The 8 Brilliant Basics of Building High Performing Teams
By Studiowide
“Great teams learn to trust each other. Mutual trust is absolutely the foundation stone of a high performing team.”
Have you ever wondered why some teams beat the odds, punch above their weight and end up out performing other teams who may be expected to do well but despite having all the ‘stars’ end up losing?
To help you understand why this can be the case I’ve put together 8 simple Brilliant Basics that we have learned over the years. Our ‘basics’ will help you become a better leader, a better team player and help you on your way to building your own high performing team!
1. Make sure there are no more than 5 vital and common goals and that they are visible to everybody.
Good leaders share a vision with the team which allows everyone to know what the goals are. Good leaders ensure that everybody is aligned around common goals or ‘Vital Few’.
High performance becomes impossible when you have some members of the team focussed on setting a particular set of priorities, whilst other team members seem fascinated by achieving something entirely different. As strange as this may sound, this very often happens in teams and organisations.
One of the Brilliant Basics we encourage all teams to concentrate on is the ability to effectively prioritise Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost and People objectives across short to medium timeframes, especially when operating in demanding market conditions.
2. Trust your teammates to do their jobs
Unfortunately, for a lot of us, we’re all very good at doing somebody else’s job. So we find ourselves constantly checking, questioning, doubting what others are doing. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking we are the only ones in the team who care that we succeed. This in reality is rarely the case.
Great teams learn to trust each other. Mutual trust is absolutely the foundation stone of a high performing team. However, sometimes it’s important to know what everyone is responsible for and to make sure those responsibilities and our commitment to achieving them are as visual as possible.
This allows team members to avoid the anxiety of worrying that all the ‘cogs’ are turning equally in coordination and when that becomes obvious the trust and respect within teams starts to flow.
3. Learn to forgive failure
Good teams aren’t afraid of failure. When they fail or lose in a particular situation, they stick with the plan. They keep going. As our teams strive to maintain brilliant customer service through delivering an excellent quality product, it’s only natural that at times they may operationally stumble and fall.
When this happens, great teams don’t look to place blame on others or make excuses. Instead, they take a step back, review what went wrong, learn from their mistakes and put in place solutions. Most important of all, they keep going.
4. Leaders should not forget the contributions made by others
For the vast majority of us, in one way or another, we owe our successes to other people’s contributions. It could be a supplier who manages to find a rare spare part, or a transport planner who manages to organise short notice cover for a delivery, or maybe a team member who decides to stay late for a couple of hours to support you through a particular problem – these are the people that help us look good as leaders.
Become the type of leader who respects those people. Become the type of leader who builds a team that respects its foot soldiers; those who aren’t necessarily interested in applause or limelight, but do all the hard lifting day in and day out – contributing greatly to the overall success of the team.
5. People will try to disrupt your plan
Unfortunately, it’s a sad fact of life that from time to time you will come across individuals, teams or maybe other organisations that want to see you fail, and sometimes these people don’t always wear a different set of company colours.
High performing teams see these particular problems as minor irritants and they never let these things detract them from their goals. High performing teams remain focused.
6. Make sure your goals are always a little out of reach
It’s normal for most of us to have a poor view of how resourceful we can be. We tend to doubt our abilities and strengths, and when that happens we often reduce the size of our ambition. We make our goals smaller and we begin to think small.
When teams set tough ambitions it tends to attract support and resources. People outside of the team will want to give advice. Other teams will want to share what they have learned to help. High ambitions attract curiosity and interest, and with that comes resources.
Think big. Aim high.
7. Enjoy the journey
Whatever happens, don’t forget to have fun. Cracking jokes, keeping the atmosphere light and sensing the joy of working together is fundamental to high performing teams. Great teams know that it is important for the team to have fun.
There’s no doubt that life can be tough and work can be boring, and the road towards our objectives can seem long and hard but great teams ensure that everyone is having fun along the way. Be careful not to get so caught up in achieving a goal or an objective that you forget to enjoy the journey.
8. There are no prizes for almost making it
We have all seen – or maybe even been part of – a team that feels they have worked extremely hard, managed to get almost within grasping distance of the goal, and then fallen at the last hurdle.
Great teams recognise this and they tend to think like sports teams. In Formula 1 racing for instance, regardless of your success history, you’re only as good as your last race. Months of preparation and thousands of hours of expertise and effort can be dashed at the final corner yards away from the chequered flag.
Great teams don’t try to fool themselves into believing that the goal was too hard or unachievable, or that coming close is close enough. High performing teams want to ‘win’ and believe that they can ‘win’. When this happens, teams give themselves the best chance of success.
At the end of the working day and regardless of what the numbers say, the definition of high performance for every team is becoming the very best that they can be. Michael Jordan once said “Talent will win you games, but teamwork and intelligence will win you championships.” The businesses and organisations that win in the future won’t necessarily be the ones with the best talent, the most money or the latest technology. They will be the ones with the best teamwork. Teamwork will be the differentiator because it’s so powerful and, more often than not, so rare.
Don’t forget that creating a high performing team enables managers, team leaders and colleagues to achieve world-class levels of Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost and People performance. However, getting there requires the adoption of an essential set of practices that when done well and done habitually combine to create a results mechanism that we call ‘The Brilliant Basics’.
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