Building a high-performance team based on company values

At SafetyCulture, I lead a team of talented engineers that builds the Analytics product of our flagship product, iAuditor.

I am a very strong believer that the values you find in your company, can and should shape the way you build your teams and in this article, I want to share my experience in building such a team, and how that helped me hire great talent and build an amazing culture among our team members.

If you perform a quick search on google on what is a high-performance team you will probably gonna bump into an answer somewhat like:

“High-performance teams is a concept within organization development referring to teams, organizations, or virtual groups that are highly focused on their goals and that achieve superior business results. High-performance teams outperform all other similar teams and they outperform expectations given their composition. “

- Wikipedia

But what does this means, exactly?

In short, It means that your team knows why they do what they do, they set clear goals to achieve their objectives and they make sure they hold each and everyone accountable for what they commit to doing.

Below, I want to show you how it translates to my teams and aligns with each value we have at SafetyCulture.

Think Customer

At SafetyCulture, saying that we are obsessed with our customers is an understatement. They are the heart of all our decisions and actions we take, hence why it’s important to understand the impact what we are building actually has on them.

Our Product teams are constantly involving the team in the product discussions and seeking their constant feedback.

Understanding the “why” behind what we do and knowing how much the work we do is important and meaningful helps the team have a solid and deep trust in each other and in the team’s purpose — the team feels safe to express their opinions, their feelings, and ideas.

Our team has clearly defined priorities and outcome-oriented goals. The team and individual performance goals are clear and everyone knows what is expected.

We are happy and satisfied with the value we are bringing to the business and to our customers.

Be Bold, Bring Action

Bold, ambitious, impactful ideas are what we need to keep encouraging and celebrating as we grow.

Having established a ‘bias for action’ component into our team value was critical. The team feels empowered to make decisions and to try new ways to solve our problems and understand that we grow through our mistakes, so are not afraid to make them.

We are all such creatures of habit so the team is constantly pushing themselves outside their comfort zone, seeking new challenges and opportunities that will help them deal with changes in a much better way.

If there are mistakes or we miss our goals, we take responsibility and accept accountability. There is no blaming happening.

Open. Honest. Always

The respect and trust within each other are built-in in the dynamic of the team. That helps us to be honest and speak our minds, it also helps to be open to a challenge and especially to feedback. We understand that it will make us grow and develop skills that will make us better.

We leverage every type of group feedback process to gauge how we are doing. We also like to understand how other people in the wider organisation sees us, think, and talk about us.

We have regular one-on-ones with our leader to seek mutual feedback and help our career development.

Nothing is left unsaid between us. We say what we need to say and we understand that feedback comes from a good and positive place.

Better as a Team

We can all say exactly what we think because the team sees disagreement as a healthy thing due to the trust and respect for each other.

The team acknowledge conflict and try to bring it into the open as soon as possible. Criticism is constructive and is oriented toward problem-solving and removing obstacles.

We do not expect consensus, on the contrary, we expect everyone to bring their own ideas. We strive to reach full commitment to a plan, and for everyone to have clarity about what we have to do, and why it’s the smartest move, so we can drive collaboration in the team.

We do some check-in process at the start of our meetings to make sure everyone is ok and have what they need.

We work hard to define meaningful and challenging goals — both team and personal goals. We praise and recognize when we see a team member stepping out of their comfort zone to help a teammate

Final Thoughts

The key to a high-performance team is putting your focus on the people of your team, helping them understand the value they bring to the business and the impact they make to your customers.

I strongly believe that having a happy team will naturally drive productivity, performance, and growth.

Find your team purpose, what makes your team members get out of bed and the rest will follow.

At SafetyCulture, we are excited to come to work and we are confident about the value we bring to the business. We are hiring!