High Performing Teams: What Are They & How To Build One?

Imagine having a team of 400,000 people working for years on a project that could change the notion of what was previously thought of as possible. Succeed, and you get a glowing page in the history books. Fail, and you waste billions of dollars, and potentially, three human lives.

Oh, and the entire thing is globally televised.

Sounds like an exaggeration, but we are actually talking about NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. This particular Apollo mission is not just one of the greatest achievements in all of human history, but also the best example of a high-performing team.

Sure, the number of hours Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, as well as the supporting crew of scientists and engineers, was massive, but there was also constant communication, support, and endless drive to put the first man on the Moon.

Apollo 11 showed that anything is possible when you have a high-performing team. Now let’s see how you can build one for your agency or business.

What Is a High-Performing Team?

A high-performing team involves a group of skilled individuals who work together in a collaborative and efficient manner and produce the best possible results. These teams usually exhibit certain traits, such as mutual respect and support, open communication, adaptability, and the ability to solve problems quickly.

Also, each team member is aware of their role in the team, and is held accountable for their actions and work results.

Why Building a High-Performing Team Matters

If there is one thing that can be said about the world of today, at least from a business standpoint, is that it’s very unforgiving and brutal. According to statistics, 90% of all startups fail! That means only 1 in 10 actually make it!

This is why you need to make sure that you do everything in your power to have that competitive edge, and having an efficient, high-performing team is exactly the edge that you need..

Here are some of the most compelling reasons why you should make the effort to build a high-performing team:

• Better efficiency and productivity: High-performing teams get more done, not just because they are skilled, but because they are driven and have a purpose.
• Wide range of different talents and skills: Having a team in which people have diverse skills can help view challenges and problems from different perspectives and result in highly effective solutions.
• Enthusiastic and engaged team members: Because members in high-performing teams feel valued, respected, and acknowledged, their morale is high and they are more satisfied with their jobs, which results in them being more engaged as well.
• Innovative and creative: With a positive and supportive atmosphere within the team, your team members will feel more free to share their ideas and experiment, no matter how unorthodox.
• Constructive feedback is embraced: Members of high-performing teams provide and receive feedback, so that the entire team can come up with the best solution or get their work done in the most efficient manner.
• Efficient at resolving conflicts: When you have a conflict in high-performing teams, it is embraced, rather than being swept under the rug. But this can only be done where their mutual respect and support, of which are key traits of high-performing teams.
• Low employee turnover: When your team is able to acknowledge the contributions of each team member, resolve conflicts, produce outstanding results, and celebrate success together, it reinforces a positive work culture that not only attracts top talent, but also keeps your existing one around for a long time.

How to Build a High-Performing Team: The Guide

Building a high-performing team is a process, rather than a one-time effort, that requires you to complete a lot of different steps. Here are the most important ones:

Establish Clear Goals and Objectives

How do you measure the performance of your team? How is success quantified?

Well, for starters, you’ll need to establish objectives and goals for your team. This will not only give them something to focus on, but it will also enable you to track their progress and performance.

As for how you should measure their performance, it depends on the makeup of your team. For example, if you are running a team of writers, you can establish a daily or weekly word count, if they are writing content, or measure reach and engagement, if they are writing for social media.

There are many different methods for setting goals, but one of the most common ones is the SMART method, which focuses on goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

With ActiveCollab, you can easily keep track of how well your team is performing and reaching goals with its time-tracking feature. You can also use it to identify bottlenecks, items that block your team’s progress, as well as dependencies, and address each one as it appears.

Choose the Right People for the Team

Selecting individuals with the appropriate skill and experience for your high-performing is a no-brainer, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You will also need to consider how well they play with each other, because we are looking for the “more than a sum its parts” kind of thing here.

This means that your team should be well-rounded and diverse when it comes to both hard and soft skills. People with different professional backgrounds, experience levels, and personalities bring their own unique perspectives.

For example, if you have developers, designers, marketers, and salespeople on your team, it helps you tackle even the most complex problems requiring a multi-faceted understanding and approach.

Foster a culture of collaboration, so that they are comfortable to share their thoughts, ideas, and feedback.

Define Roles and Responsibilities

We have said that high-performing teams embrace conflict because they channel constructively toward finding a solution, and that’s true, but, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and minimize the change of such conflict.

