A high performing team is a blend of goal-oriented professionals , experts in their respective fields, responsible for planning, executing and yielding outstanding results. Excellent performance can be only achieved if there is powerful thought leadership, goals shared, clear communications, interpersonal conflict resolution, harmony and trust among team members.

Have you ever led a high-performing team that is high in energy and enthusiasm? If not, do not despair. That is because you can build a high-performing team just by following the steps mentioned below.

How to Build a High Performing Team

1. Finding the Right Team Members

Team composition is the first point to building a high-performing team. Through Recruitment software or ATS, HR managers, recruiters, and talent acquisition members can identify the right candidate and complete the hiring process. You can also ask applicants to take a technical skills assessment test to ensure you board an employee with appropriate subject knowledge and problem-solving skill.

However, there are other important points to keep in mind when building the right team. Apart from the right skills and mindset, employers and managers need to ensure that the team size is neither too big nor too small.

According to a McKinsey report, a team with fewer than six members does not operate well due to lack of diversity and it fails to achieve an effective decision due to poor bandwidth. On the opposite side, research suggests that teams with more than ten members make the work less effective.

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2. Focusing on Team Dynamics

Although it is important to find the right team members for a high-performing team, team dynamics is imperative for success. To develop a high-performing team, it is a must that all members understand and agree to team objectives and goals.

Team dynamics help to shape the character of a team so that the members can achieve success and make the collaboration successful. That is why team members must understand and agree to a common goal and objectives.

Secondly, it is necessary for the team’s success to share the common vision and motivation to achieve the goals. Going forward, it is the responsibility of the team leader to ensure the members are motivated and energized to think innovative and achieve better results.

3. Using Metrics to Measure Team’s Performance and Appropriate Feedback System

To know the team’s performance, a team leader must use measurable metrics to evaluate it . But measuring success or performance is not easy. That is because performance metrics can often be misleading.

According to Jeff Haden, “measuring is important, but measuring what you need to measure and measuring it the right way is critical.” Therefore, you need to have a proper strategy that is tailor-made for your team’s goals to get the right results.

At the same time, you must also use a strategy to help underperforming team members to meet a better performance scale if they fail to achieve the target. Because after all, a leader helps to elevate the team’s success by bringing together both high-performing team members and low-performers under an umbrella.

4. Resolving Conflicts and Bringing Harmony

When more than one member operates in a team, conflicts are common. It is the responsibility of a leader to quickly identify the facts from the narrative and take proper actions. There are two types of conflicts- substantive and emotional. In the first instance, conflicts arise due to different opinions or disagreement in the work process, whereas, emotional conflicts can be personal.

To maintain the performance of a team and ensure its operation, a team leader needs to address the issues and bring peace.

A collaborative approach in handling team conflicts often works out well and makes room for both parties to speak out and resolve the matter through mutual agreements.

5. Addressing the Whole Team Instead of Pointing Fingers to Individuals

If an employee stays in an environment where he/she is all time blamed for bad work, it creates a level of dissatisfaction which can hinder productivity. It becomes important to create a sense of shared responsibility among team members.

To build and maintain a high-performing team, a leader needs to address members in a team collectively instead of individuals.

Whether a team has exceeded targets or underperformed, it is necessary to seem members as part of a team and address accordingly. Individual addressing might lead to low morale as only a few members are identified as achievers or low-performers.

At the same time, it is equally important to conduct one-on-one meetings with individual team members to discuss performance.

6. Setting Clearly Defined Roles and Responsibilities

What if you find the tasks are performed twice or left incomplete? The task started by one employee might get completed by another employee.

Teams are made up of individual members where everyone’s contribution leads to success. In a team, there are members with diversified qualifications and to achieve success and build a high-performing team, leaders need to clearly define roles to each member.

It is important to see that the roles and responsibilities assigned to members are fit for their expertise. This also helps to set accountabilities.

Organizational audits can be conducted by the management team to clearly define roles, tasks to be performed, task assignment, task reporting, etc.

This helps a team to perform better and maintain transparency, and also bring success.

7. Identify underperforming team member and improve them

A high performing team is only due to its team members. All team members need to equally pull their weight to accomplish goals that are set. A poor performer can hurt the team dynamics and eventually bring loss to a business.

It might be unpleasant for a leader to deal with an underperforming employee. There are a few ways to identify poor performance and fix it.

• Assess employee’s performance through work reports, performance metrics,records and also your own experience with the employee to know where there is the weak point.
• Interact with the employee to know where they are lagging and give advice on how they can improve by giving constructive feedback.
• Keep a record of the progress of the task they perform. If the numbers do not meet the standards set, instruct and guide them to accomplish it.
• Encourage employees to push their limits to meet their goals.
• Take employee’s concerns and issues into consideration. Check them if they are true and do needful to fix them.
• Provide extra training sessions and knowledge if required that will ameliorate employee’s performance.

8. Creating Room for Innovation

A team leader must make ways to allow the team members to think and apply creative solutions to problems. An employee will feel safe to experiment and learn new things.

Amy C. Edmondson published an article on the Harvard Business Review, suggesting that execution-as-learning promotes long-term success in teams. In this process, members of a team are expected to use their innovative minds to find solutions to problems.

According to the author, “psychological safety” without management intervention is crucial in a collaborative environment.

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A final word: When leaders are building a high-performing team, they must ensure diversity and a proper team-size. At the same time, maintain transparent communication, give constructive feedback and coach members towards better performance. And when all these are done in the right way, members in a team would surely exceed expectations.

Author Bio: Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager for Jobsoid — Applicant Tracking System. She is responsible for leading the content and social media teams at work. Her expertise and experience in the field of HR enable her to create value-driven content for her readers — both on Jobsoid’s blog and other guest blogs where she publishes content regularly.