

Employee satisfaction, or eNPS , is the most important value metric for me. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how satisfied your team members are with their jobs, but you can ask them why they’re doing what they do and what the outcome is. 

High-performance teams have clarity about what the business goal is and how they’re going to achieve it. They know what’s most important in the current quarter and how those goals are broken down into technical tasks.  It enables them to take action and start planning, designing, and developing the right thing.

There’s no point in delivering faster or with better quality if the team is building the wrong thing in the first place. In a high-performance team, people understand their impact on the business. They look beyond delivery pace or velocity; they focus on the impact of their work. Instead of merely refining smaller areas, like effective planning and on-time delivery, they see the bigger picture, and they understand why improving these areas is important.

What are the steps to building high-performance teams? 

Give them SPACE

To create the environment where people can see the bigger picture, I follow the SPACE framework. It describes the areas you can work on as an engineering leader in order to improve employee satisfaction and business outcomes. SPACE stands for:

• Satisfaction
• Performance
• Communication

Define areas for improvement

You can go through these areas to see if any of them need improvement, so you can set actionable goals. For example, if you want more autonomy for your teams, you might need to improve their communication. You can improve the documentation system , so they can make decisions easier, and they don’t rely on anyone else’s agenda to solve problems.

Don’t do it all at once

There are five areas in this framework, but you shouldn’t try to focus on all of them at the same time. Two or three areas are more manageable. You can discuss which areas to work on first with your team - start with the one that needs the most improvement.

Focus on getting all areas on an acceptable level first. Once you’ve reached that state, you can further iterate each aspect with a focus on the natural strengths of the group, and reach an environment where your team can thrive. 

Some teams’ pain points are efficiency and performance. Others need to focus on satisfaction and well-being.

This means that the solution is different for every team. Sometimes, it’s a tool, and other times, it’s a new process or ritual. It can also be as simple as having more conversations with your team.

How do you start improving a team’s performance?

Determine key values

The key ingredients to high performing teams are trust , autonomy, and ownership. That’s what I improve.

I also take into account what matters for each team, and what high performance means for them. I can help them understand the five areas of the SPACE framework, and I can provide guidance, but ultimately, they decide what to work on. 

Set action items

I also involve the teams to set up action items.

I prefer brainstorming and coming up with ideas together, even if I have my own methods in mind. With the collective knowledge of just a few people, plenty of ideas and actionable steps can come up. It’s a great morale booster, because they know they’re choosing from their own ideas, and they can feel proud of what they’ve come up with during the brainstorming session.

If you involve the team in this step, you’re also fostering ownership. They’re the ones giving ideas instead of blindly following your instructions, and they’re responsible for the changes that will happen. You’re facilitating decisions, like a coach.

What aspects should high-performance teams prioritize? 

Communication & collaboration

Communication and collaboration are the most important, because they provide clarity. Clarity on the roles, clarity on how to climb the career ladder, clarity about the team and its channels and practices. Communication with other teams is also important so that you collaborate more effectively.

Once you have defined and communicated the business goals, you can break them down into technical tasks, and the team can go to work. If tasks are clearly defined, team members don’t need to be in constant contact with each other, in person or remotely. They know what the next sprint’s goals are, and they can work on their designated responsibilities independently. 

In terms of priorities, business is the most important, and technology enables the business to make money. For tech companies, tech itself is a product and a business at the same time, but the business has to make money. 

That’s why tech teams need to think in business terms. I can grow this perspective in them if I burst the bubble of tech teams and expose them to the rest of their environment. I can encourage them to interact with other departments so they try something new and leave their comfort zone.

Company values above all

You have to define the company values , and you can facilitate these values as a cultural inspector. Celebrate and encourage behaviours you want to foster, and be strict about what you don’t allow. Set clear boundaries, so people know exactly what is expected of them.

These expectations can support high performance.

For example, you can communicate that you don’t encourage mediocre results and that you expect your team to pay close attention to details, because any lack of attention affects your customers. If you allow mediocrity, your employees won’t be motivated to do their best at work, because they’re treated the same regardless of their efforts. 

