How to Build a High Performance Team

Regardless of how good you are as a leader, the quality of your team, or the business environment in which you work, you are going to face obstacles and difficult situations.

This is the harsh reality of dealing with a human run ever-changing workplace. Much of what you'll face as a team will be out of your immediate control. Ultimately, it will be your team's response to it's reality that will determine the success or failure of your organization.

Leading a high performance team starts by realizing that people need to be dealt with as individuals.

Maybe you're saying, "Isn't that going to give some people privileges over others?"

No.

People have individual personalities, needs, and desires that need to be dealt with on a per-by-person basis.

Your job as a team leader, is to respond equitably to the needs of each individual team member, creating an environment where a high performance team can emerge and sustain itself.

My personal experience

In my experience, both as a team leader and a team member I've found it difficult to manage the needs of my team members, but the case is clear. . . your team will respond better when their needs are taken care or individually.

I'm a quiet person. Some people have called me shy. I don't respond well to circumstances where it's necessary for me to be the center of attention. So in situations where most people feel a slight discomfort, giving presentations in front of large groups of strangers, I feel almost complete paralysis.

In these situations where I was required to do presentations, my work suffered and the presentations were not as effective as they could have been had my team leader taken my personal needs more into account.

Most high performance teams have members who appreciate their personalities (quirks and all), and who take their needs into account foremost in their decision making.

The Thought Counts. . .

. . . when a manager takes the time and energy to learn their team members' personalities, likes, dislikes, and needs and assesses how she can best serve them as a leader with a job to do.

Take Your Team From Unsustainable to Unstoppable

The key to building an unstoppable high performance team is by finding the individual needs of your team members. I've already made this point. . . but while you're examining your team this way you'll also find the hidden value in each team member that will take you to the next level.

There are hidden assets within each of your team members you'd have never found unless you look closely. This is the hidden vein of gold in people team that makes the difference between an average and a high performance team.

People Create the Core of an Unstoppable Team:

• The more "individuals" the more hidden assets you'll find, when you look
• Better lateral thinking. Many minds focused upon a specific goal creates many possibilities for achieving it.
• A core goal. Attainable through finding the core of your team.