Developing High Performance Teams

The Rehabilitation Leadership Framework provides a structure for leadership and guidance to help us improve our leadership skills.

What is a High Performance Team?

A high performance team is a team that understands its purpose, values are clearly set out and team members are mutually accountable for outcomes. Team members are committed to achieving the team’s specified outcomes. Specific characteristics of a high performance team are encompassed in the following acronym:

• Purpose, trust and common values
• Empowerment in decision making
• Relationships and communication
• Flexibility and autonomy
• Optimal productivity and efficiency
• Recognition and appreciation
• Morale and engagement

Purpose, Trust and Common Values

Members of a high performance team will understand the purpose of their work and will trust team members. From this, the team will agree upon goals, roles will be defined and strategies developed.

Empowerment in Decision Making

A team will become empowered when it understands the decision making parameters and goals of an organisation or team. If decision making practices and accountability are clearly defined, team members can have autonomy and the opportunity to experience collective and personal power. The best teams will self manage and be able to work independently towards milestones and outcomes.

Relationships and Communication

It is essential that team members feel they can take risks, as well as share their thoughts, opinions and feelings without fear. Differences of opinion are valued in a high performance team. If they create conflict, it is important that this conflict is managed in a respectful manner.

Flexibility and Autonomy

The high performance team has the ability to adapt to changing conditions and demands. Roles are shared and all members are able to support each other. Strengths of individuals are identified and utilised.

Optimal Productivity and Efficiency

A high performance team will be committed to optimal productivity and efficiency. They will have high standards and strive to meet deadlines and reach goals. They will also hold each other accountable, but everyone takes pride in the team’s achievements.

Recognition and Appreciation

Everyone, including the leader, recognises each other’s contributions. Because of this, team members feel appreciated/regarded.

Morale and Engagement

Morale refers to the pride that comes from belonging to the team and achieving defined goals. Engagement refers to the emotional connection that team members feel towards others in the group. Members of high performing will feel confident and enthusiastic. They will be optimistic that they can achieve desired outcomes.

These attributes have certain benefits for all connected to the team, from team members to clients, organisations and team leaders.

Common Challenges of Team Development

It is important as a leader to be aware of the pitfalls of team development. This allows the leader to be proactive and ensure the team has the ability to become high performing.

Trust

Most models of team development focus on developing positive relationships as soon as possible. Trust is essential in a team. The ways in which conflict is managed will have a significant impact on whether or not trust develops in a team. While leaders may be tempted to avoid conflict, productive differences of opinion need to be encouraged. It is important that everyone in the team feels able to share their views or opinions. They should know that every perspective or view is valued and will be respected. Teams are not, however, static - members come and go. This can affect interpersonal dynamics, which can in turn, upset the trust within a team.

Connection

Connection can be difficult to achieve, especially for dispersed teams. Because these teams rarely meet in person, they must connect through technology. This almost inevitably results in occasional misunderstandings. Some strategies to address this include:

• Video based meeting
• Intermittent in person team building
• Email or text guidelines

Focus

Team members can sometimes become distracted and lose focus. A team leader must ensure that members have a clear understanding of priorities, especially early on in the team development process.

Momentum

Changes in team membership, organisational restructuring, funding changes or interpersonal tensions can affect momentum. The leader needs to be able act to ensure a team is able to reset or refresh in order to keep things moving forward.

Complexity

A focus on collaborative decision making and collective action adds a degree of complexity to achieving tasks. This can be frustrating for some team members as some individuals prefer that the leader takes unilateral action. However, high performing teams will tend to rely on collective wisdom in the team.

Organisational issues

Hierarchical decision making in organisations, as well as power dynamics, conflicting objectives and system barriers all affect a team’s ability to achieve its purpose. This is especially true as team members often have little influence over these factors. The leader needs to be able to identify and remove as many barriers as possible to ensure the team’s success.

Patrick Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

In this book, Lencioni discusses the challenges team leaders may face while trying to create a high performance team. These include:

1. Absence of trust between team members. As discussed above, trust is essential in a team. It allows members to establish a rapport with each other as well as to feel confident that they can share ideas, shortcoming and vulnerabilities without fear. If team members trust each other, they won’t hesitate to ask for or offer help. However, where there is an absence of trust, team members may work separately and not take part in team activities.
2. Fear of Conflict - the desire to maintain harmony (even if it is artificial) will reduce productivity. Fear of conflict reduces creativity and results in more superficial relationships and a lack of rapport.
3. Lack of commitment within team - Lencioni suggests that the two major reasons for lack of commitment in team are:
   1. Lack of agreement/consensus across team, which results in team members feeling discouraged or disinterested. Consensus is reached when everyone’s ideas have been heard and decisions are made by the team as a whole.
   2. Indecisiveness - if team members feel uncertain about what to do, commitment and morale suffers
4. Avoidance of accountability - sometimes a desire to avoid personal discomfort prevents team members or leaders from holding each other accountable.
5. Inattention of team to results - if team members put their own goals/needs ahead of the team’s goals, the team will be less able to achieve results.