Article, published in Børsen Ledelse October 18th 2019. Link to article here (in Danish): High Performance Team – En smuk tanke, men misforstået og ødelæggende.
Do you know that feeling? Your team has just had a tight deadline on a project that has involved a lot of planning, coordination, meetings, test runs, odd working hours, internal milestones, room for mistakes, discussions, conflicts and pressure. It was a cohesive team effort. Everyone took ownership and responsibility, the roles were clear, and you managed to get all skills into play, team members shared knowledge and the communication was concrete and constructive focusing on the common goal. You delivered on time and with the best result! What you and your team experienced here was most likely to be a High Performance TeamWould you be able to do it all over again in five days? Quite possibly not...
No, you are not supposed to be a High Performance Team
The focus on High Performance Teams in the organisations is misunderstood and destructive and has unfortunately been labeled as best practice and the desired standard. In the name of efficiency - and in line with the fact that you, as a leader, focus on your team, which must perform optimally, focus on both short-term and long-term goals, achieve the KPIs and be more or less self-directed, and at the same time you must also motivate, support and focus on each individual team member, delegating, being more authentic and innovative in an uncertain environment – the idea of a High Performance Team as the ultimate self-driving team is enticing, as it fits right in with the desire for a quick-fix solution. It is an appealing thought to strive for High Performance Teams that simply deliver and continue to perform at a high level in an uncertain environment with demands to get the most value for money in the shortest time.
But the reality is a little different, and many experience it as a more or less constant pressure both from the outside and inside to perform as excellently as possible and reach new and higher goals. Often with fewer resources available than before. The consequence is that more people go from being passionate about projects to burning out. As a team and as humans, we cannot walk around being in High Performance-mode all the time. High Performance is a level that a close-knit team that is "pressure tested" can move up to for a limited period of time, and then return to being a close-knit team again.
People are not wired to perform optimally all the time
When we as people and teams consciously or unconsciously experience having to perform or are pressured to perform at a demanding and high level, the brain reacts by going on red alert. In the short term, this causes the brain to work even more efficiently, e.g. right up to a deadline on a project or a sporting performance. But the body's alarm response is also set in motion and our ancient response is to flight, fight or freeze. The reptilian brain does not distinguish between a saber-toothed tiger or a deadline on a project and reacts based on best survival strategy. When the situation is over, the brain regulates the level back down, but if the pressure is too high for too long and we rarely have the opportunity to relax, the brain burns out and we can end up with a stress-related illness.
If leaders and teams must be able to deliver at a High Performance level all the time, challenges will arise along the way. To counter that, what you can do as a leader is to create a space for a culture that supports close-knit teams that have the potential to move up into High Performance Team mode for a limited period of time when required.
The new paradigm shift, or?
It takes time and effort to create dynamic and well-functioning teams with coherence, and very few will reach a level where we can talk about being a close-knit team that also has the potential to be able to navigate as a High Performance Team when required. And with the pressure on leaders and teams, it can be a challenge to prioritise time to work on the dynamics of team and leadership development. An on-going challenge is the replacement of employees, leaders who rotate, unforeseen tasks, changes in the market, deadlines and the pace at which organisations must operate make it a real problem to get teams to function.
It is a problem that affects more and more organisations. Furthermore, there is a tendency for the new generations to move more fluidly between employers, and at a pace we have not seen before. At Google in the USA, an average employment is 6 months... This does not leave much time to establish a cohesive team. Another large study at Google shows that the most important criterion for teamwork among their employees was trust (psychological safety) all around. So organisations have to deal with navigating an environment where the standard is that the interpersonal is the most important asset. This means that working well together and receiving continuous feedback on one's own performance is the new gold standard. But isn't that really what we as humans are looking for?
The close-knit team with the potential to go into High Performance mode
There is no doubt that several heads think and solve tasks better than the individual and that a combination of different strengths, skills and perspectives in a team is the way forward and worth supporting. It motivates and creates momentum to be in a safe and stable team, as we are by nature herd animals, and we want to be part of the herd and thrive together. But what is the definition of a close-knit team and how can you as a leader support this? Unfortunately, you can't just put a group of people together and say: now you're a team, that doesn't automatically trigger good results, and there are several stages in going from being a working group to being a cohesive team. In order for a team to develop into a dynamic unit and achieve good results, there are some different parameters that you can work with:
- Strengthen your relations so that everyone has basic trust
- Talk about why we are here? This is ongoing
- Support a feeling of accountability, ownership and community
- Talk about the team's DNA, ground rules, culture, roles and behaviour
- Introduce a feedback culture. Give and recieve constructive feedback and help with blind spots
- Create space for evaluation, discussion and development
- Ensure a complete understanding of and commitment to common goals
The premise is that we strengthen relationships in order to build trust through vulnerability in the form of being able to speak openly and honestly with each other and express our opinions, perspectives and be able to speak up from time to time. Including that everyone can contribute with their perspectives and strengths. One of the fundamentals of a close-knit team is that the members work well together. In other words, that the interpersonal relations are good. If the team culture is one in whichteam members support and help each other and there is cohesion, you have a good foundation for being able to work excellently together.
The good collaboration is the basic essence of being able to work and solve professional tasks, to participate in innovative problem solving in the most optimal way. Ownership and accountability are two other critical components of the close-knit team, closely followed by commitment and a clearly defined purpose. The entire team must have a clear understanding of its reason for being and the individual's role, as well as an understanding of common rules of the game. Being able to enter into discussions and conflicts, internally receive and give feedback is fundamental for close-knit teams. One could say that harmony is not the goal in itself, rather it is the desired common best result, so a respectful space with room for discussion and disagreement are important components.
Consensus makes stupid
Studies have been made that describe how a team can create its own logic, where consensus and agreement are valued higher than creating alternative options and achieving the best common result. It becomes dangerous, so to speak, for the individual to break the decorum, to express himself differently, as it will be a breach of the team's etiquette and thus trigger an isolation from the team. This phenomenon is called "group-think".
The problem here lies in the fact that we go from offering our individual strengths, ideas and competences to thinking as a unity. After all, what we want are different perspectives and angles from the different team members, which can lead to good discussions that jointly create the best results. It is when it gets difficult that the close-knit team is put to the test, and this is where we can see if we work well together, support and help each other. Do we have the capacity to go into High Performance Team-mode? When things are going well, we don't really feel it, and this is where we can train and re-evaluate our purpose, rules and behaviours.
The good foundation and the good culture start with the close-knit team, which presupposes that the organisational culture supports the focus on cohesiveness in teams. Being able to go into High Performance Team-mode is a rare sight and it takes dedicated team members – it's the extra gear tight-knit teams can work towards to be able to get in to when it's really needed. But it is more the exception than the rule that it actually happens.
Janus
Litterature:
- Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith (1999) The Wisdom of Teams. Harper Business
- Janis, Irving (1982). Groupthink: psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Michael Andersen (2015) Compassion Fokuseret Ledelse. Mellemgaard.
- Patrick Lencioni (2015) De fem dysfunktioner i et team. Gyldendal Business.
- Charles Duhigg (2016) What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. The New York Time Magazine