High Performing Teams
We love the work we do with high performing teams. There’s something about the alchemy and the agile reality of teams that is powerful, exciting – and measurable.
Types of team we coach
Our work typically focuses within organisations, with functional groups of people from the same work area or department who meet on a regular basis to analyse customer needs, solve problems, provide members with support, promote continuous improvement, or share information, for example. These teams, including executive leadership and product development teams, are usually long-lasting. They perform by producing quality work and deliver continued value to their organisations.
What is a high-performing team?
A high-performing team is a group of people who share a common vision, goals, measures, and whose members co-create, challenge and hold each other accountable for achieving outstanding results. You know high-performing teams when you see them, because their members have a clear vision of where they’re headed and what they want to accomplish, and have the desire to engage and discover with each other. It’s about both tasks and people.
A few symptoms of under-performing teams
- Some team members don’t complete what they’re expected to do
- Others are not flexible enough, so things “fall between the cracks”
- A team member valued for their expert input fails to see the wider picture and so misses out tasks or steps that others would expect to be accomplished
- One team member becomes frustrated because they disagree with the approach of another team member.
Some “negatives” are symptoms of larger issues, such as a fear-based culture where people are watching their backs all the time. Through skillfully handled conversations, we help to build trust so that people connect, grow, and navigate difficult situations, to get them back into the high-performing zone.
“Toni worked with me as a facilitator to develop a high performing team. The training was based on what really matters around the performance of the company.
The training sessions were energising, informative and above all, motivating. This led to staff engagement activities that brought the team together, which in turn changed the culture of the team, which became high-performing.”
– Natalie Dawson, former General Manager and Human Resources Manager at Fountain Drinks
Our approach to building high performing teams
We facilitate bespoke programmes for teams who want to get to the next level of productivity and reputation, and for teams that are already high-performing, that want to ascend to the next level of excellence. Our programmes feature a unique combination of elements and events which build the pathway to high performance.
Our role as the external facilitator is to expedite the co-creation of a trusting environment using role modelling and agreed guidelines for engagement. We achieve this by guiding the team to:
- Review their team architecture (a robust 10-factor measure from Leadership Solutions). Team architecture factors such as team purpose, goals and processes need to be measured as part of the foundation for change.
- Build their conversational agility. Conversational agility relates to what Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist Alex Pentland calls team communication patterns of energy, engagement and exploration. These “three Es” are the single biggest predictor of a team’s success. Conversational agility focuses on developing the desire and skills behind the three Es.
Tackling the tough problems
Some of the topics we’ve facilitated with teams include:
- Senior teams receive negative feedback from their staff. They then use this feedback as a platform to build staff engagement through concerted action, and build a compelling, authentic environment.
- Customer service is invisible in a team. A culture change is effected, bringing about a more customer-centric focus.
- Moving from a toxic team culture to one that breathes life into its team members and the teams around it.
- Ensuring a merger is not a workplace culture takeover.
- Reviewing the senior team’s purpose and establishing new rules for engagement and associated leadership behaviours.
- An organisation-wide revitalisation through team-based workshops.
- Applying “breakthrough thinking” in teams to address a seemingly intractable problem.
The benefits to you of our way of working
As facilitators for high performing teams, we employ the same philosophy, methods and skills we apply to the workshops we facilitate. The key difference is the context in which we apply them, and our work with high performing teams typically extends over a longer time period.
“Toni was engaged to assist me as CEO of a small start-up organisation to bring together a slightly dysfunctional team. We certainly weren’t a high-performing team but aspired to be.
Toni skillfully took the team through some communication and thinking styles workshops, and from that set up processes to help us measure progress.
I highly recommend Toni if you want to build a high performing team and organisation.”
– Victor Klap, former CEO, Southern Cross Primary Care
The tools we use for high-performing teams
- Bruce Tuckman’s Five Stages of Team
- The 10-factor Team Architect diagnostic tool
- Belbin Team Roles Profiling
- Relationship Awareness Theory Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- Conversational Intelligence® Enhanced Practitioner
- 180/360 degree surveys.
If you and your colleagues have asked whether there is unrealised potential in your teams, then get in touch with us.