Developing High Performing Teams: The 5 Keys to Success

1. Introduction to Developing High Performing Teams: The most interesting thing about high-performing teams is that we all have different ideas about what this means. What I believe are the elements of a high-performing team can be very different to what you believe to be important. It's crucial that we recognize these different perspectives at work. My name is Abby Ireland. I'm a Peak Performance Strategist and I worked with executives and teams to want to do up level performance and to do this in a balanced and sustainable way. Before starting my own businesses, I had a career in banking. Since then I've launched my own ventures in fitness, nutrition, education, and consultancy. I also have an e-magazine called Higher State, where I get to interview and tap into the minds of high performers from the worlds of everything, from sports, to business, academia and more. When I became my own boss, I had to develop habits and thought processes and behaviors to stay motivated and productive without someone telling me what to do. I became passionate about performance and productivity and in particular peak performance. I love to share what I've learned with others who also want to be at their best, and that means people like you. In this class, we're going to discover the five key ingredients of high-performing teams. Now these are purpose, mindset, trust, dynamics, and accountability. We're going to cover how to create a common purpose, how to introduce a high performance mindset in your teams? How to develop trust amongst each other out to understand yourself and others? Finally, how to promote accountability? You're also going to understand the importance of well-being and the impact that this has on what I like to call total performance capacity. When he worked on these elements, you're going to be surprised at what you and your team can accomplish both individually and collectively. Now, high-performing teams experience, we call flow, and that's the ability to get into what we call the zone. They can maintain momentum. They perform at this high level without burning out. But it's also worth noting that high-performance isn't just about results. In fact, results will follow if the right behaviors, habits, and processes are in place. We know that every business would want people who demonstrate the qualities we're going to be covering. This class is designed for those who lead, manage, or a part of the team so that it doesn't matter whether your team is small or your businesses small or you work in a big organization. By the end of this class, you're going to have a clear understanding of what a high-performing team looks like and how you can develop this in your business. Finally, I've uploaded a workbook so you can take notes as we go through each lesson. Now I'm really excited to share this class with you because I loved work with like-minded people who want to take performance to that next level. Thank you for joining me. Now let's get started. 2. Class and Project Overview: This class project involves developing your very own high-performance team manifesto and as we stepped through the lessons, I'd like you to think about how you can tailor the learnings to your unique business and team circumstances. Now, I chose this project because it gives you something tangible that you can implement. You can use the template in your class workbook to help shape your manifesto. Alternatively, if you want to, you could get creative and you can present your manifesto in a way that makes sense for your business, perhaps the culture and the values of your business. This could be in the form of a poster, a video, a booklet, brochure, postcard, or even a song. A couple of tips. Firstly, don't think too hard. Your manifesto is going to evolve and you can fine tune it over time. Secondly, this is a great opportunity to involve your team. Listen to everyone's views and create something special that your team can get excited about and engaged with. You're going to benefit from more ideas for a start and you're going to make everyone feel empowered and involved. The goal is for your manifesto to be timeless. However, remember, it is also fluid and it can be refined as your team evolves. This is a useful exercise to go through even if you been managing a team for a long time because it's always good to think differently, to step back, to reflect, to draw on new information and perspectives. This is also a good exercise for those new to a team because it allows you to start with best practice in mind. A powerful manifesto is going to help you to attract, to retain, and to develop high-performance to your team. Each lesson in this class, will focus on one critical ingredient of high-performing teams. I'm going to share theory and practical tips with you and we're going to use the class workbook to bring the learnings to life. I'd love to see your final project. Please upload this so that I can give you my direct feedback. As busy people, we often don't get the chance to work on these important projects. We are usually firefighting and we're dealing with the trivial things that pop up during our day. That's why I'm so excited about working with you on this project. We're going to be covering quite a few concepts. It may be helpful to watch the whole class in one sitting and then you can always get back in and you can review any particular lessons which you want to spend more time on. Now, before we get started, there are a couple of things I just wanted to mention. Firstly, turn-off, remove, or closed down any distractions that are going to get in your way. The more present you are, the more you're going to get out of this class. You might also like to invite your team to watch this class so you can each develop your own ideas separately. This essentially gives you a fantastic opportunity for all of you to share your thoughts and collectively contribute to the manifesto creation process. In the next lesson, we're going to dive into the importance of creating purpose. I'll see you there. 