Leading a high-performance team, where everyone pulls together and exceeds expectations, is probably the dream of every project manager. In reality it is not so common; high-performance teams are definitely not ‘normal’.
However, you will be pleased to know that there are things you can do to help develop your project teams and improve the likelihood of project success. In this post we will look at the characteristics of high-performing teams, address the key leadership qualities needed, and identify some key steps which you can start taking today to help turbocharge your projects.
Characteristics of high-performing teams
So what is a high-performing team and why do we want one?
There is no single definition for what makes a high-performing team but they do tend to share some common attributes. Below you can find a list of what I consider to be the top 10 characteristics of a high-performing team:
- High energy
- Goal focused
- Clear on roles and responsibilities
- Sense of belonging and purpose
- Fun and exciting to be a part of
- Highly engaged
- Sacrifice personal success for a team win
- Celebrate successes
- Shared vision
- Encourage diversity
So now we have looked at the characteristics of high-performance teams, let’s take a look at how we can develop them within your teams…
Desirable leadership qualities for developing high-performing teams
All good teams need a good leader, and there are a number of key qualities that leaders of high-performing teams must possess.
The primary quality is the ability to create and communicate a clear vision that gets your team inspired. Take a step back and envisage the future, create a plan for how you’ll get there and share this with the team. This clear overarching strategy becomes essential to enable the team to know how they’re going to get to their destination.
Secondly, whilst it is not always possible for project managers to choose their teams, a good leader should be able to identify and attract the most talented people. You will find that once you have a reputation for leading high-performance teams, the most talented people will tend to gravitate towards you and your projects.
In order for your teams to flourish, you will need to create the right environment. This means enabling them to operate in an organised and systematic way by ensuring that the right supportive processes are in place to help them move forwards easily.
Communication! Leadership roles are becoming increasingly challenging as more work is being done by global or distributed teams using remote working methods. This lack of face-to-face interaction can mean that building and maintaining high-performance teams is much harder. To maximise effectiveness in these situations, be sure to make good use of online collaboration tools. For example, utilising video calls instead of voice-only calls for meetings and discussions helps to convey body language and share energy, and there are a number of tools available which have integrated features for assigning tasks, file sharing, chat, as well as monitoring progress and deadlines.
Below are seven steps that you can start taking today to help build and develop your team…
7 Steps to develop your own high-performance team
- Starting out
There are three things to consider when starting out to develop your team. Firstly, you need a good understanding of what a great team looks like. Are there any examples within your business that you can look to, or maybe you can get a benchmark from outside? Next, look at the gaps between your team and the benchmarked team. What changes do you need to make to improve your team’s performance?
- Selecting the team
As a project manager you often have to work with what you’ve got, but it is important to try and maintain a good level of diversity. This includes not only the skills and abilities of the team but also personality types.
It has been proven that the ideal team size is between 6-10 people. Any smaller than this means it lacks diversity and larger can mean sub-teams develop and divisiveness and conflict increase.
If you need to grow the team consider using peer recruitment – this gets the team involved in the decision and helps with engagement and acceptance of new team members.
- Create the right environment
It almost goes without saying that a high-performance team needs a supportive environment in which to operate. So, think about what the team will need.
The team should be encouraged to meet regularly to discuss progress, concerns and ideas for improvement – this helps to create a learning environment and allows the team to reflect on what has gone well and not so well. It is also important to have individual meetings to review objectives, development, and performance. It provides an opportunity to identify if things are going awry with the team dynamic or relationships within the team and allows early intervention.
- Establish goals and vision
Once the team has been defined it is time to start communicating the goals and mission for the project. It is important to communicate this in a way that makes the team feel a part of something special such that they see their individual contribution to the project as part of a greater purpose. The goals should also be sufficiently challenging…people want to be part of something extraordinary and evidence has shown that people perform better when pushed, as well as getting increased satisfaction and engagement.
By focusing on shared goals allows the teams to achieve both their personal targets, but also those of the team. Ensure that interdependencies are clearly laid out and understood…everyone has a role to play and they need to see how that fits into the bigger picture.
Finally, make sure that the vision is communicated regularly and consistently. The team needs to be kept informed of performance and progress.
- Communicate
Providing clear and consistent feedback to the project team based on your understanding of how they’re performing and how the project is progressing. This helps with motivation as everyone can see the fruits of their labour and that progress is being made.
Communication needs to flow in both directions to be effective and the team need to feel confident in standing up and giving their opinion or challenging the views of others. When done in a constructive way this helps to develop the open/transparent culture that high-performance teams need to thrive.
Ensure the decision-making process is understood to help reduce conflict and also that there is a clear escalation process should the need arise.
- Lead by example
If you want to lead a high-performance team you need to lead by example, and this is true not just in projects but in all areas of a business. If you can be a model of excellence your team’s behaviour will match this. Again consistency comes into play here – if you do what you say (practice what you preach) it sends a powerful message to the team and they’re more likely to do the same.
Understand your team, including their strengths and weaknesses. Build strong relationships with the people in your team – people trust friends and are more likely to go above and beyond when the need arises if you’re liked and respected.
In difficult times you need to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable and possess the expertise to enable you to guide the team through difficult times. This comes with experience. Not everyone has all the answers, so don’t feel ashamed to ask for help or seek guidance from others, and make sure that you show confidence when communicating back to the team.
Give others the opportunity to lead and develop the team dynamic. Give team members the chance to shine and develop their skills and talents.
- Celebrate successes
Celebrating the wins is a great way of recognising team achievement both within the project team and within the business environment as a whole. Showing team success throughout the organisation will make others want to be a part of your teams in the future, and team esteem is enhanced.
Whilst it’s great to share good news when things go well, don’t become complacent and always look for opportunities to improve in the future.
Summary
I hope this article has been useful and provided some interesting concepts which you can utilise to develop your high-performing teams. It is important to recognise that this will not happen overnight and it is a process that you need to be fully invested in to get the best results, but thinking about how you can apply the above steps will get you started on your journey.
It would be great to hear your comments or suggestions about the topics addressed in this post. Maybe you have a story about your own team that you would like to share….
