High PerformING TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Acceleration of team performance is the goal of the TEAM ∆V™ programme.

For the majority of people, High Performance Teams may remain an almost mythical entity, with their everyday experience of teamwork ranging from effective at best to dysfunctional as a norm. The elusiveness of the High Performing Team has many contributing factors. Paramount amongst these is a culture of short-termism and obsession with targets that dominates the majority of businesses. (And these factors share no relationship with the pace and ambitious performance goals that are indeed characteristics of High Performing Teams.)

High Performing Teams do however exist and these are the teams that are capable of bringing about "tectonic" transformations that can reinvigorate organisations, markets and economies. Whilst much has been written about what these teams look like, the fixation with replicating their success, which challenges organisations around the globe, obscures the fundamental principles. This is best expressed by paraphrasing a wise client who recently pointed out, "When you want people to be inspired, you don't tell them to be inspired." So, when you need a High Performing Team, you don't accomplish this by selecting some 'great talent' and telling them to be a 'High Performing Team'.

Founded on principles recognised in high performance environments such as elite sport and the military, validated by the academic literature and featured in bestsellers (such as 'The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization' authored by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith), the Triple E TEAM ∆V™ approach is tried and tested in addressing the necessary inputs to create your own High Performing Team(s).

For the TEAM ∆V™ approach to succeed, amidst a challenging set of interfaces, a number of difficult conditions hold true:

• The majority of the team needs to be assembled from the organisation's 'best people' (availability is not a skill),
• Some of these 'High Potential' team members need to be sufficiently senior and respected to be able to influence the organisation and command respect from a standing start,
• The team in all likelihood will not look like only the brightest stars but will actually comprise a cross-section of domain expertise and experience, some of whom may be labelled as 'difficult' or 'troublemakers', with mind-set being the dominant selection criteria,
• A significant leader figure needs to be able to shield the team from internal organisational politics and the "pull of the mother-ship",.
• Organisational leadership needs to be brave enough to be take a fully committed but 'hands off' approach from the outset or to fully get on board and share in the experience alongside their fledgling High Performing Team.

Only organisations still on an upward trajectory are likely to have the stomach to embrace these conditions. For people in these businesses, the opportunity to participate in and the privilege to lead a High Performing Team awaits! Back