3. Purpose: In this lesson, we're talking about purpose and why this is crucial for high performance. Now this is about each person in your team knowing why they do what they do. Here are just some of the reasons why having a strong sense of purpose is important for teams. Purpose is crucial because it taps into essentially our emotions. When we look at top performers in the world of business, sports and more, there's always more to their work than just doing a job and getting paid. Without this common purpose, we can lose our way and we can lack drive. Everyone can be obsessed with satisfying their individual needs without prioritizing those overall needs of the team or business. A powerful purpose enables everyone to stay focused and to stay on track. It also encourages collaboration, enthusiasm, and momentum. Ultimately, people feel fulfilled and inspired when they know that they're doing something meaningful. Ask yourself, can you clearly articulate how each person in your team contributes to your overarching goals, and do you think that each team member is going to have the same understanding as you of their role and purpose. How do you create a common purpose? First, we need to establish the team's purpose. Why does the team exist and what is it here to achieve? You've got space in your workbook to complete this, so ask the question, what is our purpose? Write down your answer and then ask the same question again, and this time I'd like you to provide a different answer. What is the team's purpose? Keep asking yourself this question to give yourself a number of responses, and you will know when to stop because your responses will stop being useful for you. By going through this exercise, you're going to uncover new perspectives and you're going to get really clear on why your team exists. Compare your findings with others in your team and take time to discuss the similarities and the differences. The next thing you want to do is clarify each individual's purpose in the team. What is each individual here to achieve? Use the same technique that I mentioned earlier to determine your individual purpose, but this time you're going to ask yourself, what is my purpose? It can be really difficult and it can perhaps be bit uncomfortable to dig deeper, but that's the point. It isn't an easy exercise, and this is why so many businesses fail to get this right. We're going to look at an example now. Let's take Bob. He is an accountant within a large multinational. Bob's purpose is to ensure that the division he looks after is trading healthily. Now, this may align with the team's purpose to create financial stability within the business, and what you'll recognize is that both of these layers of purpose align with the businesses overarching purpose, which is to generate a healthy profit. However, we need to understand more about Bob's individual purpose. What drives Bob? What drives him on that personal level? For Bob, it could be that he enjoys stability and he likes having a sense of order. Perhaps he enjoys feeling secure by having control over the finances, and the overlap we'll link between a person's individual and team purpose is that sweet spot that you can use to drive performance. If you understand what's important to someone, you can use this to engage and to motivate your team towards higher performance. In Bob's case, his individual purpose to have control and stability aligns with the team and the business goals. Have a look at your workbook and when answering the questions in there, go with your gut's instinct. This is going to reveal your surface level thoughts about your purpose and your team's purpose. Then you can keep peeling back those layers as you keep asking the question and producing different responses. One tip I would give you is that it might help to revisit this exercise in a few days, which will allow your subconscious mind to walk away and to think about those answers. You could do something like going for a walk or do something non-related, step away from the desk as that can help to keep those mental juices flowing and remove any blockages. Another thing you can do is also compare your thoughts and explore the differences with your team if they're also going through this exercise at the same time. One of the things I did want to mention is that conflicting perspectives are actually really healthy and a really healthy component of high performing teams. Before moving on, complete the purpose section in your workbook. Our next lesson is going to focus on one of my favorite topics, which is mindset. 4. Mindset: In this lesson, we are going to explore the role of mindset in high-performing teams. This is a huge topic with lots to discuss. I'm not going to go into everything, but we're going to cover some of the key factors that differentiate high-performers from the rest. Mindset is really about taking ownership and having the deep belief that I'm in control of my thoughts and actions. A lot of studies have been done in recent years on this topic. In particular, one of my favorite pieces is the research on growth mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck. This shows that the way in which we approach activities drives our motivation and ultimately our achievement. Our ability to learn from mistakes, to accept feedback and to recognize the power of investing effort to achieve our goals helps us to move forward. On the other hand, having a fixed mindset means that we respond poorly to criticism, to challenges, to any of those setbacks that we get. We can become defensive or perhaps we believe that certain things can't be changed despite our efforts. With a fixed mindset, we may struggle to collaborate. We may struggle to own up to mistakes or seek feedback, all of which stops us from innovating and improving. In your workbook, there is space for you to reflect on your own views when it comes to mindset. To determine whether you operate more with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Take the time now to have a go at completing this exercise. