FOR teams to perform at the highest level, there has to be a disciplined mix of trust, clarity, accountability and a shared purpose.
This is achieved through intentional culture, strong leadership and clear systems.
Being in the same virtual teams meeting or conference room does not make you a team.
What makes a team, a real team, is a shared purpose and a clear goal.
It is crucial for organisations to engage their workers by unpacking in detail the purpose and goals of the organisation.
When the alignment is clear to the employees they become part of the vision of the company thereby driving their buy in and ownership.
These employees understand the “WHY” that fuels everything they do for the team and the company.
When workers clearly understand what is expected of them, they will perform their tasks at the highest level as they feel connected to the direction and future of the organisation.
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Furthermore, when the goals are aligned to the purpose, workers will have meaning to work in the company.
High performing teams foster environments where diverse perspectives are strategic assets.
These teams operate in a psychologically safe space where there are no meetings after the meetings about the meeting, no passive resistance and definitely “no, I told you so”.
Once a decision is made by the team, the entire team owns it, even if not everyone agrees: “Once the play is agreed upon, then they run the play as a team.”
Decisions are done with a focus on goals that lay ahead.
It helps to make decisions that align with the purpose and goals of the company.
Explaining to workers how their input and their job contributes to the overall success of the organisation makes employees feel connected to the purpose of the organisation.
When employees have a voice, that voice is respected in the shaping of the organisational direction and structure.
When employees have influence in the organisation, their job satisfaction will skyrocket.
This cultivates a culture of care, where team members genuinely check on each other and leadership views all employees as human beings not just cogs on a machine.
The teams always assume good intent and grace is extended to create room for recovery, learning and growth.
Great teams have a deliberate cadence of connection, decision making and performance tracking that keeps everyone in the team aligned, focused and forward looking.
This is the heart beat of the team, and if it’s off beat, the team is out of alignment.
This cadence is not just about daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly touch points; it is about building momentum behind clear decisions and a strong corporate culture.
This type of rhythm builds trust and speed of execution, where all team members are in the know of what’s next in the organisational maturity or scale plan.
High performing teams drive continuous improvement as part of their corporate culture, not as a project or a flavour of the month that will soon fizzle out.
They leverage methodologies such as lean tools, plan-do-check-act or six sigma to eliminate waste or reduce variation in their processes and systems.
This empowers employees to learn from their mistakes and take corrective measures before it’s too late.
Production processes will be streamlined to enable work to be done efficiently and effectively.
The best teams are very agile, they do not just move fast; they pivot, fail fast and deliver in motion (building a plane and flying it at the same time).
Agile teams are very resilient because they do not wait for perfect conditions; they ask the following questions: What do we know today? What can we test today? What can we adjust before we commit?
Then charge forward with confidence.
In high performing organisations, success is measured by how people feel when they perform the day-to-day duties of their roles within the company.
Companies like this rank high on the psychological safety scale.
A psychological safe space is where employees can speak up without fear, make mistakes without shame and challenge ideas without the fear of retaliation.
This is a workplace environment where workers feel safe and comfortable to speak at meetings.
They are not victimised when they share suggestions, opinions or admit mistakes when they have committed a wrong.
Leaders set the tone in high performing teams by leading from the front by modelling humility and vulnerability.
Humble leaders tend to respond to issues in the organisation with curiosity, not criticism; they reward honesty not harmony, because if you punish the truth, you promote silence.
- Innocent Hadebe is a United States-based certified John Maxwell Leadership business coach and mentor. He runs the Innocent Leadership Group, an organisation inclined on capacitating upcoming entrepreneurs with the requisite skills to run their businesses.
