Building a high performing team
Let me introduce you to two teams. Team A - where you love to come to the office every morning, loves to work with your team members, a team where you are sure people will help you, guide you no matter what the problem is, a team which is high in energy, a team which brings fun at work, a team which works towards a common goal.
Team B — where there are constant conflicts and disagreement, where everyone is working silos, where people are not even aware of the team’s goal, where individual performance is always preferred which hampers the team's performance.
Which team, according to you, is high performing? The obvious answer is team A, but what makes team A a high performing team? Below I have listed down some of the core elements of a team which makes a team a high performing.
- Trust — Trust is the core of any high performing team. Trust cannot be built in a day. It comes when there is transparency when facts are presented as-is and there is a fail-safe environment. When everyone is open and honest with each other.
- Respect — There should be mutual respect between team members. Everyone is heard, everyone’s opinion matters and respected. It also includes respect to each other’s time, respect to start and end meetings on time.
- Common Goal — A team becomes a team when they have a common goal else it is just a group of people working together. The goal binds everyone together. Any decision related to the team can be taken keeping the goal in mind.
- Common working agreements — One way to work together and perform well is to have a common working agreement. This will keep everyone in sync.
An example of a working agreement with my team is below —
- A clear understanding of team achievements and individual achievements — It’s very important to have a clear understanding of team achievements and individual achievements. A disbalance between the two can harm the team. If individual performance is valued more there won’t be a culture of helping/guiding each other, everyone will focus on one’s own task.
- Great Leadership — A great leader can make a team, on the other hand, a bad leader can break a team. Some core responsibilities of a leader is to keep goals realistic and meaningful, ensure that there is no organization or team level impediment, ensures that the team members are continuously learning and growing in their skills, he/she is aware of the team’s goal and individual goal, and provides opportunities to others without seeking credit.
One activity that my leadership did and is still doing to achieve good results at the organization level is to make it data-driven.
A Data-driven approach Energy Meter —
An assessment is shared with the team members every month, we call Energy Meter. In this assessment, there are some simple but powerful questions are asked to everyone in the team — How happy you are working with this team (on the scale of 5)? How aligned your work is to the team’s goal? How aligned your work is to your own goal? Any impediment you are facing which is impacting your work? and a few more.
These questions may vary but it will give a chance to measure the energy of the team which can then be used to initiate a talk to find out the cause of unhappiness/low-productivity of the team. Add the action item in the respective backlog
- Cross-Functional — Cross-functional team has all the skills required to achieve their goal. This will reduce the dependency of the team on other team members or people outside their control and will give you better results.
- Motivation and Fun — Keep the team motivated by making the goal and achievements of the organization transparent. Talk to the team regularly, keep them updated with directions the organization is taking to achieve the goal. Appreciate the good work done by individuals and team, go out for lunch together, plan team outings or games together, bring fun to work, offices are one place where people spend a lot of time keep it a place to enjoy!
Recently, we conducted an event Test Hackathon at Agile Cockpit to bring back the fun at work!
Please share your experience of working with a high performing team. Let us all learn and grow together!
