Insights For Building High Performance Work Teams
Your effectiveness at building a strong business team will often determine your success as a leader. Improving team performance depends on having great performers on the team. It also depends on putting people in the right role so that they can work from their strengths.
This lens contains tips, insights, and links to other resources for building high performing teams.
Photo courtesy of www.sxc.hu
Two Important Concepts For Building a High Performance Team
1. Find, hire, and keep good people.
2. Let them do what they do best.
Step 1: Hire the Person, Not the Resume
Building a Great Team Starts With The People You Put On The Team
The subject of hiring the right person comes up frequently in my work with various clients. It comes up when they need to fill a position. It comes up when they realize they have the wrong person in a position. Sometimes it comes up as a question in a training session. Sometimes it comes up in a private conversation. But it almost always comes up.The most common mistake that I see people make - one that I have made myself - is ranking the person's technical skills ahead of their "soft" skills. I agree that technical skills are important. I don't want to hire a CPA who knows nothing about accounting, and I don't want to hire a nurse who knows nothing about nursing. So, I am not suggesting that you ignore a person's resume. I am suggesting that their experience and training (i.e. - their resume) serves primarily to qualify them for your time investment to interview them. It gets them in the door, but it shouldn't give them the job.
Consider this situation:
You hire a person with outstanding technical skills. They know everything about the industry, the legal environment, and many other technical aspects of their position - but the rest of your staff cannot stand to work with them. This "technical expert" demands special attention, resists every change, speaks negatively about management and other team members, pushes the limit on workplace rules, etc.
Are they worth the trouble? Does the positive contribution from their "technical expert" status justify the damage they do to overall team performance? In most of the situations I've been involved in, the answer is no.
In the above scenario, I created a situation where the person under consideration is truly a "technical expert." Among the best, technically, in their field. But, what about the more common situation? The situation where the person is good technically, but they're not necessarily among the best in the industry. Now, how does their behavior with other people balance against their technical skills? It only gets worse.
I assume that you will only consider hiring people with at least the basic technical skills to do the job. So, faced with a choice between two candidates:
- Great "attitude" and acceptable technical skills (for this article, my definition of attitude includes work ethic, drive, initiative, ability to work with others, and other "soft" or difficult to measure skills), and
- Outstanding technical skills and a poor attitude.
I choose number one. I find it easier to help people strengthen their technical skills than to improve their attitude.What if you have difficulty finding a person with the right attitude? I suggest you keep looking until you find them. It is better to work short-handed for a short time than to work with a problem employee for a long time.
"When in doubt, don't hire - keep looking."
- Jim Collins, Good To Great
Step 2: Let People Work In Their Strengths
Applying some good motivation principles wouldn't hurt
Once you have people on your team, it is your responsibility as a leader to work with them to maximize their contribution to the team. You do this by:- Positioning them in roles that allow them to use their strengths more than their weaknessess. One useful tool for understanding this more thouroughly is the DISC Human Behavior Model. I don't recommend that you "box people in" based on their behavioral style. I do recommend that you use this tool, or something like it, to understand the people on your team better.
- Applying liberal amounts of praise and positive reinforcement. Read more about this at my lens on Motivation Principles for Leaders.
- Confronting poor performance early.
- Holding people accountable for their actions. This concept brings up what I call the Compassion Paradox. The Compassion Paradox states that as a leader, you must be compassionate AND you must hold people accountable. I've written some tips for handling the Compassion Paradox here.
- Rewarding good performers.
- Reassigning or getting rid of poor performers.
"...[get] the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then [figure] out where to drive it."
- Jim Collins, Good To Great
Photos courtesy of www.sxc.hu
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Articles and Websites That Might Help
This is a voting list. I started the list with some sites that I find useful. Please add to and/or vote for your favorites.
Work Teams
Different models for understanding team dynamics.0 points
Individual and Group Motivation in the Workplace
What drives team performance?0 points
Twelve Tips for Team Building: How to Build Successful Work Teams
People in every workplace talk about building the more...0 points
What Makes Teams Work? | Fast Company
What's the secret to a great team? Read what these more...0 points
Books I Recommend
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 11/21/2008) 
Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box
Amazon Price: $10.85 (as of 11/21/2008)
The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 11/21/2008)
QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability in Work and in Life
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 11/21/2008)
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Amazon Price: $17.99 (as of 11/21/2008)
Positive Principles Newsletter
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byWebsites with good information on building strong teams
- Principle Driven Consulting
- My website
- Personality Insights
- Great resources and training on working with people better.
- The Kevin Eikenberry Group
- Kevin and his team are leadershp and learning experts.
- The Table Group
- Patrick Lencioni has some great ideas for building strong teams.
- The Arbinger Institute
- The Arbinger Institute has great resources for building better teams.
What can you offer to this discussion? Insights? Tips? Experiences? Feedback?
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