Qualities of a high performance team—Part 1
A High Performance Team (HPT) is a group of people that is highly focussed on their goals and achieves superior business results. For such a team to be that productive and impactful, there has to be a set of unique qualities that the team has. Without that set of qualities, a group cannot be called HPT.
Earlier in my career at Shell Oil, I worked in a HPT. The team had high energy and was moving so fast on the project. Everyone had great support from everyone. We had a senior member who was dedicated to communications. She was updating everyone in the team about everything and also regularly updating all the key stakeholders of the project.
The experience of working on such a HPT helped me gain the necessary exposure to HPTs and I have since been attempting to run all my teams at High Performance Teams and often the results have been quite positive.
Today, we will discuss five of the top 10 typical qualities of a HPT.
- Participative leadership
In a HPT, leaders allow other members of the team to also have the freedom to contribute to the leadership of the team and tasks. Everyone can take part in the leadership of the team. The style is not autocratic at all.
- Effective decision-making
In a HPT, the leader knows that you cannot use the same style of decision making for different situations. Rather, they are flexible when it comes to the style of decision-making. In some cases, the team may need to use deductive methods to arrive at a good decision. In other cases, the leader may have to simply obey his or her ‘intuition’.
- Open and clear communication
The power of open and clear communication applies to any successful team. A team will not be successful unless it embraces open and clear communication. Information needs to flow downwards, upwards and across the team. Many people like to hide information in teams. It never helps. If you want your team to be a HPT, you need to cultivate a culture of open and clear communication.
- Valued diversity Does your team celebrate, accept and promote the rich diversity that the team brings up? In every team, the members will be very different. They will think differently, act differently and behave differently even in same or similar situations. That is what makes life interesting. Imagine if we were all identical in thought, feeling, action and behavior? A HPT embraces the diversity in the team and accepts that as a norm. They promote the diversity and leverage it for maximum productivity. Such an approach makes everyone feel at home in the team-a place where they are fully accepted and their membership and contributions are valued.
- Mutual trust
Trust is a fundamental key for a team to be successful. Members of the team need to trust one another. Members need to have the confidence that the team is with them, supporting them and standing by their side. The team as a whole must also feel trusted by the individual members. This way, no one loses time with intricate processes for approvals and consultations. With total trust, the team can move with good pace, effectiveness and efficiency.
Do be there again next week when we will discuss the other five qualities of a High Performance Team! Good luck!
