How to create a high-performing team

Why do some teams consistently deliver a high level of performance while other seemingly identical teams struggle? This was the subject of research led by Sandy Pentland at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Human Dynamics Laboratory in 2012.

The study of 2,500 individual team members taken from a broad variety of projects and industries found that the most important predictor of a team’s success was its communication patterns. These patterns were as significant as all other factors – intelligence, personality and talent – combined.

The study found that successful teams shared some defining characteristics:

Everyone on the team talked and listened in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.
Members faced one another and their conversations were energetic.
Members connected directly with one another, not just with the team leader.
Members carried on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
Members periodically went exploring outside the team and brought information back.

1. Energy, engagement and exploration

The researchers also identified three key communication dynamics that affect team performance: energy, engagement and exploration.

Energy is measured by the number and the nature of exchanges among team members. The most valuable form of communication is face-to-face. The next most valuable is phone or videoconference, but with a caveat: those technologies become less effective as more people participate in the call or conference. The least valuable forms of communication are email and texting.

Engagement reflects the distribution of energy among team members. If all members of a team have a relatively equal number of exchanges with all other members, engagement is extremely strong. Teams in which clusters of members engage in high-energy communication, while other members do not participate, don’t perform as well.

Exploration involves communication that members engage in outside their team. Essentially, exploration is the energy between a team and the other teams it interacts with. Higher-performing teams seek more outside connections. Exploration is most important for creative teams responsible for innovation, as they need fresh perspectives.

The data showed that exploration and engagement don’t easily coexist, as they require the energy of team members to be put to two different uses. Energy is a finite resource. The more energy people devote to their own team (engagement), the less they have available to use outside their team (exploration), and vice versa. But they must do both.

Successful teams, especially creative ones, alternate between exploration for discovery and engagement for integration of the ideas gathered from outside sources. The most effective work is done by teams that are high in energy and engagement, but as soon as either energy or engagement drops, so does performance. For the best performance, team leaders need to keep energy and engagement in balance as they work to strengthen them.

2. Let everyone have their say

Studies carried out by Google into high-performing teams show that the most noticeable characteristic is that all team members communicate and contribute evenly. Yet in workplaces, it is not unusual in a team of seven for four of those team members to do most of the work and most of the communication. But that will never create a high-performing team. For high performance to occur, all seven team members must be equally active, not only communicating with the team leader, but also communicating with each other.

It turns out that equal communication and contribution happens when team members feel safe enough to contribute. In teams where a few members are allowed to dominate discussions or where the team leader – or other team members – are too controlling or judging, many members withhold their views and ideas out of fear of being dismissed.

On a time-sensitive project, it can be tempting to rush a conversation or a decision, ignoring the quieter team members, but research shows the importance of slowing down and taking the counsel of all team members. If only four of the team’s seven members are contributing, you must spend time activating the remaining three people.

How can you do that? By slowing down and explicitly inviting the more reserved team members to share their views. You will have to use your emotional intelligence and be sensitive to each team member. Ask questions, listen, empathise and make people feel that they belong in the group.

3. Make your team feel psychologically safe

This means that you have to take on the role of democratic facilitator and coach so that you can moderate your team’s discussions and make members feel safe enough to come forward and share what is on their mind. When you do that, you begin to create what psychologists refer to as ‘psychological safety’ – a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up or for sharing something sensitive.

When psychological safety is present, people feel free to share what’s on their mind, whether it’s a bright new idea or a tough personal challenge. They are able to talk about what is messy and have difficult conversations with colleagues who have different opinions. This practice leads teams to success and higher performance through greater role clarity, peer accountability and commitment to the team’s shared vision.

Leaders need to show their vulnerable side to build trust with team members. They can do that by acknowledging their mistakes, weaknesses and failures, and by asking for help. Openly acknowledging a time in the past when you made a wrong decision or failed at implementing a project will signal to the team that it is OK to fail. You can also show vulnerability by recognising the strengths of others, even when those strengths exceed your own.

4. Coach your team to high performance

A coaching leadership style can help you to create a high-performing team. More than any other style, it can be used to both challenge and support your team. Some project managers, especially those with a technical background, are experts in their field and give advice more than they coach. When we give advice, we go into problem-solving mode and come up with instructions and ideas. It makes us feel great to pass on our knowledge and to help someone make progress with a task. But when we give advice, we don’t encourage people to grow and to find their own answers.

When we coach a team member, we empower them to take ownership for the task they want to complete or for the problem they want to solve. How do we do that? By asking, rather than telling. By patiently listening to the person’s account, rather than assuming we know what is on their mind. The real power of coaching is that it allows us to be equally supportive and challenging of our team members, which is one of the best ingredients for helping people excel.

We all need the support of our managers, but we also need them to challenge us to deliver our best work. When you coach, you essentially help the team member understand the nature of the problem they are trying to solve, the options for solving it and what action they can take to overcome it.

To help a team member gain insight, it is important to resist giving advice and instead to ask open questions, such as: What do you feel is wrong? What have you already tried? What steps can we take to change this? Which option would be fastest/easiest? What will you do right now?

To give an example, a team member complains to you about the client, who hasn’t delivered the requirements they promised. Instead of automatically agreeing with the team member and providing a solution, ask questions. What was the agreement with the client? What communication has there been between you? What’s going on for the client at the moment? How could we resolve this in the best way?

Can you see how this approach is helping you empower the team member to take responsibility for their own solutions? The key to a good coaching conversation is to be fully present with the person in front of you and to ask quality questions.

The best way to become a project leader who coaches is to practise as often as you can. Coaching isn’t an approach that should be used just for the big conversations. It is a leadership style that can be used even in short interactions with team members. Try it for a week and see what happens: give people your full attention, listen, ask open questions and resist the temptation to simply tell them what to do.

Is your team fully engaged?

Are people trying to contribute and being ignored or cut off – either by you or by other team members?
Do they communicate only with one or a few other team members, maybe because the group consists of cliques?
Do you do most of the talking at meetings without giving others enough space to participate?
Are you able to show vulnerability and signal to others that it’s OK to fail?

To get to the root cause of the team’s behaviour, ask yourself: Why is someone holding back? Why are they being interrupted? Why are they not collaborating?

Finally, look at what you can do to create psychological safety for team members and raise the energy and engagement levels.

This article is an edited extract from The Power of Project Leadership (second edition) by Susanne Madsen (©2019) and is reproduced with permission from Kogan Page. Get a 25 per cent discount using the code PROJ25 at www.koganpage.com/projectleadership