When new hires ask about company values, I know they’d be a great addition to our team, because they care about these aspects of the job. They understand the importance of shared values, and pushing towards the final mission while staying aligned with these values motivates them. 

Money cannot buy this type of motivation because it’s intrinsic. I learned this from Drive by Dan Pink, one of the best books for teams. It breaks down intrinsic motivation into three areas: mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

What can leaders do to build high-performance teams? 

Code is easy to alter to make it work better. Doing the same with people takes a lot of time and effort. The more people you have on your team, the more difficult your job is as a leader. 

You’ll have to make a conscious effort to allocate time for your team.

If you want to create a high-performance atmosphere, you have to be consistent. Day after day, you have to be clear about what you value and what you don’t tolerate. Your team will align with these values, and you’ll create psychological safety and a collaborative work environment as a result.

Mastery is about being the best version of yourself. You can achieve mastery when you’re doing something achievable yet challenging.

In order to create such challenges for your team, you need to get to know each team member and what they’re passionate about. Ideally, the challenge isn’t just about being achievable, but it’s also something that they’d like to pursue.

It’s important to communicate with your teams’ managers to see if the challenges you set for them are manageable or if they’ll need to prioritize something else at the moment. This way, you’ll give them new challenges at the right time. 

You don’t need to worry about finding the right level of challenge. As long as communication and trust are present in a team, they can launch their own challenges, and you only need to determine whether these are aligned with the company. 

If the team members don’t have enough experience to decide on their own challenges, create a discussion about it. Ask them about their opinion, whether they think a challenge is achievable, and whether they’re motivated to do it. This preliminary conversation can avoid burnout and stress, and it can decrease turnover rates . 

Time and task management

You can promote high-performance by helping your team protect their time, and enable them to be in flow as much as possible. Most developers need long time blocks to be in flow because writing code is creative work for them. Think about how your team operates and how many time blocks your developers have from Monday to Friday.

It’s equally important to think about the workload they have; if they have lots of different tasks, it’s harder to concentrate and spend enough time on each. Reduce their scope of work and multi-tasking to help them ignore distractions. It helps improve their performance , and it can raise team efficiency.

Look for balance 

Communication is the first thing you need to work on in high-performance teams. Unfortunately, in the world of tech, we tend not to be great communicators. We focus on sharpening technical skills instead of soft skills . 

I consider someone a good professional if his skills are balanced—people can rely on him, even if he’s not an expert in everything.

There is no such thing as a Most Valuable Player (MVP) in high-performance teams. We achieve goals together. If we win, we all win. If we lose, we all lose. We’re competing against ourselves by trying to achieve our own goals. 

When you’re clear about these values, and your team members understand that they don’t need to be rockstars individually, they’ll focus less on their individual performance. They’ll co-create and improve an environment where they can collaborate, combining their strengths and thriving as a team.

Creating a high-performance environment has to be teamwork, not only the manager’s responsibility. The manager enables them to create the best environment for themselves. 

Stress the importance of soft skills

Communication helps team members understand how the company works and operates. If they have a better understanding of these processes, you empower them to become entrepreneurs or potential intrapreneurs in the company. 

Unfortunately, the importance of psychological safety and soft skills is still overlooked. My mission is to raise this awareness, and encourage teams to improve their environments. It takes time, but the long-term effects are worth it.

When a person isn’t performing like they’re expected to, follow the adage of “hire slow, fire fast.” Don’t send the wrong message to the team that low performance is allowed. Hire slowly to find the best team members with growth mindsets, but fire fast when they go against the values of the company.

What are some of the characteristics that you look for when you want to hire high performers?

I love to hire freelancers. People who have been freelancers for a while and are willing to be employees are great because they have experienced working autonomously for a long time. 

They have been a startup of one, and they learned how to take care of their brand, their clients, and their operations to be efficient. They can look for solutions on their own, because they have always had to solve challenges alone as freelancers.

