This is a big topic.  There have been hours, probably decades of research into this and many careers have been made on sharing and teaching their take on this subject.  As with many of our resources, this is intended to be a digestible summary and a reference article to come back to when a little inspiration is needed.  This is based on a set of tools developed by VFS.

Who is this for?

1. A Common Goal  (ENVIRONMENTAL ENABLERS)
Relevant topics: Purpose; Relatedness; Alignment; Goals & Objectives

• Establish Goals. Teams need to be focused on shared goals and outcomes. Commitment to that goal is essential for success.

• Focus on the Collective Mission. Mission-driven teams and organisations perform better because they see beyond their individual workload and tasks and feel as if they are working for a higher purpose.

2. High Standards & Expectations (VITAL BEHAVIOURS)

• Determine How The Team Will Make Decisions. Whether directed or democratic, the team needs to understand beforehand how decisions will be made. This reduces conflict within the team when a decision has to be made. Also see Making Better Decisions.

• Create a Learning Environment. Emphasise the development of the team, learning through successes, but particularly through mistakes. A team with a culture of continuous improvement and where members are motivated to develop their skills and knowledge will become a high-performing team.

• Clear Expectations.  Team members have agreed and know what to expect from one-another, potentially with the use of agreed standards, processes...even behaviours.  These may be captured in technical standards and a team charter.

• Healthy Conflict.  All members are able to handle and resolve problems and conflict during the moment.  High levels of trust are essential.

• Own the Situation.  Everyone demonstrates ‘Ownership’ behaviour and each member has a ‘resourceful state of mind’ see below.

• Peer Accountability.  All members take the responsibility to hold each other accountable.

3. Recognised Output (ENVIRONMENTAL ENABLERS)

• Clear and Constant Feedback is Provided. Teams need to know how they are doing in order to stay motivated and to correct performance problems or inefficiencies.  The more feedback loops the better.

• Use Team-Based Reward Systems. Too much emphasis on individual rewards can lead to in-fighting and resentment. A combination of individual and team-based rewards is often best.

The Pressure - Performance Curve

We all need pressure, internal and external to motivate us and produce a good performance. The relationship between pressure and performance is a direct one (see diagram below).   From a high performing teams and workforce perspective, avoid unnecessary pressure and keep performing.  Be aware of the Pressure-Performance curve and proactively do things to reduce avoidable pressure building up.  It's important that senior leaders and the employees are educated and well equipped to do so.  It's worth investing in training and awareness for increasing personal resilience and personal agility.

It’s important to reduce, ideally eliminate the things that, together, can accumulate to build up pressure on us, it’s also important to recognise when it’s happening and why.  Most people, even talented ones, can fail under pressure.  Whilst it’s a complex topic, one of the primary mechanisms is overthinking.  We start overthinking something that usually comes naturally to us.

When considering your ideal company culture or your desirable working environment, recognise that pressure is an important ingredient.  But appropriate pressure - ensure that avoidable stress and pressure is indeed avoided and that the levels of pressure are not constant.  Pressure is better managed when ability and autonomy are high (see the 4A Framework).

A little VFS Gem:

Did you know that having clear deadlines or clear scope provides a "Concrete End point" which is essential for creating the right conditions to provide a healthy challenge.  Paul J. Zak describes it as inducing "challenge stress".

What's more interesting about this is that in the early days of the agile software development movement and the introduction of strict, time-boxed iterations of 2 to 4 weeks (such as that of Scrum and eXtreme Programming) it was the end of iteration rituals that formed the foundations of high perforjing teams....but not for the reasons you think and are typically written about.  Short iterations, sprint goals and stretch goals create the challenge and something akin to Siege mentality that increases social connections and trust within the team due to increased Oxytocin release.  Coupled with the retrospective (which again, provided something different to what conventional wisdom things) that provided the concept of 'closure', an essential aspect of moving on from a period of heightened focus and effort.

There's another consideration...

Why would an individual want to be part of a high performing team?

Why would they want to have that difficult conversation and hold their teammates to account, stick their neck out to protect one another - 

"What’s in it for me?"

The Short Answer:

"To increase our predictability and the company’s trust in us.  With trust comes responsibility and empowerment."

Read more about Trust.

A Slightly Longer Answer:

• Reduce the Frustration

  • • Take more control of matters

    • Have a clear purpose

    • The resulting reduced delivery pressure gives time to focus on process, product and people improvements

• Feel Productive, Motivated, Empowered

  • • Make higher quality decisions and accomplish more in less time and fewer resources

    • Put critical topics on the table and have lively, impactful meetings

• Be Respected and Valued

  • • Listened to

    • Get to work on the interesting and important things

    • Able to say no

    • Be included in part of the broader conversation and strategy and not simply be provided with a solution to implement

Appendix

A Resourceful State of Mind

A resourceful state is when a person has positive, helpful emotions and strategies available to them that they are using to behave and operate effectively... you feel capable and confident. You feel calm and your mind is clear and you’re able to generate all kinds of options and make solid decisions.  A non-resourceful state is where you feel anxious, fearful and tense.