Whether you’re leading a start up, SME or multi-national, every chief executive wants a team that is self-motivated, highly-skilled and willing to collaborate to achieve a common vision.

It might sound straight forward, but unless you’re building a team from scratch it can be challenging. More commonly management teams have to work with existing employees, creating partnerships that might not seem immediately obvious with people who may have differing agendas and skillsets.

According to Katzenbach & Smith, 1992, high-performance teams are “highly focused and achieve exceptional results. They outperform not only expectations but also other equivalent teams.”

Getting the right people in place to be ‘exceptional’ can be tough. The good news is that if you follow a checklist of requirements, the risks of failure are immediately reduced.

Here are five things to consider when building a high-performance team.

1 Choose from your top team of talent:

High performance teams need people who are able to collaborate and innovate. Each individual needs to have bought into the organisational vision, be highly motivated, a good communicator and able to manage conflict. Having these shared abilities will help to immediately build trust and this, combined with the right leadership and direction, helps create a culture of empowerment.

2 Be clear on roles:

Defining what’s required within a given timeframe is absolutely crucial at the outset of any project. Equally important is defining the skillsets needed. Recognising and playing to individual strengths shows everyone that they’re valued, can reduce tensions and helps to generate greater commitment. Belief in what can be achieved as a team because of the talent within it goes a long way to generating exceptional results.

3 Strong leadership:

The role of the leader is absolutely key. High performance team leaders need to clearly and consistently keep the collective focus on the shared vision and project goals, assigning tasks and fostering collaboration accordingly. Keeping everyone’s eyes on the prize requires someone who can monitor work processes, quickly address issues and share learnings while maintaining momentum. Making sure individuals have the appropriate support, with discretion, keeps things progressing efficiently.

4 Collective responsibility is key:

High performing teams are high performing because they are more than the sum of their parts. Communicating performance expectations and celebrating successes as a group helps establish clear rules of behaviour and underlines that everyone is mutually accountable for the results achieved.

5 Create a safe and supportive environment:

Finally, everyone performs better when they feel secure and trusted to deliver quality work alongside their peers. The most innovative and creative organisations create safe spaces that allow employees to voice opinions, dissent with each other and make mistakes without fear of punishment. Environments where people can challenge constructively work to everyone’s benefit.

High performance teams hold major potential for organisations if the right building blocks are put in place. Leaders need to create an environment which is conducive to learning, unlocks capabilities and motivates talent to pursue goals. Incentivising and rewarding results will also pay big dividends.

Photo by Pascal Swier on Unsplash