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Good teams will be well-functioning, but great teams will be high-performance. We have already looked at the ten characteristics of the well-functioning team which included purpose, priorities, roles, decisions, conflict, personal traits, norms, effectiveness, success and training.
Please keep in mind the idea that a team is a group organized to work together to accomplish a set of objectives that cannot be achieved effectively by individuals.
What are the traits of the high-performance team? You might want to compare this set of characteristics of a superior team to one that is well-functioning.
In a high-performance team you will find:
Participative leadership--Being a participative leader means involving team members in making decisions. This is most essential when
creative thinking is needed to solve complex problems. If the leader is an acting participant of the team, the team feels interdependent, empowered and freed up to serve each other. When the leader has the team participate in developing answers to problems with the project, the team begins to own the project and to protect it and each other as co-owners.
Shared responsibility— In a shared-responsibility team, That Leader no longer has the sole responsibility for the success of the project or for individual team member performance. That Leader’s new role is to develop the talents,
skills, and mindset of all team members so they can participate, contribute, and share in the management and leadership of the team. The team members are empowered and feel comfortable holding one another accountable to the
business’s goals. They do not do this using criticism, blame or going behind one another’s backs. Instead they listen to each other’s ideas, express themselves tactfully and praise each other’s good ideas.
Aligned on purpose—The team has a sense of
common purpose about why the team exists and its functions. The Purpose is a moral conviction: a rationale that explains why a particular group of talented people—leader and team--should spend their valuable time working together in this group doing these particular things. They have a clean sense of what they are trying to produce, what the performance goals are, the value of a team that works well together, and a sense of interdependence.
High communication—High communication helps the
team work in a climate of trust and open, honest communication. Some of the basic patterns for communications behavior are that the leader is clear in what is the important thing to discuss, whether the subjects under discussion support the main issue, are the members connecting with the message, is the communication clear and could this be explained with fewer words and less talk.
Future focused—The team is seeking change as an opportunity for growth, professional, personal and for the business.
Focused on task—The team will work together to see that meetings and interactions are focused on results concerning the project, not on each other or other topics.
Creative talents—All members come to the team with individual talents and creativity which all are encouraged to use on the project. But how does the team discover each person’s talents? Is this person more into people,
projects, products or
problem solving? To get the best out of a person, it is important to understand what he or she enjoys doing most.
Rapid Response—Not just a medical concept, rapid response refers to the team identifying and acting on opportunities quickly. If a project is not going to work as decided, the team must be able to respond to the problem and come up with some alternate solutions.
Do you see these traits as important parts of a high-performance team? Have you worked in one this these characteristics?
This information is from Washington State School Directors’ Association and found on http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/.
Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put
marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at
jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or
707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at
www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on
www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.
- Teamwork Pt. 1 (sellinginnovation.wordpress.com)
