IS YOUR TEAM ENGAGED?
If not, you are likely dealing with some level of frustration, resistance, confusion, anxiety, and/or stagnation. Some are dealing with it all. In that case, one word describes it all: chaos.
Unfortunately, for many leaders THIS IS THE NORM, not the exception.
There are 5 ELEMENTS THAT CREATE HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS:
- LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT (unifying principles): This is the foundational element that allows high impact leaders to magnify, multiply, and leverage all of the other elements to create a high performance team. Many leaders do not adopt a set of unifying principles to align their team members. The best say, “This is who we are,” and through constant and consistent training and development teach these principles to all team members…top to bottom, month after month, year after year. Without leadership development, there will be frustration.
- BUY-IN (to the leader and the leader’s vision): Teams buy-in to leaders who buy-in to them. However, high impact leaders do more than buy-in to their team. They invest in the development of their team. Teams buy-in to high impact leaders because of what they do for them on a personal level. Team members buy-in to leaders who care about them, who want to help them, and who demonstrate respect for them. When teams buy-in to their leader, they are much more likely to buy-in to their leader’s vision. Without buy-in, there will be resistance.
- UNIFYING PURPOSE (vision/mission): Just as unifying principles align team members with a specific set of character traits, a unifying purpose provides the team with a sense of direction. High impact leaders develop and communicate the unifying purpose through clearly defined vision and mission statements. However, high impact leaders blend purpose into their words. High performance team members respond by intentionally helping move the organization in the right direction. Without a unifying purpose, there will be confusion.
- COMPETENCY (talent, ability, skills, knowledge): High performance teams are highly competent teams. They don’t hoard knowledge. They share knowledge. They have a growth-mindset and proactively seek positive change. They leverage their competency to accomplish the mission. They know how to make things happen and have a passion for making things happen. However, it’s the character of a highly competent team that makes them a high performance team. Competency alone is never enough. Without competency, there will be anxiety.
- EXECUTION (by everyone at every level): Thomas Edison said it best, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” High performance teams execute at every level. High impact leaders and their high performance team members do much more than is required. They do things much better than is required. And, they do things much sooner than is required. Because there is high trust, things happen quickly. Because there isn’t blame, time is invested doing instead of spent defending. Because they take responsibility, there is ownership. Without execution, there will be stagnation.
When the “5 Elements” are missing:
- At best, the team struggles to maintain the STATUS QUO.
- At worst, the team suffers a quick and steady DECLINE.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SICK TO GET BETTER, neither does your team.