High Performance Teams

Over my career, I have had to build many different kinds of teams.  As a turnaround manager for a national pizza delivery chain, I had to break teams down and build new ones from scratch.  In technology I had the opportunity to build development, quality assurance, project management and analyst teams along with leadership.  Now, I have had the pleasure of building a world-class operations team.

Today I took a moment to reflect on the teams I have built-in the past and the teams now coming together in my new role.  How did I build them?  What was the result each time?  Who did I have in leadership roles and why?  As I thought about these questions, I began break it all down into a few foundational ideas that were consistent across all the teams.

Self assess your weaknesses and find people who will fill in the gaps.

This wasn’t an obvious one for me early on in my career but as I look back, I intuitively surrounded myself with people who were better at certain things than I was.  When I was a turnaround manager, I would have a few folks that would follow me from store to store.  These were folks that were very capable specialists at things I was not and naturally we worked well together as a result.  More recently, I purposefully find people who augment my weaknesses.  For instance, I am not  a detailed oriented person by nature.  I can do it when needed, but if buried in the detail day in and day out, I feel I am not keeping things moving forward at a strategic level.  So I find those who are good at being detailed oriented and love being in the weeds.

Take an honest look at how you operate the best.  Find the gaps and fill them with the skill sets that will best fit the situation you are in and will help you keep the team focused and performing.  If you hire people who are just like you, then your weaknesses will only be exasperated exponentially.  Keep your team diverse so they all complement each other.  As you access yourself, you must assess the rest of the team and apply the same principles.

Understand personality types and find people who will work together the best

Personality ranks right up there with finding people with the right skills.  If I am building a team from scratch, it is easer to assess personality as you bring people into the team.  If you are taking a team over I like to have the team go through a personality assessment program.  I prefer the DISC assessments as they are fairly straightforward and provide insight into how people are normally and under stress.  I generally like to see this effort completed at a team level so that each person can see the styles of the others and have discussion around the best way to work with each personality type.

Like the skills assessment above, you don’t want to have to many folks with similar personalities on your team.  Many types in large numbers create dysfunctional teams.  A more diverse team is preferred and understanding your own style will help you find the right people to surround yourself with.  Taking into account what the person will be responsible for may also drive your decision making process. 

Allow the team to mesh on their own while encouraging good conflict

I like to allow a team to operate as autonomously as possible as I am not a micro-manager.  In my opinion,  a team isn’t functioning unless they can operate on their own without a lot of direct supervision.  If they need constant direction from me then I have not put a good team together or there is a need to change some of the dynamics. 

Another thing I have found out about teams is they will always have some sort of conflict going on.  Hopefully it is the good kind of conflict that generates new ideas, gets problems solved and keeps the mission moving forward.  I have found that allowing the team to resolve its differences forces the leaders to be leaders and not just managers.  It should be a rare situation where I have to wade in a be a tie breaker or moderate a decision.  There are situations where strategic decisions have to be made where you have to set expectations and moderate a decision.  However, once it is made, a good team will execute.

Hold the team accountable

Accountability is an amazing thing and I am constantly amazed at how little there is of it.  It is difficult to understand how a team is functioning if you don’t have measurements in place.  I like to work with the team to design the measurements by which they will be evaluated on.  Allowing the team to come up with their own measurements puts more ownership into ensuring they are executing on them.  

Once measurements are in place, make sure they are reviewed on  a regular basis as a team.  I like having the team present their findings to the larger group.   This creates more accountability through the peer pressure nature of the goals.  No one likes to get in front of a group and talk about how they missed their targets or goals for the timeframe.

Change will be your only constant

Once you get your team up and running your done right?  Unfortunately it isn’t that easy.  High performing teams have to be constantly challenged and requires a certain amount of upkeep.  As with any large group of people, there will be those who perform consistently and those that do not.  Out of all the teams I have built, I never hit one 100% the first time.  There is always a need to tweak the teams by removing poor performers.  I like to use these opportunities to fine tune the team.  Always be on the hunt for talent and keep your relationships with key potentials going.  You never know when there will be an opening on your team for that perfect person you have been looking to add to your team.

Team building is part science and part art form.  Building your team will require you to know yourself, your limitations and those of the people you are making part of your team.  Always find the people who will compliment you and each other.  Allow them to work together to solve problems on their own as much as possible.  Track and report their progress to ensure they are performing to  your standards.  And finally, always look for opportunities to upgrade the talent on your teams. 

What do you think about building teams?  Feel free to leave your comments!

 

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