How do you build a High Performing team?

High performing teams don’t just come together because of luck or chance. Building a successful, cohesive team takes a lot of planning, reflection, and hard work.

But the good news is, that means any leader is capable of doing it! This article will tell you how.

First, what do I mean by a “high performing” team?

There are two primary identifiers:

• Is the team successful in achieving outcomes and delivering outputs?
• Are team members engaged, motivated, and committed to the team?

Both elements are key — You can have a team of productive but very unhappy people, or you can have a collaborative, dedicated crew who have trouble meeting their goals. Neither of those qualify as “high performing” by my definition.

So how do you build this type of team? Based on my experience building multiple high performing teams in my career, I recommend focusing on these three areas.

Design a thoughtful hiring process

Bringing in the right people is critical to building a high performing team. But how do you do it?

It’s all about preparation:

• Prepare your criteria. Be very clear on the characteristics of people who will be most successful on your team. Technical skills, soft skills, culture fit — all of it. (I previously outlined the key skills I look for.) If you can’t clearly define what you’re looking for, it will be really hard to find it.
• Prepare your interview process. Design a hiring process that helps you see those key skills in action. For my BizOps team, we evaluated soft skills in a behavioral interview and technical skills in a case interview. The behavioral interview questions were tied directly to the soft skills we had prioritized. The case interview was inspired by a recent project we’d worked on, giving us a realistic demo of how they’d perform versus theoretical answers.
• Prepare your interview panelists. You’re relying on their judgment to evaluate these candidates. Ensure they understand the key skills needed for this role, and that they are prepared to assess those skills. Give them specific, targeted questions to ask. It can even help to provide them with general guidelines for assessment (e.g. case presentation evaluation is 60% content, 20% style, 20% Q&A response).
• Prepare your candidates. Clearly explain the interview process and set expectations for how they will be evaluated. There’s no need to be secretive. Part of your assessment as a manager should be how well you and the candidate will work together, so look for any opportunities to collaborate. Offer time for them to ask you questions when they are prepping for a case interview.
• Prepare yourself. One thing that often gets lost in all the aforementioned prep and evaluation — the candidate is also evaluating you! The best candidates have multiple options and are looking for an engaged, effective manager. Make sure that you are prepared to talk about your leadership style, your vision for the role and the team, and why they should want to come work for you.

Focus on continual growth

There are two types of growth you need to focus on: individual growth and team growth.

Individual Growth

I’ve said a lot about how to keep individuals on your team continuously growing and learning. At a minimum, you should have these things in place (in priority order):

• Documented expectations for performance in each role
• Regular bi-directional feedback sessions (minimum quarterly)
• Employee self-assessment against documented expectations (semi-annually)
• Personal development plan focused on closing any performance gaps (6–12 month horizon)

Setting expectations and providing regular feedback are critical. Establishing an open dialogue is the best way to help someone succeed. Unless your employees are mind readers, clear conversation is the only way they’ll know whether they’re meeting your expectations.

How will you know that you’re successful? If your team members always know their current performance assessment and any areas they need to improve. It should be so crystal clear that they can describe their current assessment themselves, in their own words. (And, in fact, you should start to see that happen during their self-assessments.)

Team Growth

Just as individuals want to continuously grow, learn, and be challenged, the team itself should also continue to grow and evolve. Team members will feel more inspired by and anchored to a team with direction and opportunity.

As a team leader, start by:

• Setting a vision and priorities for your team that aligns with company goals, and a strategy for how to achieve the vision (updated minimum yearly).
• Making sure your team understands your team goals and are committed to working together to accomplish them.
• Developing a team culture of communication, transparency, accountability, vulnerability, collaboration, and trust
• Asking your stakeholders for feedback, particularly their customer satisfaction with your work and what value they think you deliver (minimum semi-annually)
• Evolving the team’s offerings by identifying any key capabilities you might need to hire for or train existing team members

Don’t hesitate to reinvent your team — even making small changes can keep your work fresh and ahead of the curve.

Prioritize leading your team

One of the most important keys to leading a high performing team? Wanting to.

All of the actions I described above take time, effort, and concentrated focus. And those actions are the minimum that you should do. So I’m not saying this is easy.

The biggest mistake I see is managers who view these activities as distractions instead of as core to the job:

• “Writing feedback for each of my team members takes SO much time.”
• “Do we really need a team vision? I think people know what to do.”
• “It’s a lot of work to put together a case interview. Let’s just skip that part.”

As I said earlier, high performing teams don’t come together because of luck or chance. High performing leaders understand that, just like anything else at a job, the outcome is determined by how much effort you put in.

And don’t forget — your team members will see your commitment (or lack thereof), and they will take their cues from you. An employee’s engagement is very closely tied to how much you invest in them.

If you’re new to leading a team, take some training and read some articles on best practices. Carve out time on your calendar to focus on building your team and team members. Remind yourself that time spent building a high performing team is a valuable investment. Spend time developing yourself into a great leader.

As the saying goes, there’s no secret formula — it’s just doing the work!

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