Creating the proper foundation for high performance teams is becoming ever more important in corporate environments where collaboration is increasingly seen as the solution to success.
A high performing team is a blend of goal-oriented professionals that are experts in their respective fields, who are responsible for planning, executing and yielding outstanding results.
High performing teams are critical in helping organisations thrive and survive in today’s intensely competitive business landscape. But building high performing teams is not a matter of chance. So here are a few tips to get you started:
Work towards the same goal
The best team work comes when a team is working together towards a common goal. Without direction, no team can achieve anything. Introducing a common goal must form part of pre-planning. If introduced too late, goals become harder to achieve.
Keep in mind, the common goal must be clear, organisation-orientated and communicated efficiently to everyone in the team.
Set clear roles and responsibilities
Each team member must know their roles and responsibilities within the team. This allows you to take advantage of everyone’s potential, hold people accountable and prevent duplication of time spent on tasks.
There must be logic behind allocating roles and responsibilities and employees should be in agreement with all decisions made on delegating tasks. Roles should be assigned based on expertise.
Communicate, communicate, communicate
We’ve heard it before but can’t stress the importance of communication. It plays a vital role in helping highly performing teams to achieve their goals. By communicating in a timely manner, it can save organisations a huge amount of time and money.
Leaders can do their part to encourage communication by taking frequent feedback, providing daily team updates and getting the team together on a regular basis.
Allow room for Innovation
Teams should feel confident to experiment and learn new things in order to apply innovative solutions to problems. By working in this way, long term success is created and teams become more confident in coming up with solutions to their problems.
Innovations come from unusual places, never criticise ideas. Consider holding an Innovation Lab with your team to introduce this new way of working if it isn’t something that you and your team are familiar with.
Use metrics
To measure a team’s performance, using measurable metrics is a must. Introduce a proper strategy, plan and key performance indicators to ensure that your team are delivering the right results.
Remember to also measure under performing team members. A highly performing team brings overachievers and underachievers together to evaluate how the team can create success together and not impact the team dynamics.
Lastly, when leaders are creating a highly performing team, they must ensure diversity and enough resources. A team can do all of the above, but without these two things, it may not be a success.
When all of the above is done in the right way, a team will exceed expectations and over deliver on tasks and results.