Aside from freelancers, I look for entrepreneurial engineers with a “can-do” attitude. They tend to ask questions about opportunities in the company, how much autonomy they’ll have, or what learning opportunities are available for them. 

When interviewing with such people, I can sense that they’re willing to go to the next level for themselves, and they are looking for growth. They aren’t looking for a comfortable job but one where they can grow and reach their full potential. 

When they ask questions about the environment and their potential role, I can sense that they are serious about improving themselves, and they try to determine if we can enable that. Once you have your eyes and ears trained to spot such ambition, you can spot valuable people who look for growth opportunities.

Four years ago, I joined an existing company with an established culture. However, there was no tech team. They relied on an outsourcing company to build their product, and I needed to create the team from scratch to keep building the product in-house after we had validated traction in the market. 

There was a lot of pressure because I needed to do it quickly.

I managed to negotiate the budget for our in-house team. I hired fewer but more senior people than they were initially planning. They helped me save the company culture, which was the most important thing for me.

I delegated the technological part of my job because I knew I had to prioritize other areas in that short deadline. 

Creating high-performing teams, not individuals, was also achievable because the values of the company were part of the performance review . These values were related to high-performing teams, and they included ownership, autonomy, innovation, and continuous improvement. My role as a CTO was setting clear actions so we could evaluate how the teams were working towards company values by the end of the quarter.

This was a powerful way of building high-performance teams. The technology and the way teams operated were open for discussion, but the values were set from the beginning.

Álvaro Moya is the Founder of LIDR.co and an experienced CTO. In 12 years, he has walked the path from software developer to leading large technology teams in high-growth companies, such as Wefox or Revolut. During this time, he has mentored hundreds of engineers to help them make the transition to management and develop successful career plans. 

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Teams That Changed The World (Team Case Studies)

Written by Victoria Allen

Apr 13, 2018  - Last updated: Aug 30, 2023

During our lifetime there are an abundance of occasions in which we are required to work as part of a team; most notably in the workplace, and because of this, organisations are habitually faced with complex problems, sometimes in higher levels of pressure circumstances.

Team development is more than just running team meetings and ticking of boxes. It involves making hard decisions, and working for the good of others even when the end is not in sight. Great teams cultivate a sense of psychological safety across the organization— from senior executive all the way down to entry-level colleagues.

What it Takes to Build a Top-Performing Team

The proper formation and careful maintenance of a team is crucial to the team's performance and success. Establishing a diverse team with mixed skills and strengths can improve team effectiveness and productivity. They also have a positive effect on the team's dynamics and help everyone achieve key goals individually and together.

Another vital element is communication. By communicating with one another and understanding each other’s communication styles and preferences, a shared culture is created.

Disagreements can be avoided (or easily resolved), with people understanding their individual and group roles in order for each team member to be striving for the same collective goal.

Research lead by Google  has concluded that the best teams included team members who listen to one another and show sensitivity. Studies have also shown that when people work in high performing teams, in contrast to working alone, they are more productive and report greater job satisfaction.

Working in a team results faster innovation, quicker mistake detection and correction, better problem-solving, and greater performance according to research findings.

History is littered with top performing team case studies, and in this article we will look at the three top performing teams that we believe changed the world as we know it.

Before we dive into the case studies, if you're wanting to build a high performing team then you should take a look at QuizBreaker . It's an all-in-one team engagement platform that helps brings teams closer together through a variety of great tools. They offer a 7 day free trial too.

NASA’s Apollo 11

A huge milestone for science and for mankind, NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission is a great demonstration of high-performing teams.

Televised across the world, three astronauts made the revolutionary journey toward the moon and two of the three astronauts stepped foot onto the moon’s surface, creating history.

Whilst Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are the well-known faces of this prodigious achievement, they wouldn’t have made it to the history books without the efforts of their supporting team - years of previous research and expertise allowed this mission to take place and succeed.

