5 Ingredients Required for High Performance Teams

Last week I defined what it means to be in real High Performance Teams. The bottom line was that there were a lot of moving parts to get together. So what are these parts? Well, based on experience from supporting CEO’s in transforming top teams in organizations across Asia and Africa (along with being inspired by true gurus like Lencioni, Drexler and Sibbet, Dave Ulrich and of course the original work of Tuckman), I’ve identified the following ’5+1 Ingredients’ required to develop high performance teams.

1. Have Complimentary Skills and Roles

For a team to deliver members with proficient technical and professional skills which are required to fulfil the tasks and responsibilities for it’s deliverables are required. What’s important is that everybody in the team is crystal clear about his / her responsibilities in the team.

Less obvious is to ensure that the different team members can play different roles that suits their style and personality. For a team to be highly successful you can’t have individuals who are all detail focused or want to take on the leadership role. You need people who can play a variety of roles from a person who comes up with the ideas, to the one who focuses on the details and he who makes sure each of the team members are looked after and can contribute.

There are a number of different team role inventories out there and I always prefer Belbin team roles since it’s easy to explain, identify and use.

Belbin team roles

2. Share a Co-Created Purpose and Aspirational Goal

Recent research indicates that although remuneration and rewards can stimulate people temporarily, for individuals to really have a sustained effort it’s important that they are driven by intrinsic reasons. My favorite explanation of this concept is by Peter Fuda who through this animation explains that instead of creating a burning platform you would like team members to be driven by a burning desire.

To move a team from a collective group of individuals to a team that is willing to go the extra mile and sacrifice their own interests for the sake of the greater good it’s important for each of the members to be intellectually and emotionally committed to a purpose and vision that inspires and excites each and every one of them.

3. Have an aligned strategy and implementation plan

Having an inspiring purpose is just the first step. In order to start delivering on that purpose you have to be able to answer the following questions:

• How you’re going to achieve this?


• What your 5 Must Win Battles are?


• Who will do what, where and by when?

4. Follow clear execution processes

At the end the best and most diverse teams with a strong purpose and aligned strategy will not be able to deliver if they don’t agree on:

• How they will make decisions


• How they measure progress


• How they will communicate with each other

They need to identify what meetings are necessary for what purpose and how they plan to keep the ‘outside world’ involved and engaged.

5. Adapt, Learn and Persevere

Finally high performance teams are able to spot issues ahead of time and have the agility to change course if and when required to deliver results. They ensure that each and every members learns, encourage experiment, takes risks and looks for new ways of doing things. Finally high performing team members encourage and support each other to overcome obstacles, find alternative routes and keep the motivation up to stay the course.

So what’s the ‘+1’ ingredient? I’m going to keep you guessing until next week! I’ll explain the element that needs to be continuously nurtured in order to truly build lasting high performance teams. Leave me your thoughts on what you think is the secret ingredient or your experiences with high performance teams. What made the difference for you?

Photo Credit: he-sk via Compfight cc

5 Ingredients Required for High Performance Teams