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey talks about the sphere of influence and the sphere of concern. This is about our tendency to direct our energy and attention to things that we can do something about versus those things that we have no control over. The sphere of concern includes everything that we may be concerned about, but which we may struggle to influence. This can include the weather, time, aging, news and politics. However, the sphere of influence relates to things we can do something about. That's whether it's directly or indirectly. An example would be, we can't change the weather if it's going to rain, but we can prepare ourselves by having an umbrella and a raincoat to keep us dry. What I'd like you to do is to consider the questions. What's in your control? What can you influence and where you directing your time and your energy right now? Remember that shifting our mindset isn't something that happens overnight. Many of our beliefs and our behaviors and our attitudes are deeply ingrained and so they'd been established a long time ago. We can take a while to change the way that you think. It's all about doing these small adjustments. That that's the best way to go so focus on creating new habits that essentially replace those existing ones and simply being aware of your thoughts is one of the best ways to start making changes. There are some key characteristics that contribute to a success mindset. These include things like courage, consistency, determination, resilience and having focus. These are all featured in your workbooks, so have a look, have a think and think about which characteristics are most important to you and the team that you want to develop. At the end of the day, it's down to you to role model a success mindset for your team to follow and ultimately be inspired by. The reality is that we are all resourceful and adaptable enough to enhance the way we think. It just requires a little extra work at the beginning to shift those deeply embedded neural pathways and to promote more productive thought processes. To avoid overwhelm, what I suggest is focus on just one or two ways in which you think your team could change their thoughts and perhaps their attitudes. Think about how you can think differently about your own outlook and that of the people around you. I hope this lesson has been thought-provoking for you. In the next lesson, we're going to explore team dynamics and how this can impact a team's performance. 5. Dynamics: In this lesson, we are exploring team dynamics, and that starts with recognizing our preferred style, our strengths, and our personality type. After that, it's about understanding other people and how we can apply this information to work more effectively as a team and on our own. We're going to explore different personality profiles, and we're going to discuss the strength of each. But we are also going to consider what happens when these strengths are overused and how different styles can work together or perhaps clash. Once you understand this, teamwork is going to be so much more powerful and impactful, and you're going to be able to focus on everyone's strengths. One thing I'd like to say is a high-performing team is more than the sum of its parts. You've probably heard that before. The blend of skills, experiences, strengths, and character traits, all come together to create synergy and momentum in the best teams. Consider this question, what will be the benefits for you, your team, and your business if you are able to understand each other better? Now these are just some of the benefits, everything from the ability to influence others more effectively because you are able to stand in their shoes through to developing stronger relationships in which people are not afraid to challenge each other or ask questions to push their thinking further. There are lots and lots of personality profiling tools and psychometric tests out there, and you may have even done one yourself, which is fantastic, on a disk practitioner. I find that this is a really simple approach when I'm trying to understand other people, even if they haven't done the tests themselves, I can workout roughly where they will sit. But this isn't about putting people into buckets. It's useful because it helps me to become more self-aware for a start, and it helps me to recognize that everyone operates differently with again, different preferences and working styles. There are four quadrants when we're looking at this, and they're based on whether a person is firstly task-oriented or people oriented. Then, we look at whether a person is more for an introvert or more for an extrovert. The four quadrants are categorized into; drive, influence, steadiness, and compliance. Let's take a moment now to go through each quadrant in turn, and as we do this, think about which descriptions you can reflect most on, which, which ones of these aligned most with you? We are all a blend, but most people tend to have one or two dominant styles and that's just something for you to be aware of. So the first quadrant is drive. Now, people dominant in this segment like to get things done. They may like to take charge and they can come across as assertive, determined, driven, powerful, competitive, and decisive. However, if they overuse these strengths, they may be perceived as argumentative, impatient, insensitive, opinionated, and perhaps a bit overbearing. So the next quadrant is influence, and people who fall into this category, into me being around other people, and much more extroverted in style. They may be described as inspiring, influential, enthusiastic, optimistic, and very energetic. Perhaps they are the life and soul of a party. However, overusing their strings means that they can be seen as distracted, unfocused, perhaps a bit over-excited, frantic, and indiscreet. Remember, I'm only giving you some high-level descriptions here to help you're thinking into it, to start thinking a bit more about how this all works. There was so much more we could dig into for each style. Next, we have steadiness, and people in this category tend to be much more reserved than the influences. They're typically calm, reliable, supportive, they're great team players, and they are really good listeners. Otherwise, they may be resistant to change. They may be stubborn, perceived to be sitting on the fence, and perhaps they don't give their opinion for fear of rocking the boat. They may also find it hard to speed up their pace, and so this can create conflict with those opposing styles, such as the drivers who just want to get things done and move on. Last but not least, we have compliance. Now people who were dominant in this category have very high standards. They have great attention to detail. They're often perfectionist, they're very structured, very analytical, and they're critical thinkers, they're very logical critical thinkers. However, if they go too far, they can experience what we call analysis paralysis. They can be indecisive over critical of themselves and others, and they can find it difficult to delegate. Being totally honest about your preferences, use your workbook and more we use it most comfortably within these quadrants. Which segment or segments do you relate to the most? You probably now see how different styles can clash based on our individual preferences. So in your workbook, write down your thoughts on these questions. Which styles are your dominant styles in your team? What would you like to see more of or perhaps less of? Really take this opportunity to reflect on your own style and where you think others in your team sets. It is so valuable to understand yourself and others so that you can get clear on how you interact with others and how your styles align, conflict, or perhaps just require a little extra effort. Before we move on, this is a great quote by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who's the master of these personality profiling tests, which will give you some food for thought. