Howard M. Guttman

Don't expect perpetual perfection from a high-performing team. The real world is full of twists and turns that can cause a fall from grace: a new team leader, churn in team membership, restructuring, a strategic shift, an economic downturnyou name it. Every team, no matter how evolved, backslides occasionally.<br /><br />In a recent interview published in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, Professor Amy Edmondson reported that well-led teams seem to make more mistakes than average teams. The reason: They report and discuss more errorsthen learn from them.<br /><br />The article underscores a unique feature of a high-performing team: its ability to recalibrate. To do so, a high-performing team is aligned, "we" centered, quick acting, and unafraid to go where lesser teams fear to tread. This makes such teams superb engines for achieving results, despite the occasional sputter.<br /><br />Leaders of high-performing teams play a pivotal role in their team's revitalization. They typically possess finely tuned sonar that enables them to go below the surface of day-to-day activities to detect trouble early on. When that radar locks onto trouble, it's time to bring in a third party to conduct interviews of team members and survey them to see if them have the same perceptions as the leader. Then, it's on to a full-team meeting in which the first order of business is to hold up the mirror to the team by discussing the results of the interviews and surveys.<br /><br />This is not for faint-of-heart leaders. The discussion can point to the leader as an unwitting co-conspirator in the team's underperformance.<br /><br />Once there is a baseline of agreement on the symptoms and behaviors that have led to the difficulty, the discussion moves to pinpointing root causes and corrective actions.<br /><br />Accountability is another prerequisite for bringing a star team back to its previous level of performance. Dips in team performance are rarely the result of a single underperformer. In most cases, the enemy is "us." On high-performing teams, accountability goes well beyond the individual's recognition that he or she is part of the problem. It even goes beyond holding peers on the team accountable for performance. It includes holding the team leader accountable as well.<br /><br />While it is great to have a team leader with a well-developed sense of impending performance difficulties, you can't always count on it. The leader may beand often ispart of the problem. This makes recalibration dependent on a team's ability to continuously self-assess. We recommend that high-performing teams go through a formal self-evaluation process every six months. And most high-performing teams that we know do a quick reality check at the end of each regularly scheduled meeting, asking: "How are we doing as a team? Are the ground rules we've established holding up? Are there any disconnects?"<br /><br />High-performing teams, especially those in a course-correcting mode, are relentlessly "just do it" oriented. They typically have a built-in process for identifying issues, setting priorities, assembling the fewest number of people from the team needed for resolution, setting decision-making guidelines, and moving quickly to resolution.<br /><br />Reviving a sluggish high-performing team is rarely a mission impossible. Team members who were once at the top of their game need to be reminded of the fundamentals in order to return to the previous level of play.<br /><font size="1"><br />Copyright 1999-2007 Guttman Development Strategies, Inc.<br />Created with the assistance of Princeton Internet Group, Inc. (PInG)</font>