High-performing teams are made up of individual employees with specialized skill and corresponding expertise, and who are hyper-focused and goal oriented to attain clear, exceptional results. The individuals collaborate and engage in innovative discussions, leading to outstanding results (Keller & Meaney, 2017). The team relentlessly pursues excellence through shared leadership, open communication, shared goals, collaboration, and clear role expectations. Moreover, they adhere to effective team operating rules such as effective conflict resolution and a robust sense of accountability among team members (Keller & Meaney, 2017). Overall, high-performing teams are advantageous over individual workers since each member of the team gives new ideas, viewpoints, and talent. Additionally, high-performing teams predictably effect strategy, necessitate little supervision and management oversight, and meet goals, given that they are empowered and accountable for their functional activity and responsible for performance.
Creating a high performance team necessitates more than having a group of brilliant individuals with appropriate skills. It necessitates careful creation and development of critical behaviors, individualities, and best practices (Laiken, 2017). Consequently, creating a high-performing team needs time, given that it takes commitment as well as an investment in sustainable and endless growth and development. Building high-performing teams requires creation of a common sense of purpose. For workers to remain attached to a team, they must have a unified purpose, which calls for team alignment and clear goals. To achieve this, managers of high-performance teams must evaluate priorities and team objectives to ensure they are properly aligned (Keller & Meaney, 2017). Additionally, creating high-performing teams requires streamlined communication. The reason is that such teams have to be focused and agile. Streamlined communication ensues that every team member is updated with the processes and expectations of the company. For instance, teams may depend on project management apparatuses to define responsibilities, house project data, and trail progress (Keller & Meaney, 2017). Streamlined communication process also helps in conflict prevention and allows for sharing of key information among the right people while also ensuring responsibilities and assignments are clear.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Importantly, investing in employee development is critical to building high-performing teams. This entails establishing a culture of continual learning and improvement, which leads to consistent exceptional results (Keller & Meaney, 2017). The reason is that high-performing teams are curious and as a result, they explore possibilities, ask questions, and acclimatize based on what they learn. Employee development through learning makes teams more innovative, effective, and efficient. Therefore, managers should facilitate team performance by capitalizing on the growth and development of their human resource. This entails identifying appropriate development opportunities that are aligned to with the priorities and needs of the team, and with the individual goals of team members. Such development opportunities are critical to motivating employees, making them feel empowered, thereby promoting employee engagement (Keller & Meaney, 2017). In other words, high-performing teams are created and nurtured by managers who support the fundamental characters of such teams.
While individual members of the team bring special attributes to the team, high performing teams generally have certain characteristics shared by all the members as a team. According to Lancaster & Burke (2019), the teams have clear goals linked to the team and organization’s priorities. The team is seen as focused and determined to achieve these goals. Lancaster & Burke (2019) add that high performing teams have defined roles and responsibilities that help the members to maximize and reduce conflicts. Every member of the group is aware of what is expected of him or her, and this creates clarity of the task ahead.
Communication remains a clear marker of a high performing team. In any team that is oriented for exemplary performance, there has to be a streamlined and optimized communication (Laiken, 2017). Laiken (2017) adds that such teams communicate clearly and respectfully. These are teams that appropriately select the channel of communication that resonated with the message and the audience for clarity and efficiency. Finally, high performing teams are characterized by having collective goals. Desptie each member having individual responsibilities, they all toil towards attaining the larger and collective single goal of the group (Keller & Meaney, 2017). All efforts aim at the group goal.
Notably, recruiting for attitude and skills for training are crucial concepts to building a high-performing team. According to Laiken (2017), ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’ should be the maxim for recruitment in organization. The fundamental justification is that hiring for attitude enables the company to get the right person for the right kind of job. The right person for the right jobs is characteristically hard workers and fast learners. Any mistake in the recruitment and hiring process are detrimental to the enterprise regarding lost resources, reduced worker morale and frequent supervision and managerial stress (Keller & Meaney, 2017). Therefore, the company must adopt ‘recruit for attitude, and train for skill’ mantra.
Jacob is one of the Biblical characters that had manifests the ‘recruit for attitude, train for skill’ attitude. While staying with his Laban (his would be father-in-law), Jacob worked for 14 years to eventually marry Rachel. He put in a committed and enduring attitude to earn a prize. Samuel, the son of Elkanah, also embodies the above attribute. In particular, he poised himself as humble and trainable while living with Elly in the temple. Through patience and willingness to learn, he grew up to be one of the most respected religious leaders of Israel. Overall, Jacob epitomizes positive attitude towards work while Samuel demonstrates the willingness to be trained with skills.
References
Keller, S., & Meaney, M. (2017). High-performing teams: A timeless leadership topic. McKinsey Quarterly , 1 (3), 81-87.
Laiken, M. (2017). The anatomy of high performing teams. In The Anatomy of High Performing Teams . University of Toronto Press.
Lancaster, S., & Burke, V. (2019). Creating long-term high performing teams. In Routledge Handbook of Elite Sport Performance (pp. 384-389). Routledge.