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. I'll leave you to think about that one. In the next lesson, we're going to look at trust and how this impacts team performance. 6. Trust: In this lesson, we are talking about trust and the reason that this is such a vital component of high-performing teams. Trust works in two ways and it's about how you can trust other people, but it's also about how well other people can trust you. We've already covered the importance of team dynamics and getting to know each other's styles and preferences, and now we can overlay this with trust because teams that trust each other work well together. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, trust means believing that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable. Of course, it makes sense that teams that trust each other have stronger bonds, they've got better relationships and therefore they work well together. This includes the ability of individual members to trust each other through to the ability of people to trust their manager and vice versa, and it seems simple, but trust can take a very, very long time to build, yet it can be destroyed very easily. As a result, it makes sense to invest a decent amount of time and effort into nurturing this valuable element. In fact, studies have shown that trust is one of the cornerstones of high performing teams. Back in 2012, Google conducted a two-year study called Project Aristotle and they were looking at what makes a Google team effective. The top dynamic of the most successful teams was something called psychological safety which links strongly to trust. This term was coined by Amy Edmondson, who is an organizational behavioral scientist at Harvard University. Psychological safety: it relates to the belief that team members can take risks and they can make mistakes without fearing repercussions. When people feel psychologically safe, they feel listened to, they feel safe to give and to receive feedback without that fear of rejection or ridicule. If team members, on the other hand, worry about sharing their vulnerabilities and weaknesses with each other, they're more likely to act defensively and to keep that guard up. In so many teams that I work with, we have discussions and there is a view that people trust each other. They enjoy working with each other and they feel that sense of trust, but they may only be considering one dimension. My challenge to you is to think more deeply about how you can develop a more holistic sense of trust in your team, and I'm going to show you some ways in which you can do this. There's something called the trust equation, and there are four ways in which you can enhance trust and I'm going to briefly take you through those. The first one is credibility: this refers to a person's expertise and knowledge, and it's our ability to trust what they have to say about a topic. For example, you may be an expert in your field, or you may be an expert in a technical field. Reliability relates to your ability to trust a person's actions and to believe that they are dependable. An example here would be that we may be able to rely on someone to always deliver projects on time or always be on time for meetings. Then we have intimacy and this is our ability to trust others with confidential or personal information, and this could involve sharing of vulnerabilities or confiding in someone safe in the knowledge that they're not going to violate our trust. Finally, the fourth element of trust is self-orientation, and this refers to a person's focus on themselves or other people. If a person is too self-interested and focused on their personal gains over our best interests, we are less likely to trust them. Self-orientation is the one factor that we want to reduce rather than increase. Instead, the more focused we are on helping and supporting others in building their goals, the more likely we are to build trust. On that note, consider how you score in each of these four categories and think about which ones you maybe want to pay more attention to. There's space in your workbook to rate yourself and your team. A good way to approach this exercise is to think about how you can role-model trust. What do you do well right now, and what could you do even better to develop your trustworthiness among your team members, and what gaps exist your team, how could you close these in the future when it comes to trust? Because the team will not go far without this trust. This is one of the most crucial building blocks of high-performing teams. As I said before, it takes time to build, but it can be very easy to lose trust. Really think about what you can do to embed trustworthiness in your team. Before we move on, take a moment to consider the behaviors, the words, and the actions of people whom you consider to be trustworthy. What did they say or not say, how did they say it, and what do they do to make you feel psychologically safe? Hopefully, this has got you thinking about the small adjustments that you can make going forward to develop a high-performing team. In the next lesson, we're going to look at accountability and how this shapes our teams. 