5 steps for leaders to build high-performing teams

Even at the best of times, leaders want their teams to produce extraordinary results. However, with countries like Australia experiencing the biggest productivity slump in 60 years, optimising performance has never been more critical. 

The challenge, however, is that high-performing teams are no accident – and they are not built overnight. While each team is as unique as the people within it, there is a shared understanding of what makes a team perform. Careful strategies are also in place to support and encourage outstanding achievement.

Research from international leadership training firm Dale Carnegie shows that 96 per cent of teams acknowledge they at least meet their performance goals. Less than one third of them, however, are considered high performers who have exceeded those goals over the past year. 

What distinguishes high-performing teams from other groups, and how can finance leaders take their teams to the next level? Here are five key steps.

1. Lay the foundations for high performance

Workplace collaboration has evolved along with technological advancements, organisational changes and shifting workplace dynamics. 

Teams can work together while being geographically apart. Part-time workers can bring the same vital ingredients for team success as their full-time counterparts. However, they all require leaders to lay the foundations for peak performance.

Communication specialist Leah Mether works with leaders to help develop their soft skills. She says high-performing teams operate within a culture that focuses on people.

“If people feel supported and valued and cared for, then they are going to want to do great work,” she says. “From a leadership perspective, it requires a mix of warmth and strength, empathy and accountability.

“You will also know that you have a high-performing team if people want to work for you as a leader, or they want a secondment into your team because they’ve heard you are great to work for, and that you have a great culture and you get great results.”

2. Create a sense of collaboration and commitment

The notion of team building stems from the work of Harvard Business School professor Elton Mayo, who conducted experiments in the 1920s focusing on the importance of social and psychological factors in the workplace. 

Before Mayo’s work, the ruling theory in workplace productivity was that employees were driven by pay. Mayo’s studies showed that employees are motivated more by factors such as attention and camaraderie than by monetary rewards or environmental factors.

Graham Winter, performance psychologist and author of Think One Team, has served as chief psychologist for three Australian Olympic teams. A starting point for finance leaders to build high-performing teams, Winter says, is to create clarity and commitment.

 

"If people feel supported and valued and cared for, then they are going to want to do great work. From a leadership perspective, it requires a mix of warmth and strength, empathy and accountability."

 

He says that while high-performing teams are generally “a function of the context in which they are operating”, they have a high level of alignment and commitment to a goal, a standard, a vision or a purpose.

“They also have a strong level of sharing and collaboration, and they value ongoing learning,” says Winter, who is also co-author of Toolkit for Turbulence.

“Even when an organisation is operating in a time of uncertainty, it is important to give teams a sense of meaning or something to get onboard with, whether that is an opportunity for profit or for making change in the community, for example.”

3. Set clear goals that define high performance

Leaders also need to clearly define what they mean by high performance and communicate this. 

For instance, is it about exceeding budgets? Is it about exceeding client expectations? Is it about developing innovative practices?

“When building a high-performing team, you need to bring your people together and have a ‘shared expectation’ conversation about what high performance looks like for your team,” Mether says. 

“Ask, ‘What are our expectations of how we work together?’. You cannot hold people accountable for high performance if you have not told them what high performance looks like.”

While high-performing teams are vital to the success of organisations of all sizes, Winter adds that there can be pitfalls to over-focusing on performance. 

“It is critical to keep it simple. People generally cannot focus on more than two or three things at a time, so if a leader wants to build their team, home in on two or three critical habits or behaviours,” he says.

Natascha Tjendana CPA is executive manager corporate services at Youth Projects, an independent charity that provides front-line support for young people experiencing disadvantage. She believes open communication is a vital ingredient when building high performance.

“You need to be clear about where your team is going and how you contribute to the impact and the strategy of an organisation,” Tjendana says. “Ask, ‘What is our vision?’, ‘What are our goals?’ and ‘Are we aligned?’.”

“You need to be clear about the strategic plan for the organisation,” she adds. “At Youth Projects, our strategic plan is set up for five years, and all our success profiles trickle down from the strategic plan. 

