High-performance teams – just a myth?

High-Performance Teams – Just a Myth?

“Not everyone can be a hero. Someone has to sit on the roadside and cheer them on.” Will Rogers may have been talking about athletes or celebrities, but his words also fit companies and teams.

In this context, people often speak of A, B, and C employees—a categorization made famous by Steve Jobs, who believed a company can only be as strong as its weakest link. Jobs used these categories to either part ways with the weakest employees or invest in their development.

I personally find this classification problematic. Labels can give short-term orientation but also risk reducing people to supposed deficits and leaving little room for growth or change.

• A employees take responsibility, are dependable, generate ideas and strategies, and drive company success.
• B employees do their jobs reliably but limit engagement to their working hours and rarely take responsibility.
• C employees spread negativity and can undermine a company’s success by blaming others and seeing the glass as half empty.

A team made up entirely of A employees can, in theory, become a high-performance team. But in reality, I have seen very few such teams. In more than 30 years as an entrepreneur, consultant, coach, and leader, I’ve encountered them mainly in young, small companies with a clear vision and strong culture. In larger organizations I’ve often been called in to turn dysfunctional teams into merely functioning ones—still far from true high performance.

What Defines a High-Performance Team?

Most people struggle to clearly define what makes a high-performance team or how to build one. Many leaders reduce it to “everyone gets along.”

Leadership expert Marty G. Moore, known for his No Bullshit Leadership approach, identifies seven key traits of true high-performance teams:

1. They produce results no matter what obstacles arise.
2. They stand out clearly from other teams.
3. They never settle for the status quo.
4. They outperform comparable teams consistently.
5. They continually challenge themselves to improve.
6. They exude confidence, accustomed to winning.
7. They make no excuses and embrace tough challenges.

Little wonder such teams are rare—meeting all seven points is demanding.

High-Performance Teams Don’t Grow Overnight

Building one takes years of steady work and tough decisions. When a leader takes over an existing team, the process typically takes three to four years and requires hard calls, such as:

• Do I have the leaders and employees with the right attitudes and behaviors?
• Have I placed them where they can play to their strengths?
• Have I parted ways with consistent underperformers?
• Have I successfully recruited the right new talent?

Replacing and onboarding key people often takes many months, even over a year. Yet without this effort and courage, a true high-performance team will never form.

Progress depends on your own leadership actions: developing people, recruiting carefully, making timely separations, and modeling the desired behaviors every day. Without active, continuous work on team capability and performance, the team will remain merely average.

Is It Worth the Effort?

Absolutely. Achieving top results with available resources is a core duty of any leader. And members of a high-performance team—leaders included—tend to be happier and more fulfilled.

If you’d like to explore how to build such a team in your own situation, let’s talk.