The Secret to High Performing Teams
Jodie Rogers
MD at Symbia | Helping teams and leaders achieve more to positively impact business | Leadership | Professional Development | Capabilities Training | Facilitation | Mental Fitness
Welcome to The Hidden Edge, where we cut through the clutter and get real about what it takes to be a leader today. In a world inundated with superficial advice and empty platitudes, this newsletter stands out by providing actionable insights without the fluff.
Our goal is to give you practical tools and strategies that you can immediately apply to your leadership journey, helping you navigate the complexities of modern business with confidence and clarity.
So, let’s get into it.
In the last edition, we said we’d reveal the secret to high-performing teams, but…
… it’s not as simple as that.
It’s a layered topic – you can't do just one thing and expect results. It requires us to put efforts into different levers.
Creating and sustaining high-performing teams requires leveraging multiple aspects of team dynamics and personal development.
There are plenty of different models that provide valuable insights, such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Dysfunctions Pyramid.
These are a good place to start – understanding these frameworks helps us recognise that building effective teams is multifaceted and requires continuous effort across several areas.
But here are a few more ideas:
Importance of debrief: post-mortem, retrospective
One of the biggest opportunities teams miss time and time again is the post-mortem.
Too often, teams move on too quickly when things go wrong or right without taking the time to debrief, decode, unpack, and learn from their experiences.
High-performing teams make it a priority to lean in and understand what went well and what didn’t, all without judgement.
In our work at Symbia , we give people frameworks because they are good thinking tools that help us make sense of the intangible aspects of being human and showing up in business.
We conduct primary research – 1:1 interviews, surveys, anonymous and confidential – to get under the skin of what’s working within the team and what isn’t.
It’s the leaders that are willing to make the space to do this work that get the insight they need to elevate their teams.
The truth is, across the companies, industries, markets, hierarchies that we work with, our challenges and successes are usually the same.
Every team has a different make up, but the ingredients to success (and dysfunction) are often the same.
Multiple levers for high performance
Recognising that there are multiple levers leaders need to work with is crucial for achieving high performance in teams.
Here are some of the key levers:
🔴 Individual focus - me before we:
High-performing teams start with strong individuals. This means self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the ability to regulate thoughts and emotions. Good communication skills and a belief in oneself and the team are essential. This is the foundation of mental fitness.
🔴 Shared goals - roles & responsibilities:
Beyond individual strength, team members must relate to each other healthily. Trust, relationships, and dynamics are critical. Teams need clarity of direction, roles, and responsibilities to avoid stepping on toes and ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction.
🔴 Clean and clear communication:
Effective communication is key, especially when it comes to addressing the hard stuff. So much sits in the unsaid, which can be cancerous to teams. Creating a culture of confidence and courage to speak up and address the elephant in the room is vital.
Frameworks and primary research
As mentioned above, there are plenty of frameworks that you can refer to to understand teams and leadership, but at Symbia, we find that our primary research fits in nicely with Lencioni’s Pyramid.
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However, we’d add another layer at the bottom: mental and emotional fitness.
When debriefing leaders, our goal is to separate symptoms from problems and causes, always working at the root cause level.
Clarity of direction, trust, relationship, and psychological safety to discuss hard topics make the biggest difference.
Often, leaders mistake a “nice” team for a functioning one.
A nice team might know how to be pleasant during meetings, but without addressing deeper issues, they aren't truly high-performing.
Importance of engagement
Teams need to be motivated and engaged, genuinely wanting to be part of the work. The fastest way to achieve this is through bonding over intense goals or challenges.
We’ve seen teams flourish when they are really challenged to work together.
For example, in San Francisco, we partnered with Dark Swan to run challenge-based learning with 100 Google staff members.
They took part in an exercise called Messy Island, where each group had different information but had to work together to achieve a common goal.
This practical exercise really demonstrated that teams come together through doing, not just knowing.
Continuous learning and reflection
The key differentiator for high-performing teams is their commitment to continuous learning and reflection. After-action reviews, retrospectives, and debriefs are critical practices.
One powerful technique we learned from Dark Swan is to debrief backwards.
This method ensures that only facts are recalled, eliminating assumptions and stories our brains might create.
By focusing on these principles, we aim to help you build and sustain high-performing teams. Stay tuned for more insights and practical tools in our next edition.
It’s always worth remembering:
Being a successful leader isn’t about finding ‘secret’ solutions, but about continually refining and adjusting multiple levers - incremental, slow but steady gets you progress
Embrace the messiness of team dynamics, invest in open and honest communication, and never underestimate the power of reflection.
In the end, it’s the commitment to these ongoing practices that will turn your team from just functioning to truly thriving.
After all, the best leaders know that success isn’t a destination but a journey – one that’s always evolving and always worth the effort.
In the next newsletter, I’m going to be sharing the midway results for the EDGE 2024 Programme.
Make sure you subscribe to keep up to date.
If you’re want to level up your team’s performance and impact, check out our transformative development journey, The EDGE.
This 10-month online program is built around your busy schedule, offering interactive, live sessions designed to drive behaviour change, improve performance, and enhance your team’s overall impact.
With The EDGE, you’ll gain:
To find out more, head to our website.