What are the Secrets of High Performing Teams?

What are the Secrets of High Performing Teams?

THE SECRETS OF HIGH PERFORMING TEAMS

We know there are differences in how well teams perform. Some teams work together seamlessly; they get things done, overcome obstacles, make decisions and stick to them, always having the information they need and so on. Other teams do the opposite; hence, nothing is really working out for them. Well-functioning teams perform better because they have a talent for making decisions, sticking to them and implementing them. Because of this, they are more successful. We also know that high performing teams experience less stress, have fewer sick-days, and are not, at least not by default, working harder than low-performing teams.

The secrets of high performing teams are that they:

1. Repeatedly come back to the purpose and goals
2. Have high quality in talking and listening
3. Have a high degree of discretionary behavior among individuals
4. Have a high level of psychological safety
5. Alternate between reflective and action-oriented mode

Repeatedly coming back to purpose and goals

Often, in the beginning of a project, teams develop and decide on a purpose and corresponding objectives. Using this as a foundation, a detailed plan is created. As the project goes on, normal teams tend to follow the plan to the point, considering all the activities in the plan as “musts” just because they are in the plan. They do not notice that conditions have changed – and that the plan should, too. What high-performing teams do in this situation, instead of following the plan to the letter, is that they repeatedly come back to the purpose and the objectives. They keep on asking themselves if the planned activities really represent the best use of time, given the purpose, objectives and current conditions. Normal or low-performing teams often avoid these discussions under the presumption that it would imply revisiting matters that should have been clear from the beginning. High performing teams do not experience this issue since they consider discussing the purpose and objectives as a way to discuss priorities and direction. Moreover, they have a skillful way of discussing: re-iterating and exploring the purpose, goals and conflicting aims, always striving to expand their understanding of the purpose – maybe even re-developing the purpose.

High quality in talking and listening

Another characteristic behavior of high performing teams is high quality in talking and listening. Basically, a high quality in communication, usually distinguished by a constructive approach towards problem solving. In any problem-solving situation, you have your own perspective on the problem as well as other peoples’ perspectives. You can approach these perspectives in two ways: either you advocate a perspective, or you explore a perspective. Research tells us that high performing teams are great at interchangeably switching between all of the four possible approaching modes: team members advocate their own as well as others’ perspectives – and explore both their own and others’ perspectives.

High degree of discretionairy behaviour

Another critical factor for high performing teams is the degree of so called discretionary behavior among the individuals in the team. Discretionary behavior is the skill, intelligence and energy an individual chooses to invest in a task. It refers to the part of an individual’s behavior that goes beyond what has been specified in the assignment description, referring to the degree of engagement, attention and care the member puts into the assignment – factors decided upon by the individual him-/herself. Furthermore, discretionary behavior includes sharing and knowledge seeking behavior in performing assignments. Thus, knowledge integration can only be effective through support from the discretionary behavior among the members of a group. When something in a team is not working, individuals with high discretionary behavior will approach the problem, feeling as they can do something about it, oftentimes succeeding in addressing the real issue. All organizations have structures to support and manage work and to facilitate knowledge integration and collaboration. However, these structures will always be inadequate and “one step behind” the dynamic development of reality. Thus, to enable effective knowledge integration, individuals in organizations need to interact with and support these structures by taking initiative – they need to utilize their own discretionary behavior.

High level of psychological safety

High performing teams have a high level of psychological safety within the team. A high level of psychological safety basically means that individuals in a team dare taking personal risks to achieve results. This includes thinking openly and speaking up on concerns and opinions without feeling judged or threatened. If a team is characterized by prestige, politics, hostile relations etc., individuals will be more restrained in what they say. They will tend to say things they perceive to be correct, but such remarks are less informative and valuable from a problem-solving perspective. To increase psychological safety within a group, group members need to establish trust in each other’s skills, knowledge and expertise. This will in turn increase the group’s perception of its own ability, and hence its confidence in relation to the task. If the group has a high confidence in members’ knowledge, one can also expect that the desire to understand each other and share knowledge is higher. Thus, establishing a high level of psychological safety will enable a group to use its members’ specialized knowledge more frequently and willingly.

Reflective mode and action-oriented mode

Lastly, another aspect having an impact on whether a team is high performing or not is its ability to alternate between a reflective mode and an action-oriented mode. A team cannot always be in a mode where everyone is heard, where there is always consensus in decision making, etc. It would be impossible to move forward with speed. What high performing teams do then, is that they spend a lot of time in the reflective mode – reflecting on their purpose, decisions, prerequisites, roles and the problem setting. However, when they need to, they move into the action-oriented mode, in which all individuals can act on their own, making prompt decisions and implementing them, based on what was agreed upon in the reflective mode.

Author

Influence Labs

CI Model Research

Developing Collective Intelligence is an approach to share and integrate knowledge using self-navigation and reflection to achieve commonly defined goals.