leading high performing teams
In my career, I’ve had times when things were going really well and times when they weren’t.
When it comes to leading high performing teams, I’ve learnt a few things along the way and in recent times, used these learning’s to assist client businesses to set up their own high performance teams in my role as a Business Advisor.
Here are the top 6.
1. CHANGE IS A KILLER OF PERFORMANCE.
From time to time, strategic changes are needed in order to remain competitive in business. However, these changes are often unsettling, and many people who were high performers during the old ‘business as usual’ will struggle through this phase of changing direction.
You’ll often need to find and rely on new champions.
Execute the change as quickly as you can in order to set the stage where the new strategy becomes business as usual.
2. YOU MUST DEFINE WHAT ‘PERFORMANCE’ IS.
Until you’ve created your Vision and set the Scorecard for the team and the individuals in it, the only way you can get great results is luck.
Successful high performance teams (and they all have this in common) know what success looks like.
They are guided by the Vision and they track their performance through the Scorecard.
Ask yourself, can your team get to the end of a week, month or quarter and raise their hands in the air in victory because they know they succeeded?
3. YOU’VE GOT TO MAKE SCORES VISIBLE
One of the common success factors is having a good Scorecard.
Measuring the things that count and having each team delivering on 3 or 4 at the most.
In an ideal world, each individual only has to make one number, but that number is all that’s needed from them to get the team to succeed.
Use red, orange and green (traffic light colours) to show how numbers are tracking against targets, so you can see at a glance where things are on track and off track.
While every business is different, there are key functions that every business must perform to succeed.
Make sure you and the team know the key performance indicators (KPIs) your company has to deliver on, measure them, and make the results visible.
4. GOALS MUST BE ACHIEVABLE
If you set goals that are so unrealistic that they can’t be achieved, you’ll kill performance.
Always set a goal from the perspective of the person delivering it. The art of leading companies is to have every person aiming for a target they can achieve by doing something they are naturally good at and enjoy.
The combination of these individual achievements enables the company to achieve its goals.
One mistake I see (and have made) is doing this the other way around and basing each team member’s goal on what the team needs to achieve, even if reaching it is unlikely or impossible.
It’s the leaders role to put the right people in the right seats to achieve the overall goals, you need to make sure you give your people every chance to succeed if you want to have a high performing team.
5. CELEBRATE SUCCESS
Every time someone, or the team, is achieving their goals, they need to be acknowledged.
You can do this in the weekly team meetings, on the scorecards or dashboards using colours.
Company news and get-togethers (enhanced company culture, based on streamlined communication) are great to broadcast and celebrate successes (like the old school act of ‘ringing the bell’ for success).
This is a powerful way to enable you to build the culture, as everyone in the company can share in the success.
6. ACKNOWLEDGE CORE VALUES
Use the company’s Core Values. Peer to peer acknowledgement of people living the company’s values is a simple and powerful way to acknowledge those people who may not be directly ‘ringing the bell’ but often help everyone else who is.