7. Accountability: In this lesson, we are exploring accountability and the role that this plays in high performing teams. One of the top qualities of high performance, is that they hold themselves accountable and they hold each other accountable too. They are committed, reliable, and they work well together as a unit towards a common goal. They're clear on what they need to do by when and how this impacts their progress. Accountability is about taking ownership for the task and the results, and the consequences. It's not just about doing the work. This also means that we have to resist the urge to point fingers and to blame others when things go wrong, and instead we need to step up and we need to own the situation. This is very different to being responsible for something, which involves completing a task or an activity. In his book on The Five Dysfunctions of A Team, Patrick Lencioni highlights the impact of accountability. Going back to our lesson on trust, we know that without trust, people are less likely to speak up. If they fear conflict and challenging each other, they're more likely to agree to, for example goals and decisions which they don't really believe in, or which they may be think are inferior. We have this false sense of harmony created as people are scared to express their true opinions. In turn this causes a lack of commitment to the goals or decisions, which then reduces accountability. People disengage if they haven't bought into the ideas or the concepts or the goals. They don't really feel that sense of ownership, and the outcome is that they then fall short when it comes to the results. If we can encourage accountability within our teams, were more likely to achieve the results that count the results that matter. One of the best ways to do this is by empowering people to be at their best. Ways you can do this, check in regularly with your team members. Understand what drives and motivates them at work. Also be clear on who is accountable for what and what your expectations are. Without personal and collective accountability, we can become dis-empowered and we can become very detached from our goals. We can become complacent, we can lack enthusiasm, and we can lose that motivation. Re-enforce each person's purpose and contribution to your team goals and give people the space to take ownership of driving things forward, without feeling that you have to micro-manage or take control. Before moving on to the next lesson, consider what you're doing currently to hold your team accountable for the work that they do. What obstacles are you creating and what could you remove perhaps? Regularly check in with your team members and ensure that they understand who is accountable for what, and ensure you keep the lines of communication clear. Another thing you can do now is take the time to work for your handout as your reflections are going to feed into your overall class project, your manifesto. We've now covered all five critical success factors of high performing teams and we're ready to consolidate our learning. But before we do that, I'd like to introduce a bonus topic that is often overlooked when we think about high performance. Let's get into a short lesson on self care. 8. Self Care: In this bonus lesson, we are exploring self-care and how this is actually the secret ingredient that sets top performing teams apart from the rest. Now, this is a huge topic on its own, and I am passionate about human performance, so I could pretty much go on for hours here. However, for the purpose of this class, I want to leave you with something that you can think about. As a leader, what do you do to optimize your well-being and that of your team members. In my work, I always take an integrated approach to performance and in particular peak performance. This means considering how psychology and physiology and business strategies, all enhanced performance and productivity at work. We've already touched on the business and some mindset elements in this course. I just want to bring your attention to how you can look after your body and your brain in order to perform at your very best. This means thinking about your physical, your mental, and your emotional state. It means thinking about the food that you eat, the food that you feed your body in your brain. It means thinking about the way you look off to your body and the attention you pay to your energy levels too. The reason I love to do what I do, is that it gives me this opportunity to combine my business and my well-being skills. A few years ago, I qualified as a personal trainer and a nutrition coach and I quickly realized when working with my clients, that it is impossible to get top results without taking an integrated approach to performance. For example, you can be a top performer at work and your team can be brilliant to getting results, but you may all be working at an unsustainable pace which can lead to burnout if you don't pay attention to stress levels, to your physical health and to your mental well-being. Likewise, you may eat well and you may exercise regularly, but you may not have the most effective tools and frameworks, and structures at work to achieve top performance when you are in the workplace. In a nutshell, it pays to look at all of these factors that can impact women. This is what I love to do when I work with my clients. We're now ready to consolidate our learning. So I encourage you to have a go at creating your very own manifesto. Your high performance team manifesto. The space in your workbook to complete this. Review your notes from each lesson and the example I've shared in the workbook. All of this is going to help you to create a draft of what high-performance looks like, feels like, and sounds like for your own team. 9. Wrapping Up: Congratulations on making it to the end of this class. I hope you've enjoyed the experience and are now even more confident about what it takes to develop a high performing team. Over the course of this class, we covered everything from how to get clear on your purpose all the way through to how to know yourself and those around you better in order to get the best from each other. We also explored how our mindsets are critical when it comes to performance and we dived into the power of trust and how this can essentially make or break a team's performance. Last but not least, we looked at the importance of accountability. Here is some key takeaways to reflect upon. Now, I've shared just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to developing a high-performing team. For each ingredient, we could go into a whole lot more detail, but it is important to build a strong foundation and get that understanding in the first place. If there's one thing I hope you will take away, it says that the essence of high-performance may be similar across teams, but each team will have its own unique flavor. Identifying this uniqueness is going to make your team stand out from the crowd. Do the work and craft your team manifesto today. I would love to see this manifesto. Upload and share to the project section for this class. Once you've done that, I can take a look and I can give you feedback directly. Thank you so much for taking time to participate in this class. Please share your feedback if you've enjoyed the lessons and I look forward to seeing you again soon.