One of the ways to do that is to define roles and responsibilities for each team member. These roles align with your overall goals, as well as your team members’ skill sets and aspirations. They also help you to fill the gaps and prevent overlap in responsibilities.

That way, everybody knows exactly what they will be held accountable for, which does away with confusion, misunderstanding, and inefficiency.

And it prevents your team from getting derailed by something that shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place and enables them to focus on what they do best.

Provide Training Opportunities

In order to build a high-performing team, you need to look beyond the day-to-day operations. Even if you are pretty happy with who your team members are, you can always make them even better through continuous learning.

Consider providing the following training opportunities for your team members:

There are multiple benefits to this approach. First, your team members will feel more confident, empowered and motivated to put their new skills to work. Second, you enable them to keep tabs on the latest trends, developments, and best practices in their industry.

Last, but not least, all this individual growth and development will have a positive impact on the entire team and its abilities.

Offer Leadership and Support

High-performing teams require great leadership, which involves a lot more than delegating tasks and making sure they are done on time. As a leader, you should provide guidance, support, and inspiration.

However, being a great leader is not a simple sequence of steps you need to follow. Each team member may respond to different leadership style, and you need to be able to help each one.

The solution might be to become familiar with some of the most common leadership styles and find one that would fit your team’s characteristics. Consider the following leadership styles:

• Servant leadership: This particular style focuses on your team members’ growth. As a leader, you set an example by putting the needs of the team above your own. Instead of telling, you show.
• Delegative leadership: This approach involves providing your team members with plenty of autonomy, trusting them to do the best job possible, and giving them ownership of their tasks.
• Transactional leadership: With this method, you introduce a more rigid structure, as well as rewards and consequences in order to drive your team to perform better.

Foster Open Communication

Another prerequisite for building a high-performing team is the existence of open two-way communication. When communication is a two-way way street, it creates a culture of trust and makes the team gel more closely together.

Make sure to define methods for both synchronous and asynchronous communication, so that your team members can their ideas, concerns, and feedback across. With ActiveCollab, you can communicate with your team members in real time using its chat feature.

Also, you can mention team members, leave comments, and upload documents, so that everyone is kept in the loop at all times. With ActiveCollab, you can reduce the amount of emails going back and forth within the team, and foster more direct, timely communication.

Plus, all of your communication will be saved on a single platform, you won’t have to go digging through your email, Slack, or any other communication channel.

Value Work-Life Balance

Have you ever noticed how everyone talks about the efficiency and hard work high-performing teams do and nothing else? Well, as paramount as it is to have employees who are highly productive, you also need them to be functional and healthy.

If you focus solely on the efficiency of each individual team member, you will quickly wind up with a group of overworked, overstressed, and disgruntled employees who are failing to meet deadlines.

Take care of your team by establishing a healthy work-life balance that enables your employees to decompress and recharge after days and weeks of hard work. Also, make sure to prioritize their mental and physical health.

Your team is your agency’s biggest asset, so throw out the toxic hustle culture, and replace it with an environment in which each employee can thrive as professionals, as well as people.

Acknowledge Contributions and Reward Team Members

Now, even the most engaged and efficient teams need to have their motivation boosted every once in a while to produce the best results.

How do you motivate your team to continue performing at its very best?

One of the most effective ways would be to recognize their contributions and celebrate their achievements. And we aren’t just talking about giving them props only when huge milestones or entire projects are done. Take notice of every single win, no matter how small.

Another way to keep your team members performing at a high level is to reward them for doing a great job, especially if they have overshot their goals. As for how you should reward them, it can be anything from monetary incentives, such as raises and bonuses, to training opportunities and promotions.

It’s also up to you to figure out what type of incentive would work best for each member of the team.

Conclusion - ActiveCollab Helps Your Team Fire on All Cylinders

When you have a high-performing team, there is little that they can’t accomplish. But actually building it is a process that involves a strategic approach every step of the way, from hiring the right people to providing the right kind of motivation.

And it involves not just efficiency, but also empathy, understanding, and support. By maintaining a healthy workplace culture, you provide your team with all they need to thrive.

From a performance standpoint, you can make your own and their lives easier with ActiveCollab's productivity workspace that gives you all the communication, project management, and time-tracking tools they will need to get things done.

Ready to elevate your team’s efficiency to an MVP level?

Sign up for our 14 day free trial, or book a demo and our representatives will show you why ActiveCollab is a piece of the puzzle you’ve been missing to build your very own high-performing team!