“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
As a leadership consultant, I have the privilege to assist organisations in building high-performing teams, and increasingly more of my time is spent on this critical aspect of business. I would like to share with you in this article what I have seen to be the critical success factors for building high-performing teams, which extend beyond our habits. I firmly believe that these areas are equally relevant to our private lives, especially in the context of our teams at home – our families…
Success factor #1 – Psychological safety
“Psychological safety is a shared belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”
– Amy Edmondson
In the previous decade, Google launched Project Aristotle to identify the factors that would assist them in building the perfect team. Through their research, they realised it did not matter who was together on a team – they could not find any correlation between team membership and team success. A key finding though, was that it mattered how people on a team interact with each other, and 2 factors stood out in this regard that made team members gel, being (1) everyone on the team should speak up and contribute to what the team wants to achieve, roughly, in the same amount, and (2) team members should listen to each other with the intent to understand. They deem these as key factors of psychological safety, because if we are not operating in a space where we are heard, we cannot optimally contribute to the team’s success.
Success factor #2 – Mutual accountability
We cannot be accountable if we don’t know what we want to achieve to be held accountable against. It always starts with Self, and we cannot hold ourselves accountable if we don’t have a job description, a job specification, key performance indicators or areas and a summary of our strategy – just to name a few. We need to have structure and clarity to make accountability possible. Accountability goes beyond holding ourselves accountable, though. Everyone on the team needs to hold one another responsible or accountable for their commitments and the team’s overall success.
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.”
– Bob Proctor
To complete the picture of mutual accountability as part of building a high-performing team, it is important that the leader of the team creates an atmosphere of open communication where she or he is not only comfortable with feedback regarding their actions, but also encourages it from their direct reports.
Success factor #3 – Recognition
Great teams give recognition to individual and team achievements, also by celebrating the small and big wins. The mistake we often make, though, is to think that this should cost us money. Nothing is further from the truth… We could celebrate by simply getting everyone together and applauding the member or the overall team for an achievement. It can also be formal recognition or simply wishing someone a “happy birthday” in passing.
“Feeling gratitude, and not expressing it, is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
– William Arthur Ward
If we don’t recognise achievements, we miss an opportunity to intrinsically motivate someone, which should get individuals and the collective team to achieve even more. To me, this sounds like a win-win…
Success factor #4 – Effective communication
Assuming that we have a team culture of open communication, high-performing team members understand the importance of communicating effectively. They recognise the importance of taking charge in ensuring that the message lands successfully – when you receive a message, ask the sender of the message: “Just to check my understanding, is this what you meant?” or, if I was the sender of the message: “In terms of our discussion, how did you interpret what needs to be done?”.
“It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”
– Mae West
Great teams also consist of members with great listening skills, who share important information with the people who need to receive it, and understand the importance of continuous feedback to each other.
Success factor #5 – Trust
I recently completed reading a book called “Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace”, written by Dennis and Michelle Reina, who made this important statement: “Business is conducted through relationships, and trust is the foundation of effective relationships. Trust builds the bridge between the business need for results and the human need for connection.” High-performing teams value trust and do everything in their power to discuss and resolve trust issues as soon as possible. They also discourage cliques, knowing that it’s bad for team cohesion and for building trust in the team overall.
“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.”
– Dhar Mann
Success factor #6 – Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy and practice focused on continuous, incremental improvement in all aspects of business and personal life. Members of high-performing teams understand that being satisfied with the status quo prevents us from being the best possible individuals and team, and, ultimately, it stifles performance.
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”
– Mark Twain
The benefits of continuous improvement are endless, including increased efficiency and productivity, higher quality products and services, cost reduction, improved customer satisfaction, greater innovation, and more engaged team members.
Success factor #7 – Diversity and Inclusion
Successful teams embrace Diversity and Inclusion, because these team members understand that different perspectives could provide us with more potential solutions to challenges that we might face on our way to team or organisational success.
“When everyone is included, everyone wins.”
– Jesse Jackson
When we think of Diversity, we mainly consider race, which is such a small part of it. When I Googled the “elements of Diversity”, I got 24 different answers, of which race is only one of them. Great teams understand that we need to look beyond this single element and that we should also include people of different genders, cultures, ages and levels of education, as examples.
Success factor #8 – “Silocitis”
There is a disease in organisations between different teams called “silocitis”, which effectively means that different teams make the mistake of operating in silos to the detriment of the organisation as a whole. It is like the team in the kitchen of a passenger ship, only caring about their success in cooking good meals, while the other teams need their help as the ship is busy sinking. High-performing teams understand that they are part of a bigger unit and that their achievements need to be aligned with what is required by the overall unit or organisation.
“What if I told you that the left wing and the right wing belong to the same bird?”
– Native American proverb
If your team, professionally and in your private capacity, is not meeting these eight criteria for high-performing teams, then I suggest you, together with your team members, complete an exercise. Rate yourselves against each of these critical success factors, before you start with your lowest score area and work yourself to the top in your quest to become the best possible team that you could be…
Author Dr. Hekkie van der Westhuizen shares practical self-leadership tips, tools and interventions in the form of stepping stones that will assist you along the journey to becoming the best possible version of yourself.
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