Key Insights From Our Research
Our multi-year research of top performing teams revealed key factors that work together to keep the heart of an effective team beating strongly.
Building High Performing Teams
All teams, regardless of size, level or type, need to build a good foundation. Our multi-year research of top performing teams revealed that there are three major factors that work together to keep the heart of an effective team beating strongly.
Powerful Partnerships
Building a high-performing team requires establishing a partnership among the team, its leader, and its key stakeholders, particularly senior management. Each partner plays a unique and necessary role in a team's sustained success.
Decisive Leadership
Strong leadership is critical for developing high levels of cooperation. Without a leader who is willing to step in and be directive and decisive in times of ambiguity, cooperation can fall apart and performance will likely suffer.
Dive Deeper Into Our Research
Explore our detailed findings on what makes teams truly exceptional and how you can apply these insights to your organization.
Building High Performing Teams
Our multi-year study confirmed that there are three major factors that all teams must pay attention to and consistently address if they intend to become a high performing team.
- Leadership
We discovered that the best teams have leaders who can provide constructive feedback and coaching support when members need help or act in ways that are unacceptable. Leaders of top performing teams act decisively and provide very clear direction when their team gets off track.
- What We Do
The best teams ensure that their strategies, goals and objectives, roles and responsibilities, and team processes and procedures are all very clear and continuously updated and aligned.
- How We Work Together
Teams that aspire to be great need to pay careful attention to their team's culture or how they work together, how members treat one another, how members operate, learn and improve as a team, and how the team engages with its key stakeholders.
Powerful Partnerships
Our research shows that building a high-performing team culture requires a partnership among the team leader, team members, and management. All three groups play a key role as all three affect the team's probability of success.
Team Leaders
Managed the boundary between the team and management, spoke up for resources, sought out information and decisions, and negotiated balance between stakeholder and team needs.
Management
Provided timely decisions, clear direction, alignment around priorities, actionable feedback and recognition.
Team Members
Worked hard to understand stakeholder needs and were proactive in seeking out what was required to fulfill those needs.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE TEAM PERFORMANCE
Decisive Leadership
Research shows that team leader behavior has a direct affect on team member motivation and engagement. The best leaders are skilled at using a variety of leadership styles, and can flexibly switch among styles as circumstances warrant.
While we found the need for highly participative, democratic leadership, leaders of the highest performing teams also did not hesitate to step in and demonstrate a decisive and directive style when needed.
Members of high-performing teams described leaders who were not afraid to tell them what they wanted done and how priorities needed to be aligned. High performing leaders became particularly authoritative in their expectations for processes and behaviors during team meetings.
Innovation Through Team Emotional Intelligence
Our research shows that team-level emotional intelligence (TEI) isn't simply the sum of team members' individual EI. Team emotional intelligence is expressed in team norms and member expectations of one another.
Emotionally intelligent teams build norms that support awareness and management of emotion and emotional issues inside and outside the team and develop deep levels of team trust, team identity and team efficacy.
We've spent over 20 years studying the influence of emotionally intelligent team norms (Team EI Norms) on team collaboration, innovation, and performance. Our research shows that Team EI Norms build the foundation for true collaboration and cooperation—helping otherwise skilled teams fulfill their highest potential.