Rapidly Creating High Performing Teams

We all need results and we need them fast. The important of having
the right people on the job and ensuring that they are performing has
never been more critical for organisations.

The debate on how this done is heightened as we often bring together
teams from very different organisational and cultural values and we
quickly need to have the same ideas around what it means to delivery,
what a deadline is and how we are going to work together. It is also
argued that global economic challenges are making teams more risk averse
and spending has reduced – making traditional norms of time frames less
achievable. It seems that the prevailing attitude is to do it and do it
now or get out while we find someone that can deliver.

We are familiar with the work of Tuckman (1965) that highlighted that
a team moves from forming to performing.

The stages of team development

In recognition of the life cycle of groups, Tuckman proposed that
there are hierarchical stages of team development, all of which are
necessary and inevitable as a team grows and delivers results.

The first four stages are;

• forming – teams get together and colleagues want to impress each
  other and start putting forward their ideas and agendas,

• storming – a period in which people all move forward and chase at
  the goal while there is no clear leadership and working style,

• norming – recognition of what each member is there to contribute
  and starting to share information and collaborate on solutions that take
  objectives forward, and

• performing – acceleration of collaboration and progress towards
  the goal.

Wheeler (2003) showed a team would not become high performing until
it has progressed through all of the earlier stages.

The start-up phase on an initiative still remains the most critical
area to getting performance working. The challenge is to effectively
support high potential teams from the beginning to minimise the time
they spend in the less productive forming, storming and norming stages.
Most importantly, research seems to emphasise the importance of
assisting teams through the critical storming phase quickly to reduce
unnecessary conflict and to prevent undesirable behaviours and cultures
from developing which can have far-reaching consequences for a project
or organisation.

What is a high performing team?

To get to a high performing team, organisations are looking at ways
in which to accelerate the process and not to leave it to an organic
evolution – but rather through employing innovative strategies – we are
moving teams into higher performance must faster.

To define high performing teams we need to look at what they do. A
high performing team exhibits innovation, an effective working style and
through collaboration they provide the greatest value to their specific
goals as an organisation or project.

A high performing team also proactively find ways to effectively
undertake a function, without unnecessary conflict and supervision. This
does not mean that there is no conflict but that conflict are about
ideas that move the programme forward and lead to meaningful progress
and appreciation of the different perspectives and working styles of
individuals and teams. With this type of flexibility and adaptability a
high performing team is well positioned to achieve its outcomes and
goals and make decisions that are implementable and realisable in the
context of goals. This idea is called the regenerative power of the high
performing team as the next step always brings us closer to the end goal
and feeds an adaptive cycle of growth.

Practical steps

A great team starts with getting the right people in the team. This
may not be all the “A-Players” but a range of roles that can support
each other and work together. Organisations unfortunately often take a
skills based, rather than a team-role based view of teams and this has
been proven to limit the effectiveness of teams.

A great team needs

• a clear team vision;

• an agreement that each person understands what the vision,
  mission, purpose and goals actually means;

• setting clear performance indicators and performance
  standards

• agreed on deliverables, procedures

• clear communication

• clear definition of behavioural expectations including respect
  and collaborative working

• ensuring that issues such as reporting and team discipline is
  implemented from the beginning

• ensuring that teams operate as adults with agreements around open
  and honest communications

• agreements on fostering collaboration and involving of all key
  members in key decisions

• agreement on conflict resolution mechanisms

• building effective feedback into the team work process

Organisations that accelerate team performance is using the project
initiation process to establish these new types of ground rules to
create a team environment that functions effectively and that can draw
back on a pre-defined architecture of “teaming” that means that everyone
is on the same page before we start.

This approach highlights the need for effective team and task design
for high performance and it challenges managers to really understand
what they want from their people.

Moving beyond the obvious

A lot of the above is “as expected” but some organisations are moving
beyond these approaches into more advanced teaming practices.

Some examples of way to achieve the above in the context of the
‘quickening’ is to:

• Enforcing direct team protocols and behaviours to optimise
  workplace climate and project outcomes e.g. forced communication and
  resilience measures. All projects follow this type of outlook and there
  are e.g. forced weekly meetings – and set agenda’s for ensuring that all
  elements are dealt with.

• Teams are often co-located into residential environments to
  pressure cook the storming and norming phases and to ensure a high level
  of understanding of personal and work motivations for doing
  things.

• Teams are more often composed through detailed psychometric
  assessments based on peer review and peer selection. Peers are given
  options on people with specific skills to compose a team that is
  balanced.

• Reward systems are being reshaped to be highly dependent on high
  performance, team innovation and peer based performance review.

• Team purposes are defined upfront and the team leader is
  “inducted” into this purpose by the higher management level. This “board
  of supporters” approach ensures that the team leader has a high level of
  authority and is compelled to drive the project purpose with the
  team.

• Aligning of team performance measures and metrics with company
  and project performance metrics through fluid performance frameworks and
  bonus systems that recognise the roles people play in different
  initiatives.

• Use of effective team-based inductions to create, enforce and
  re-enforce team expectations and behaviours

• Use of buddy systems to ensure that teams work together and
  different deliverables are adequately supported. This micro-peering
  approach socialises the solutions more effectively.

• Use of team advisors and team coaches to provide external
  validation of progress

• External auditing and maintenance of team agreements

While each of these measures has it place it shows that organisations
are exploring new and innovative ways to accelerate team
performance.

It has been found that teams that have clear ground rules and support
operates quicker, more effectively and maintains a clarity of purpose.
Team unity and cohesion minimises wasted time and energy and reduces
timeframes and overall cost. People also like working in teams where
things work and this reduces anxiety, increases “fit” and leads to
long-term retention.

Poorly formed teams suffer from slower delivery and less than ideal
performance. Management often need to get involved in poorly formed
teams and spend time managing fallouts from missed deliverable and
getting involved with people and performance issues. Costs increase and
projects fail and often lead to major loss of reputation and value in an
organisation.

Conclusion

As a manager and leader you need to focus on navigating the start of
each person that joins a team very carefully. For new project teams it
is important to set the tone and delivery parameters clearly and there
are techniques to assist with this.

To maintain high performance requires an ongoing investment of time
and management effort but you rather want to be on challenging people to
achieve a higher purpose than investing time in managing poor
performance. Managers and leaders should constantly look at support
mechanisms and be brought back to the basics when those storms hit the
team environment.

References

Tuckman, B.W. (1965). Development sequence in small groups,
Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), pp 384-399

Wheeler, S.A. (2003). Group size, group development, and group
productivity, Small Group Research, 40(2), pp 247-262