“We have five pillars in there and each role within the organisation is clear about how they contribute to each pillar – our people, our client, our future, our impact, and our innovation and resilience.”

Paul Luczak CPA, chair and co-founder of Gild Group, employs a team of 180 people across 11 business verticals, including wealth, finance and legal. He agrees that providing clarity is a foundation for high-performing teams.

“Teams need to be really clear on their goals and the purpose of the organisation,” he says. “That then leads to their KPIs and the metrics around how they are assessed.”

4. Embed psychological safety

Diversity of thought can enhance team performance by bringing a range of perspectives to the table. The key, says Winter, is ensuring that leaders create a sense of psychological safety.

“Psychological safety has two elements to it,” he says. “The first is about feeling socially safe. In other words, ‘Can I express myself? Can I speak up, can I experiment, can I challenge?’. Alongside that is accountability, because there is a context in which you are operating, so you are signing up to a set of performance standards or values.”

Mether adds that leaders must regard their teams as more than resources and tap into their humanity. This requires spending one-on-one time with team members, as well as meeting as a group. Ask questions, such as:

• How are they coping with their deadlines? 
• Are they feeling satisfied in their role? 
• Are they achieving the work–life balance they desire? 

“If you want your people to do great work for you, they have to feel like you care about them as a human, not just the tasks that they are doing, because otherwise you lose their discretionary effort. 

“They will still do the job for you, but you will always be frustrated about why you cannot get more out of your people,” Mether says.

“An organisation also has to have the right culture and values that support a high-performing team,” Luczak adds. 

“That is not a one-size-fits-all, but both of those parts must align, because if they are not right, you cannot sustain high performance for long,” he explains.

5. Measure performance

A team might be working cohesively, but its leader also needs to be able to recognise whether it is performing at a high standard.

In his book Toolkit for Turbulence, Winter uses the “ADEP Model”, which describes his four essential elements for high performance – achievement, development, enjoyment and partnering. 

 

“When we coach leaders to establish agreements with their team, we focus on those four areas, because otherwise the risk is to assume that high performance is just about kicking goals or hitting KPIs,” Winter says. 

“If the team’s enjoyment levels are low and their partnering is poor, then they are going to hit a barrier pretty soon.

“When people talk about performance, they tend not to define what they mean by it, or if they do define it, it tends to be in the narrow way of traditional performance management,” he adds. “But it is so obvious when you look at those four ADEP areas that if one of them is missing, you are not going to be sustaining high performance over the longer term.”

Winter explains his clients use the ADEP framework in 90-day cycles. 

“Each executive has a check-in with their boss every 90 days and, hopefully, the boss is playing a coach role, not a ‘command and control’ role.”

 

"You need to be clear about where your team is going and how you contribute to the impact and the strategy of an organisation. Ask, ‘What is our vision?’, ‘What are our goals?’ and ‘Are we aligned?’."

 

At Gild Group, Luczak measures performance through tools like employee net promoter scores and client net promoter scores. 

“We also have some basic things like setting revenue targets and goals around the team’s objectives from a financial perspective,” he says. “These are basic goals that we are all aligned with.”

Mether adds that traditional “people matter” employee surveys can provide useful indicators of performance.

“You will know you have a high-performing team and be able to measure that if people are contributing, if they are willing to speak up and challenge each other with respect, if there is psychological safety, if people are wanting to do great work and are supporting each other, and if they are willing to really put in,” she says.

For Tjendana, high performance can be achieved when teams understand how they fit into the bigger picture.

“When you are in a positive environment, where people want to grow and feel excited about growth, it is contagious.”

7 characteristics of a high-performing team

According to a recent Dale Carnegie study on teamwork, high-performing teams:

1. have a clear vision and purpose
2. close perception gaps
3. reflect higher levels of team satisfaction among their members
4. communicate well with each other
5. adapt to changing situations
6. cross-train and collaborate effectively
7. utilise technology in a supportive role.

The research also shows that another common thread among high-performing teams is strong opportunities for learning and development.