Having a high-performing team can make or break your business. High-performing teams can tackle problems more efficiently and enhance productivity and creativity. Whether you’re leading a high-performing team or working on one, you’ll be sure to notice increased morale in the workplace and a better decision-making process. The effects of a high-performing team can pour into other work areas and help improve other teams and the workplace as a whole.
Understanding what a high-performing team is and its characteristics are stepping stones in building high-performing teams of your own.
What Are High-Performing Teams?
A high-performing team is a team of individuals who are focused on the same goals and mission. The individuals may possess specialized skills as a unit or have specialized skills complimenting others on the team.
Teams are an important asset in work life. Instead of working individually, teams work together to achieve a certain mission. High-performing teams take it a step further by striving toward excellent performance and superior results. They pursue these shared visions through collaboration, communication, accountability, respect, and trust.
13 Characteristics of High-Performing Teams
High-performing teams are likely to be more engaged and involved in their work and have more fulfilling work lives. But what makes a high-performing team? Certain characteristics separate a normal team from a high-performing team. In fact, research has highlighted traits of a successful team: individuals on a team must be independent, capable, and have a deep understanding of one another.
While these three characteristics are important, they aren’t the only ones that should be considered when building a cohesive unit. Other essential elements of high-performing teams include those listed below.
- Strong Team Culture
Having a strong team culture helps build healthy relationships among team members. It contributes to optimal performance and better decision-making. A strong team culture also helps team members with engagement and retention in their workflow and allows them to feel supported.
A strong company culture should be built around core values and a shared vision. As a team leader or decision-maker, it’s important that you encourage a strong team culture through support and positive reinforcement.
- Trust and Mutual Respect
Trust and respect are essential to building a quality high-performing team. Not only does your team need to have a level of trust and respect for one another, but they also need to trust and respect you, and vice versa.
Trust ensures that everyone on your team feels safe. It encourages people to open up, take risks, and be vulnerable with each other. It improves innovation, collaboration, and overall productivity. It instills confidence and builds a supportive environment and strong bonds.
- Efficient Workflow Practices
Keeping up with the day-to-day workflow practices can be challenging for everyone involved. If you have ineffective or absent workflow practices, your team’s productivity could be hindered. Issues in planning and executing business-related strategies and projects can arise.
Therefore, it’s essential to develop efficient workflow practices for you and your team. With efficient workflow practices, you can support your team and boost their performance. Consider the tools you use and your team’s responsibilities and ensure they align with your company’s vision.
- Clear Communication
Effective communication is vital. You can’t have a good team without communication. However, sometimes miscommunication happens. This can result in conflicts and wasted time and resources. So, it’s important to work on communicating clearly within your team.
Effectively using oral and written communication can go a long way. It can boost competence, knowledge, and productivity while also helping to build trust and respect. Clear communication is done by relaying thoughts and opinions and sharing ideas to limit misunderstandings.
Conducting regular meetings and check-ins, encouraging clarifying questions and personal conversations, and setting clear expectations are a few ways to promote clear communication.
- Constructive Feedback
There’s always room to grow, and constructive feedback is the best way to promote growth in the workplace. Constructive feedback helps build teams and allows you to observe and correct mistakes while helping your team better themselves. You can give constructive feedback on the skills and behavior you observe to help your team improve.
It’s also important to encourage your team members to come to you with constructive feedback of their own. Whether they have feedback to share about their peers or they want to share constructive feedback concerning your performance as a team leader, it will help your team to feel heard and their opinions respected.
- Team-First Mentality
Working individually can be great and beneficial sometimes, especially when you assign a single person to a task or project. However, when you’re working on a team, your team members must have a team-first mentality. This means they must think collectively and work on projects as a group.
If they don’t put the team first, they may struggle to work well together, and find success. If your team struggles to work together, it can affect many aspects of your team and your company. Miscommunications and misunderstandings can happen, performance can be hindered, and mistakes may be made.
- Defined Roles
While it’s important to have a team-first mentality and ability to work as a group, it’s equally as important to have defined roles for each of your team members. Defining roles and responsibilities can help your team be more productive. It will ensure that your team members know exactly what their responsibilities are, which can decrease the chances of duplication, confusion, and frustration.
- Diversity
When selecting your team, it’s important to consider diversity, including making gender-diverse teams. You won’t want to build a team based on one specific skill set. Instead, you should look to incorporate many different skills, experiences, and backgrounds.
Diversifying your team allows them to be more knowledgeable in various fields. Your team can come up with fresh ideas due to their different perspectives, helping them make better decisions and feel more comfortable giving their opinions.
By incorporating different strengths, experiences, perspectives, and ideas, you’ll have more well-rounded individuals and a more productive team.
- Collaboration
Effective collaboration is essential. After all, teamwork is all about collaboration. Collaboration helps build authentic connections between team members and improves how a team works together. It also improves problem-solving, communication, and overall efficiency while building respect and trust.
To encourage collaboration, you’ll need to build a positive working environment, host meetings when necessary to check in with your employees, and allow your team some creative freedom.
- Measurable Objectives
Measurable objectives are vital to a team’s success. It allows them to aim for something that they know is attainable and understand when they’ve achieved it. It gives them a purpose and a drive to reach the end goal.
When objectives aren’t measurable, there’s no way to tell when your team has reached its objective, leading to frustration and confusion.
- Defined Goals
Goals are nice to have, regardless of the situation. When it comes to working, it can help keep your team motivated and engaged in their day-to-day work life. But more than just setting goals, it’s important to define them. Breaking them down into clear steps can also help prevent your team from getting overwhelmed while working toward the bigger picture.
Goals can help keep your team moving forward, tackle day-to-day tasks, and prevent your team from stalling, getting stuck, or not understanding what to do next.
- Strong Leadership
Strong leadership is essential to the success of any team. Teams need to know that they have someone to turn to in times of crisis or confusion. A strong leader will be able to handle working under pressure, be good at conflict resolution, and be able to help their team on the path to victory.
Strong leadership also helps hold individuals accountable and keeps the team moving forward promptly. Without strong leadership, a team can crumble, ensuing confusion and loss of team morale.
- Continued Individual Development
While building a high-performing team means creating a good team environment and fostering team development, encouraging individual development is also important. Each individual on your team matters, and so do their individual visions and goals.
Encouraging continued individual development and supplying development opportunities will help your team members feel that their own development matters beyond their team. It will ensure they feel valued as a team member and will support them in learning and growing their skills, also helping your team in the long run.
Building High-Performing Teams
Building high-performing teams doesn't have to be hard. Having a team health check template or tech ladder template can also help. Consider the above characteristics and remember the importance of trust and respect. Encourage open communication and constructive feedback. Develop a shared vision and goal team alignment of core values.
Most of all, lead by example.
Build the Best Team for Your Business With Revelo
If you’re stuck on how to build high-performing teams for your business, you don’t have to do it alone. Don’t limit yourself to looking for local talent. Instead, broaden your horizons and explore a diverse talent pool with Revelo.
Revelo offers businesses and entrepreneurs the ability to meet and hire rising and seasoned tech talent from all across Latin America. Revelo can help you build a team with these important characteristics. Learn more about how Revelo works and get help building the best team for your business today.
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