Method #1: have a common mission

Without a common mission, all teams will eventually disintegrate and become completely ineffective. This mission is most clearly defined by a set of shared values ​​among team members, whether it be contribution, determination, altruism, loyalty, or any other value. When building a high-performing team, be sure to enlist the services of employees who share a similar set of values ​​on some fundamental level. After all, the direction of the team and the level of motivation are determined by the amount of shared values ​​within the team.

Some possible shared values ​​for high-performing teams include:

A. Value-Driven Interactions: High-performing teams place a high priority on adding value to every interaction with customers and other team members. This value can take the form of tangible assets (improved results and measures) or intangible assets (greater employee cohesion, greater customer satisfaction).

B. Honesty High-performing teams value honesty, as it provides clear and actionable communication. It also provides a process for readily available constructive feedback.

C. Integrity: Enough Saying!

Method #2: Designate Roles

Everyone has something they excel at. To that end, it’s essential that you first understand what your team’s assets are, particularly with regard to desired job outcomes and tasks to be performed. All corporations can benefit from a thorough screening (usually upon entering the company, but the effective hiring process is another article in itself!) whereby employee strengths are made available for team use.

Once the strengths of employees are understood, it is important to assign roles and tasks deliberately. These tasks are derived from the desired results, which result from the corporate strategic goals. Working backward from tasks, assign employees to a main force area. Company effectiveness can be improved by a minimum of ten percent (my unscientific estimate) on any stat or metric by using this simple technique.

In general, it’s important to remember that team members are most valuable where they add the most value, as we discussed earlier.

Method #3: Build individual and collective responsibility

Accountability is a concept that is often talked about but understands itself. In fact, accountability is an area where most teams fall apart, leaving management to wonder why they continue to fail and meet expectations.

Once you’ve done a thorough job of understanding your employees’ strengths and delegated according to desired outcomes (which should always be linked to strategic goals), you’ll need to develop BOTH quantitative and qualitative methods for assigning employee responsibilities. . Quantitative methods can include task-specific statistics, while qualitative methods can include process reviews, 360 evaluations, etc. Both are important, as they often provide converging information. Using both methods for accountability allows management to identify areas for remediation for specific teams and individual employees.

Of course, it is essential that these methods for building accountability include agreement and a schedule for regular, constructive feedback.

The application of the above principles will allow you to build a high-performance team, in which collective efforts are synergistic and concentrated, unlike typical efforts (generally by committees, which tend to be a waste of resources due to their inefficiency). that serve to dilute and abuse available resources.

Copyright (2005). Leif H. Smith. All rights reserved.