Measuring what really matters
How to support individual growth and collective performance
From 2000 to 2006 Real Madrid, one of the most iconic football clubs in the world, started an era of recruiting star players with the intent to form a highly successful team and win many competitions. The team known as “Galáticos” (Spanish for galactics, referring to superstars), where not able to won many relevant tittle in European, despite having so many top players.
In contrast, the brazilian team International Porto Alegre — made predominantly of worker players — accomplished a huge achievement. They won the Libertadores Cup 2006, which is the Champions League’s equivalent for South America. At the end of that same year, Internacional would face Barcelona FC — winner of the Champions league — in a single match, in Japan, to decide which team was the best in the world. Barcelona, was the favorite with famous players such as Deco, Ronaldinho Gaucho, and Puyol. However, the underdog Internacional defeated Barcelona by 1 x 0 in the regular time, playing an intelligent game and demonstrating in the match an impeccable tactical discipline, team cohesiveness, and fighting spirit.
These two stories illustrate a fact that I observed throughout my career managing software development teams: high performing teams are not a result from just grouping together talented individuals. There is more to it.
What is a high performance team?
A high-performance team can be defined as a group of people with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, who consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation, produce superior results, and extinguish radical or extreme opinions that could be damaging.
In the context of software development, I like to think that high performance teams are those which have the ability of being creative, collaborative, autonomous, ethical, and committed to it’s own learning and self-improvement.
Why some teams function so well, while others just not work well together?
Communication pattern of high performance teams
In the article “The complex dynamic of high performing teams”, Marcial Losada describe a study conducted with teams from several corporations doing typical business tasks like strategic planning, brainstorming, and others. One of the main findings of this study was that the communication patterns of individuals at meetings could be used as a reliable predictor of team’s performance.
The researchers coded different speech acts according to three main axis:
- Inquiry / Advocacy: Inquiry if it involved a question aimed at exploring and examining a position; while Advocacy if it involved arguing in favor of the speaker’s viewpoint.
- Self / Other: Self if it referred to the person speaking or to the group present or to the company the person speaking belonged; Other if the reference was to a person or group from outside the company to which the person speaking belonged.
- Emotional space — Positive / Negative: Positive if the person speaking showed support, encouragement, or appreciation; and Negative if the person speaking showed disapproval, sarcasm, or cynicism.
The teams with higher performance teams presented a expansive emotional space and much wider range of speech code in all other all axis (Graphs 1 and 2); while low performance teams had a very restrictive emotional space and speech codes were converging to a particular point (graphs 3 and 4). This means that in high performance teams, the discussions are more fluid, and chaotic; whereas in low performance teams the discussions were linear and unidirectional.
Alex Petland, also came to a similar conclusions in another experiment organized by his research team at MIT. In the article “The New Science of Building Great Teams”, published in 2021 by the Harvard Business Review, he describe the main insights from that experiment.
The data of the study revealed, at a higher level, that successful teams shared several defining characteristics, such as:
1. Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.
2. Members face one another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.
3. Members connect directly with one another — not just with the team leader.
4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back.
Additionally, the author shared another surprising fact:
Individual reasoning and talent contribute far less to team success than one might expect. The best way to build a great team is not to select individuals for their smarts or accomplishments but to learn how they communicate and to shape and guide the team so that it follows successful communication patterns.
Psychological Safety is key
In the book “The culture code”, Daniel Coyle describes an experiment called the Bad Apple Experiment, conducted at the University of New South Wales in Australia, with forty four-person groups who were working on creative work for startups. The researchers observed what happened when a new team member — called Nick — was introduced into those teams to play three different roles: the Jerk (passive-aggressive and defiant), the Slacker (withholder of effort), and the Downer (depressive Eyesore type).
