How To Build And Maintain High-Performance Teams

Building high-performance teams from the ground up

Great companies are always people-focused. They have to be capable of building and sustaining high-performance teams that can communicate and collaborate effectively, execute on the company mission, and quickly adapt to changing circumstances. While every company is different, there are several elements that all high-performance teams have in common, such as an emphasis on trust, engagement, fairness, diversity, and the open exchange of information.
 
There are many ways companies can reinforce these characteristics among their teams: they can establish a culture of transparency, equity, and inclusion, ensure that employees feel like their voices are heard and their contributions are valued, provide shared digital productivity tools, and give all employees a sense of meaning at work. Although there are policies companies can adopt and resources they can deploy to achieve these goals, they can also create high-performing teams at the most fundamental level: by hiring the right people.
 
When companies focus on building top-tier teams right from the start by hiring candidates who have the cognitive and emotional equipment to become excellent teammates, the process of integrating those employees with their workforce will be much more streamlined and productive.

As we’ll see in this article, the characteristics of high-performance teams aren’t a mystery. Companies just need to know how to create those teams, put their skills to use, and help them reach their full potential.

One of the biggest impediments to productivity in a modern organization is a phenomenon known as siloing – when departments and teams become cloistered from one another, don’t share information, and fail to capture the synergies generated by cooperation. It’s no surprise that a PwC survey found that 61 percent of companies say the “solution to reaching their strategic goals is collaborating more across functions, paired with faster decision making.”
 
Awareness, empathy, and trust are critical components of open communication and collaboration between employees. These traits are all indicators of emotional intelligence, which is defined as the ability to understand your own feelings and the feelings of others. According to a 2020 study, conducted by researchers from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, emotionally intelligent behavior displayed by managers is linked to higher levels of positive affect among employees, which leads to greater creativity and innovation. When employees have an appreciation of how their colleagues approach problems, manage stress, and so on, they’ll be able to collaborate more effectively.
 
Employees also have to feel comfortable asking questions, experimenting, and making mistakes. This is why trust is so central to high-performance teams – when colleagues know their input will be taken seriously and feel free to try new things, and develop a sense of psychological security, they will be in a position to do their best work every day.

When employees are engaged, it means they understand and value the company’s mission, they feel like they’re putting their skills to use and solving problems that are intrinsically interesting, and they have healthy and productive relationships with their teammates. These characteristics don’t just lead to high levels of productivity – they also increase morale and reduce turnover rates, forge stronger relationships between employees, and create a healthy company culture.
 
However, a lack of engagement is one of the most pronounced problems companies face today. According to Gallup’s 2021 State of the Global Workplace report, a staggering 80 percent of employees report that they’re not engaged at work. There are many ways to address this engagement crisis, such as setting clear expectations; providing rewards, praise, and other incentives for a job well done; offering professional development opportunities; establishing fair hiring and promotion practices; and showing employees that their contributions matter.
 
When employees are fully engaged, you won’t just see surging productivity – you’ll also develop a workplace culture capable of attracting and retaining top talent. This is all the more important in the era of remote work, which can lead to burnout, stress, and a sense of alienation among employees.

A recent PwC survey found that the top concern among executives in the era of hybrid work is maintaining their corporate culture. By focusing on increasing engagement, companies will simultaneously address this challenge and create high-performance teams.

The most efficient way to build a workforce with all the essential features of high-performance teams – such as high levels of emotional intelligence, adaptability, and engagement – is to get the right people in place at the outset. This means a company’s hiring platform is a crucial contributor to the creation of productive and engaged teams. Hiring managers can use rigorous pre-employment assessments to determine whether prospective employees have the skills, temperaments, and other characteristics necessary to be members of high-performance teams.
 
An objective, evidence-based hiring platform won’t just screen candidates for the characteristics they need to be productive new team members – it will also expand the available talent pool to potential employees, who would be overlooked by traditional hiring methods. This helps to create balanced and diverse teams, which will spur innovation, demonstrate the company’s commitment to fairness, and reduce the risk of echo chambers developing within the organization. The business case for diversity is overwhelming, as study after study has proved that diverse teams outperform their peers and secure higher levels of innovation.
 
While the core characteristics of high-performance teams are well understood, many companies find it immensely difficult to build these characteristics into their workforces. This is why they should start with the most vital component of those teams: employees who have the skills and personalities that will make them valuable teammates.