For two years prior to the operation, mission planners studied the moon’s surface using photographs from satellites and the Surveyor spacecraft, to find the best place for Apollo 11 to land. They needed to consider the geography of the surface, factoring in craters, boulders and cliffs, as well as the best time to land due to the positioning of the sun.

NASA has estimated that more than 400,000 people made the moon landings possible; scientists, engineers and technicians, who had never worked in aerospace before, were given contracts to design a machine capable of transporting humans safely to out of space.

The astronauts visited the laboratories in order to create a human connection to foster a more cohesive team – the workers met the men whose lives were in their hands. In the operations control room, during each flight, there were numerous technicians guiding and supporting those heading into outer space. Essentially, each step of the way, communication was paramount, enabling the team behind NASA’s Apollo 11 to achieve a historical milestone.

The Manhattan Project

The American-led mission to develop the world’s first atomic weapon during WW2 was code-named the Manhattan Project .

It was and still is, thought of as a highly controversial assignment, though it is hard to dispute that it is an excellent example of a top performing senior leadership team.

The task began in 1942 after authorisation from U.S. President Roosevelt. Utilising the minds’ of some of the world’s leading scientists and military personnel, the Manhattan Project started as an attempt to beat the Nazis in a race against time to build a nuclear weapon. However, with hindsight, we now know that the Nazis would not be successful in their attempts to build an atomic bomb.

Involving over 130,000 individuals, spread across 13 locations in the United States of America and Canada, and all sworn to secrecy, this mammoth of a project had a huge risk of exposure and sabotage and therefore communication and coordination would be vital to this mission’s success.

One of the reasons why the Manhattan Project is considered one of the greatest examples of the top performing team case studies is that often, within the realm of research and invention, scientists have a desire to compete against others in order to gain notoriety for their work.

However in this instance, scientists (and other specialists) worked within a team and adopted a group mentality in order to achieve a shared goal.

The Royal Society of London

The Royal Society of London is a classic and old example of a top performing team. Granted a royal charter by King Charles II, the Royal Society of London was the first national scientific institution in the world.

Founded in 1660 and often referred to as “the invisible college”, the society was orchestrated by its team leaders in order to encourage the exchange of scientific and philosophic ideas and theories. The society’s motto “Nullius in verba” is translated as “take nobody’s word for it”. The motto was upheld as a manifest of the members’ drive to verify all statements by the means of scientific facts and experimental research findings.

Notable members over the years have included the legendary Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.

When the society was formed, during a time dominated by prejudice, war and political unrest, the group prided itself of the fact that it accepted members of all backgrounds.

Papers were exchanged between the scientific scholars, and within the space of just 70 years the science we employ in everyday life today was developed. This includes the sciences of anatomy, astronomy, botany, chemistry, physics and zoology.

The team’s achievements were established on a foundation of trust, support and respect, as well as a collective goal – the advancement of science.

Many of us use Wikipedia on a regular basis and do not stop to think what a great example of teamwork the website portrays.

Volunteer writers and editors contribute by inputting knowledge and facts about the world onto the website in order to create an accessible and easily understood encyclopedic database. Without an army of regular employees, the team worked together to build the biggest database of information of all time.

Wikipedia is one of the most viewed websites in the world and is the result of the cumulative efforts of a vast, and somewhat anonymous, team.

In the world of sports, when thinking about top performing team case studies, one famous team in particular comes to mind.

The New Zealand national rugby union team

The All Blacks , are considered to be one of the greatest performing international teams in history.

Representing a country of just 4.5 million inhabitants, the All Blacks appear to be an untouchable team. They have won the title in 3 World Cups and accomplish a better ratio of wins than other sports teams, making them the foremost sports franchise in history.

In their 125 year long history, the All Blacks have won more than three-quarter of the games they have participated in which is a statistic unsurpassed by any other national sports team. Despite the frequent long periods of time spent away from family whilst touring for matches internationally, the team have a strong determination and drive to achieve a common goal - to win every game and maintain their reputation. All Black team players, including the coach, are seen as equal and as important components in the creation and maintenance of a successful team.

