As an advisor to startups, I always get this question – How do we build a high-performance team? Surely, you want to make sure that your team is working efficiently and effectively.
Whether you are a startup, a mid-size organisation or an international behemoth, building an effective and efficient team is on every leader’s KRA (Key Result Areas). Even the smartest and the most innovative leaders need teams to scale. Hence, building the right team becomes imperative to grow.
Building and scaling a business is almost equivalent to winning a cricket match for example. Just like a cricket team, you not only need better batsmen, but you also need good bowlers as well as active fielders.
Irrespective of whether you are leading a sports team or a business team, you need to have keen interest in people. Team building requires managing egos, interests, and recognition of people. A leader who can consistently build high performing teams is worth a king’s ransom.
I have read and listened to many such leaders who consistently built high performing teams, from GE’s Jack Welch to IBM’s Lou Gerstner, everyone mentioned these points in one way or another.
Culture: Culture of a team is always top down. It flows from the top leaders to the teams down and it’s pertinent for the leaders to build the culture right. A few key things to keep in mind are expectations setting, defining the roles and responsibilities clearly, rewards and recognition and feedback sharing. These are some of the core competencies that one needs while building the right culture.
People First: A leader must be people first when it comes to building high performing teams. You will have to understand that although these are your resources to get work done but they are human first. If you know your team, their work-life situations and understand their needs and beliefs, you will be able to lead them better and in turn they will give their 200% to the tasks at hand.
Team Building: Not only with the leader, but the team has to bond well with their peers as well, and the onus of greater team bonding also lies with the leader. Regularly talking to them as a team, understanding their internal synergies and timely resolving the conflicts is the key to team bonding.
Emotional Intelligence: When it comes to leading teams, EQ is more important than IQ. An effective leader would know that every individual has different motivations, and h/she would treat their differences as an opportunity rather than disadvantage. For example, some people might be motivated with common goals while others would be individual performers, some people might get motivated with incentives, while others would be aiming for growth.
Communication and Positive Motivation: Communication is the most important tool for a leader to build effective teams. Keep a two-way communication channel, make it easy for your team to come up to you and share their feedback. At the same time, you should also keep open feedback with the team members. Everyone wants to know where they stand and it’s important for a leader to share this with their team. Positive reinforcement is also very important. As Dale Carnegie said, “If you want more flies, you gather honey not vinegar”, always give positive feedback to your team when it’s due. If you can offer cash incentives it’s wonderful, otherwise, some special recognition or perks would also do the trick.
At the end, I would say, building high performing teams is an art as well as science. Understand the science, and practice the art. You can start with the above today and you will see positive results in your teams. Ciao.