In the vast majority of teams, the overall performance dropped by 30 to 40%, but only one group was not affected by the behavior of the new member. Looking closely to this one team, they found that the behavior of the team leader — called Jonathan — was different, he was friendly an warm, he would listen and show interest in people’s ideas, and he used body language and laugh, never in a sarcastic way, to defuses any threatening situation. Apparently, Jonathan was not doing what traditional leaders would do such as strategize, motivate or explain his vision. Instead he was leaning on people to do such things, and adapting his attitudes to deflect any aggressive behavior coming to him or others in the team. He was able to keep the environment relaxed and warm, and pivot the the discussion to ask simple questions to other members, and include all in team's discussions. The author conclude:
Many people don’t normally think of safety is being so important. We consider safety to be the equivalent of an emotional weather system — noticeable but hardly a difference maker. Safety is not a mere emotional weather but rather the foundation on which strong culture is built.
Another way to improve on teams safety is to really bring that discussion to your team. You can organize tea building workshops, or have people from the team self-assessing team's internal safety and discussing what are the behaviors to be encourage or discouraged in order to create a safe space. A great format of workshop is the Psychological Safety Ladder proposed by Gustavo Razzeti.
Performance Management
In essence, performance management involves establishing behavioral goals, following up to identify the gap between the current and desired behavior profile, and then planning, implementing and monitoring changes in order to close the gaps.
But measuring the performance of any human system, including a team, can be quite challenging. That is why any system of goals, measurements and incentives needs to be carefully designed, if not, there is a risk that it can drive the wrong behavior. For instance, the article published by Vanity Fair in 2012, highlight the destructive performance management process installed by Microsoft in the period starting in 2001 called The Microsoft Lost Decade, in which the company accumulated a series of poor results. As highlight by the author:
. . . a management system known as “stack ranking” — a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor — effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed — every one — cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
It is clear to me that a performance management system must support individual growth, but more importantly drive the behaviors needed for great team collaboration. The main questions I always had around this topic were: :
- What is the link between individual performance and group performance?
- What individual skills and traits are conducive to higher team cohesiveness, and therefore, collective performance?
Measuring what matters
I came across an interesting performance management framework, based on a material from the U.S. Office of Personal Management (OPM). According to OPM, the traditional appraisal and recognition frameworks used in organizations tend to focus on individual performance exclusively and therefore jeopardize team development and collective performance.
Nevertheless, what I found most interesting of is that the framework is very generic and evaluate performance elements that can be applicable to almost every team and individual members. The framework is divided into four group of measures as shown in the matrix below:
Result measures:
These 2 groups are outcomes expected both from the team and individuals. For the team level, these goals must be linked to organizational strategic goals, and for individuals this can be setup by the person itself along with their team lead.
Team Process Measures:
The aim of this measures is to assess and monitor the progress of the team towards higher collective efficiency. This can be assessed by the team, and progress should be visible to everyone within the team.
Individual Behavior Measures:
The objective of these measures is to assess the technical expertise of individuals, as well as the soft skills that will contribute for better teamwork and collaboration. This can be used to have deep and insightful individual one on one conversations, and potentially be used as a reference for individual development plans.
I end this article, expecting it can bring insights on how you can you better support the development of individuals on your team, while fostering better collaboration and ultimately team growth.
References
United States Office of Personnel Management (1998) Performance appraisal for teams: an overview. Performance management
practitioner series
Losada, M. (1999) The complex dynamics of high performance teams. Mathematical and computer modelling, n30, pag 179–192.
Malone, T.W. (2004). The Future of Work: how the new order of business will shape your organization, your management, and your
life. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts
Darsø L. (2007) Is there a formula for innovation? Borsen Handbook of Leadership. Translated 2007 from original Danish article
(2003) En formel for Innovation, Børsen Ledelseshåndbøger
Lujike, J. (2011) Atlassian’s big experiment with performance reviews. ManagmentExchange.com.
Allen, F. E. (2012) The terrible management technique that cost Microsoft its creativity. Forbes Online
Petland, A. (2012) The new science of building great teams. Harvard Business Review Online
Tate, C. (2015) Differing work styles can help team performance. Harvard Business Review, April Issue
Fudge, C. & Roca, J. 10 tips for successful innovation teams. InnovationManagement.se
Griffin, M. How to build a lean high performance innovation team. InnovationManagement.se