Nature - Birds

There are even examples of effective team performance in nature; think of geese, for example, each winter the flock work together in order to achieve their common goal - reaching their seasonal destination. Communicating by honking at one another, they encourage those who appear to be losing momentum or getting tired.

Or, by flying in a v-shape formation, the geese reduce the drag for those behind them. The same principles could be implemented in an organisational team. Or, by nurturing a team mentality, all members share a common goal and feel supported by one another.

History teaches us that in order for teams to be successful, the conditions must be right. Nurturing management styles, and awareness of others working styles are just some of the contributing factors that aid the creation of a high performance team.

Google’s " Project Aristotle " has highlighted the fact that when individuals join an organisational team, they do not want to leave their individuality and personality at home. People want to be their true selves and feel that they are free to share ideas and thoughts in a psychologically safe environment.

Communication, empathy and mutual understanding all create a productive environment for increased performance and job satisfaction.

By understanding each other’s work styles, strengths and attributes, work stops becoming an act of labour and becomes a collective goal or mission.

No man is an island. Business is a team sport!

About the author

Victoria is a Psychology Masters graduate and works in psychology research/copywriting. She has a background in marketing and has previously worked within the NHS in the Mental Health services. Victoria loves animals and is a self-confessed Pinterest-addict. She is always dreaming of her next travel adventure.

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Waukee Northwest leans on youth with standard-setting 4x100 performance at Drake Relays

There is winning, and then there is setting the standard.

One Waukee Northwest relay team accomplished both.

As the storm clouds returned and then departed over Drake Stadium – in symmetry with the meet-postponing weather from the night before – Avery Winter moved through a series of warm-up starts ahead of the girls 4x100-meter relay.

On your marks.

Winter jumped a few times in the air, leaned down and placed her cleats against the blocks. She wiped the water from her hands on the back of her uniform and settled her fingers along the line.

The Wolves squad already ran a season high (47.65) in the preliminary round – run Saturday morning under a cloudless, sun-filled sky.

After a three-hour delay – which Northwest spent staying warm in the Bell Center, according to third-leg runner Katie Stahl – Northwest came out ready to claim the white flag.

Winter exploded off the blocks, and her teammates – Keziah Caldwell, Ayrissa Robinson and Stahl – didn’t slow down.

Northwest finished in 47.89 seconds, good enough for first place and faster than the previous statewide best of 48.05 this season — which the Wolves ran at the Jim Duncan Invitational on April 13.

Caldwell crossed the finish line after anchoring the Wolves to another relay victory and was immediately enveloped in a hug from Winter.

“Good job,” Winter exclaimed. “You did so good.”

It was a good job by Caldwell, especially since the win almost slipped away from the Wolves. Western Dubuque’s Brynn Walters came on strong after the final turn, and Northwest pulled off the win by just five one-hundredths of a second.

Caldwell, a freshman, reminded herself to relax and focus on her finish.

“Just relax,” Caldwell said. “You run fastest when you’re relaxed.”

The Northwest relay team must have been relaxed, even as the day dragged on longer than planned.

The Wolves concurred one event in the sunny: Caldwell, Robinson, Stahl and Winter finished first in the 4x200 and set a Drake Relays record with a time of 1:40.46.

With fresh legs and four familiar faces, Waukee Northwest pulled off another win in the 4x100, and then Caldwell and Winter rushed out of post-race interviews to compete in the 4x400-meter relay.

The Wolves couldn’t pull out three wins in the sprint relay events.

But, with not so fresh legs, Caldwell and Winter joined Anna Sheriff and Sadie Maas to pull off a fourth-place finish in the 4x400.

The focus now turns to the state track meet, where Waukee Northwest will certainly be the team to beat.

And the Wolves are up for the challenge.

“We’ve been working hard for it all year,” Stahl said. “We’ve been working in the summer, fall, we just keep trying hard.”

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at [email protected] or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel .