6 Hallmarks of High Performing Teams

Deidre PaknadCEO & Co-Founder of Workboard

High performing teams seem to generate their own energy and elevate everyone on the team to their

full potential.

What sets high performing teams apart and why aren’t all teams so

successful and fun?They aren’t just a collection of strong individual performers. They don’t leave great performance to luck or personality, they design for success. They have…

Defined Goals Committed ActionsTrue TransparencyFrequent Feedback

Unabashed AccountabilityCelebrated Successes

Defined goals and a clear plan to achieve them are essential to great performance.

Abstract annual goals aren’t enough. Teams need shorter-range, compelling and clear goals that unify and galvanize them on shared purpose.

Sequencing these to an annual result works well, but it’s key that the team wants to achieve the goals.

Defined Goals

Successful teams write down the committed actions each person owns on the path to goal achievement (and they waste less time determining who owns what).

Members feel a sense of personal ownership and have a shared intention to accomplish the results they’ve committed to the team week over week.

Making progress on actions aligned with a goal people believe in energizes people and elevates their performance, according to author and Harvard professor Teresa Amabile.

Committed Actions

Facts and status enable members of the team to work more effectively together. They can pivot or adjust course quickly on unforeseen events, and execute with greater efficiency and predictability.

Embracing transparency is one of the most distinct features of high performing teams (and a stark contrast to the politicized and professional “ball hiders” that frequent lesser performing teams).

True Transparency

People with written goals and written action plans improves goal achievement

43%

Adding status reports boosts the likelihood of achievement

to 76%

True Transparency

The team leader and members hold themselves and each other accountable for their commitments and goal achievement week to week.

Unabashed Accountability

When the team or a person comes up short,

it’s not swept under the rug – it’s triaged and addressed quickly to get back on track to goal.

There is a uniform expectation of each other, that when combined with a uniformly

high level of commitment to goal, are the essence of a high performing team’s greatness.

Unabashed Accountability

Members of the team get and ask for regular feedback on their work. Learning

members get positive feedback that enables them to learn and engage quickly, while expert members get constructive feedback that helps them

continuously advance already-mature skills.

Because team members are focused on achievement and respect each other’s

commitments and efforts, feedback is easier to give and apply.

Frequent Feedback

Celebrate Success

They savor the small and the big wins as a team.

High performing teams celebrate people’s individual contributions and the accomplishments of the team as a whole.

In large matrixed organizations where teams coalesce and disband quickly, it takes extra effort to celebrate success but it is

actually more rewarding than a cash bonus, according to McKinsey.

People who’ve worked on high performing teams tend to remember the experience and their team mates vividly for years to come.

When they describe the experience, they use words like “epic” and there is tangible

pride and gratitude in their voice. That team imprint is far greater and longer lasting than its contribution to the company at which its members worked.

It's not just the business results…

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