High performing teams have become a core focus of my work in the last few years. Hours pouring over the latest research papers, books and journal articles has been thoroughly enjoyable (waving the nerd flag proudly here!) and have added depth and breadth to my knowledge in this space. What it has also done is reaffirm my long-held belief that for teams to be high performing, they must also be diverse. Diverse teams deliver superior results – whether that’s socially, in a sporting context or in the workplace.
In any professional context, you’d be hard-pressed to not have seen any of the content showcasing the power of diversity – it really is irrefutable. What’s harder is the play by play on how to create a high performing team.
There’s a lot of chat about the merits of diversity of thought, which is one part of the equation, but it’s not all there is. To get the best outcomes you also need the right environment for discussion where everyone shows up authentically and participates, there's non-biased decision making, and great implementation or execution.
We all know it’s more nuanced than ensuring there is thought diversity at the metaphorical table. People can have a seat at the table but if the isn’t a culture of openness and trust (psychological safety) people aren’t going to share what they really think. So the diversity box gets ‘ticked’ on paper, but the outcomes will be shaped by the loudest voices in the room, and we’re all a little sick of hearing those ones, right?
So the real skill in getting to these superior results starts with ensuring the team assembled is one where individuals are competent in the relevant competencies and skills, have a broad and varied range of experiences and when they come together, the communication platforms and places are safe – that’s all about team culture.
If you’re leading the team it’s easier to shape this, but if you’re in the team you can do so too. Sometimes the old and boring tools do work well and in this context, I’ve found a good old team charter has been really useful for getting everyone aligned with ‘how’ the team will work. Teasing out what words like ‘respect’ actually look like behaviourally in the context of this team is really helpful so there’s a shared understanding of ‘how’ the team will work.
It’s then up to you all to ensure you hold yourself and others to account – if ‘speaking up’ and ‘respect’ are on the charter, and a few people hold court, some speak over others, and some don’t say a peep, then that needs to be tabled. Being brave and discussing it early on is the only way to really shape the culture. It’s living and breathing, so can evolve each day and those micro-moments where you ask Mark to please hold that thought as Lu hadn’t quite finished speaking set the tone more than you know.
Asking those holding back directly for input is a good tactic too, it can be hard for people to speak up or they may need time to gather their thoughts so a good tactic can be to call it out before a break or “Hey Jay, just a heads up that in about an hour I’m going to ask you for your thoughts on x and y” or to “share your experience with z”.
The ability to have conflicting views, to discuss them and for all parties to stay in dialogue, is a key component of great teams. This can take time to talk through, it can feel uncomfortable for some too as people ‘battle’ it out, but it’s necessary – not so one voice or opinion overshadows the other but so that both or all perspectives are tabled and all team members have the chance to listen and learn.
Not to get too bogged down in meeting facilitation tactics, but they can be useful in person, online etc as the team develops. Over time, with all other things being equal, a constructive culture develops and individuals will likely be active and engaged members. If you’ve set the scene and they don’t ‘show up' or contribute, that then can be worth a one on one, or it can be a case of them not showing self-leadership.
That’s a core part of a high performing team – members have to be willing to be part of the team and manage themselves. Of course, life happens, but if every Zoom call Sal is late, stressed and angry about something, that’s going to impact the group and their own ability to perform.
Great – so the right crew, the right culture, everyone’s managing themselves well .. what now? Now it’s about the quality of the decisions made.
For the last month or so I’ve been working on a chapter for Careering on decision making, and often the one trap we all fall into is that of ‘outcome bias’. We often judge the quality of our decisions by the outcome, we almost always judge the quality of other’s decisions by the outcomes as we don’t often understand or see their intentions or the quality of their decision process. A poor result can come about due to factors beyond anyone’s control or information not available at the time, the example is often that of hiring someone – you can follow a robust, un-biased, structured process, do all the steps well, hire someone you feel will be a great fit, and they just can’t deliver in the role. That can be due to a myriad of factors – from changing personal circumstances, conflict in the new workplace, misaligned values, or the likes, but resulting in them not performing in the role. It is then easy to say that was a poor decision, but in reality the decision may still have been a good one. Of course with hindsight it’s easy to see how to ‘improve’ things but you get the idea.
When it comes to how high performing teams make decisions there’s no rule book as it’s all about the context. The trick then is to be clear about what decisions need to be made and determining an effective decision strategy, that is how decisions will be made, what tools will be used, how everyone inputs, who decides and the process for doing so. Nothing more disengaging than everyone working around a whiteboard for a few hours shaping the plan and making decisions, only to later realise their input was ‘helpful’ and actually it’s the ‘manager’ who will actually decide – let people know early if it’s a ‘we chat, I decide’, ‘majority rules’ or ‘consensus only’ type decision.
Lastly, the *ahem* easy part – the rubber hitting the road! Turning the theory into practice, playing the game of your lives, scaling the start-up, running the community event or whatever the team was formed to do, doing it well is the final step. Taking an iterative approach here is always best – do the ‘work’, assess the impact and effectiveness and finetune the tactics.
This was a long and detailed way of saying that I believe the best outcomes happen with this formula:
Competent and diverse thinkers + a safe environment + self-leadership + quality decision making + great implementation = superior results
Recently researchers studied thousands of Slack messages sent by software development teams and found that diverse thinking at different stages has an impact:
“Teams that become cognitively divergent for ideation but more convergent for coordination are the ones most successful in delivering their projects on time and to the satisfaction of the customer.”
I’m assuming their stage of ‘co-ordination’ is where decisions get made and the work gets done, so the three latter parts of my formula being self-leadership + quality decision making + great implementation is where there needs to be convergence. To get to the point where there is more alignment on what needs to done, how and who will do it is definitely easier when you’ve set expectations for the team well, invested time early on creating a great culture, and have capable, committed people in the room.
"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."
– Michael Jordan
