Developing high-performing teams

How do you develop a high-performing team?

Organizational leadership at any level is complex.

Whether you are starting out in your career or have over four decades of experience, you are regularly a part of a team. In today's blog we are looking at the competencies involved in developing a high-performing team. Go you!

If you are just joining this blog series, we have been using a rather simple leadership development framework (leveraging the work of Ginger Lapid- Bodga) to help build out your personal leadership development plan. What we have been calling your leadership endeavor.

The framework is rendered below and is designed to focus our attention on striving towards self-mastery or what we are naming as becoming a multi-rested leader (which is step one).

Each blog in this series is taking a deep dive into this framework and utilizes many author’s writings (including my own) as well as best practices in leadership and organizational development. 

As we strive for self-mastery, the first set of skills to develop are our people skills (harkening all of us back to what we learned in Kindergarten.) Those skills help us become better humans. In developing our people skills, we have outlined two important components:

1. Being a better listener and communicator (Leadership Endeavor Step #2, link to blog here)

2. Developing high-preforming teams (Leadership Endeavor Step #3, which is the purpose of today's blog.)

1. Being a better listener and communicator (Leadership Endeavor Step #2, link to its blog here)
2. Developing high-performing teams (Leadership endeavor Step #3.)

In Ginger Lapid-Bodga’s book What Type of Leader Are You?, Ginger identifies seven helpful competencies to develop and rate yourself on when developing a high-performing team. They are:

1. Providing team leadership

2. Creating a team vision

3. Attracting and developing team talent

4. Designing a team architecture (please read a recent case study on this concept)

5. Establishing effective team processes

6. Building a team culture

7. Assuring quality products and services

1. Providing team leadership
2. Creating a team vision
3. Attracting and developing team talent
4. Designing a team architecture (please read a recent case study on this concept)
5. Establishing effective team processes
6. Building a team culture
7. Assuring quality products and services

Perhaps there is one of these seven competencies that you identify with quickly and feel competent exercising, perhaps there is one that might be harder for you to get your mind around and are less comfortable using. Take a moment to read the list again and name these two for yourself. One easier and one harder.

For me, I identify quickly with #2, creating a team vision. I often reference this as developing a team covenant. A process that identifies the purpose of the team, the team’s vision, who plays what role on the team, and so forth. I’ve helped countless teams develop their covenants and am amazed at how helpful they can be in charting a productive course forward. I'm super comfortable and competent with this one.

The competency that I’ve had to work on is #5, establishing effective team processes. This one has always been hard for me because I don’t like telling people what to do when they look to me for direction. I’d much rather help them craft the process together by co-creating it with them. Over the years, what I’ve learned about myself is the importance of being open to another person’s perspective and trusting their insight as well as being able to trust my own instincts as to what next step to take. Then, to speak clearly and directly. That is super hard for me to do. My leadership journey (just like yours) continues.

In a recent conversation with my colleague Noele Stith, she shared an extremely helpful resource from Facilitating Power on this very issue. It’s called The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership. If you are working with a team, group, community of practice, or any cross section of people, I highly recommend learning this spectrum. Not only is this spectrum easy to understand there are simple exercises you can do to help your team build ownership around important issues you are facing. 

Well done you! You’ve learned more about your next leadership step: developing high-performing teams. Here is our leadership development framework to help you see how far you have come. First we focused on you developing you (what we have called becoming a multi-rested leader), next we learned more about being a better listener and communicatory, and today we learned more about developing high-performing teams.

Next month we will dive deeper into developing your enterprise skills. Looking forward to joining you as you build out your leadership endeavor.

Mind how you go,

Lon

Lon L. Swartzentruber

Design Group International
CEO & Managing Partner

PS: If you would like to talk with me about your leadership journey, please give me a call me at 616.516.9870, or schedule a 30-minute discovery call , or simply email me at lons@designgroupintl.com.