High Performance Teams — when good relationships are not enough

What characterises a high performing team?

• A purpose everyone can repeat without looking it up.
• Standards the team enforces itself — not only the leader.
• Enough trust that mistakes surface while they can still be corrected.
• Role clarity: who decides, who delivers, who supports.
• Constructive disagreement instead of politeness in the room and criticism outside it.
• Feedback as a daily habit, not an annual conversation.
• Decisions that are made and that hold after the meeting.
• Systematic learning: the team also evaluates what went well.

Direction, trust, roles, standards, feedback, execution

1. 1DirectionWhat is this team here to do, and what does success look like in three months?
2. 2TrustCan people say the difficult thing without it costing them?
3. 3RolesAre responsibility and mandate unambiguous — also under time pressure?
4. 4StandardsWhat is good enough here, and who speaks up when it is not?
5. 5FeedbackHow does the team give and receive feedback day to day?
6. 6ExecutionDo agreements become action, and what happens when they do not?
7. 7PerformanceCan you see in results and behaviour that the level has been raised?

Typical barriers

Patrick Lencioni's work on the five dysfunctions of a team describes several of these patterns well. We use that kind of established framework as a shared language — they are not our own models and we do not present them as such.

• The team has aligned on well-being instead of on standards.
• Disagreement is read as disloyalty, so problems surface too late.
• Too many goals — the team delivers on the easy rather than the important.
• No consequence when agreements are not kept.
• The leader solves what the team should have solved.
• No shared evaluation, so the same mistakes repeat.

How we build a programme

1. 1MappingConversations with the team and the leader — possibly JTI profiles as a shared language for differences.
2. 2Common foundationPurpose, standards, roles and ground rules are written down and made binding.
3. 3TrainingAction learning: the team solves tasks under time pressure and evaluates its own behaviour — indoors and outdoors.
4. 4EverydayNew meeting formats, feedback routines and follow-up in daily operations.
5. 5VerificationWe come back and see whether the standards hold when we are not there.

The leader's role

No team effort survives a leader who does not hold the standard personally. The leader has to take the difficult conversation, hold people to agreements, and let the team solve what the team should solve. We therefore run the programme with the leader as a participant — and often with 1:1 coaching alongside.

Training in practice — action learning

We work with changing learning arenas: the team is given tasks where collaboration becomes visible and where there is a real problem to solve. Afterwards we work in a structured way on what happened and what it corresponds to in everyday work. The patterns usually become clear in the tasks under pressure — not in the discussion of them.

Among other things we have delivered outdoor-based training in effective team leadership and longer team programmes for production teams, middle management groups and development teams.

Not the same as team development or teambuilding

Team development is about making collaboration work better over time. Management team development is about the performance of the leadership team specifically. Teambuilding is an experience that opens up collaboration. This page is about the teams that deliberately aim for an unusually high and sustained level — and that requires standards, roles, feedback and execution, not only good relationships.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between team development and High Performance Teams?

Team development is about making collaboration work better over time. High performance work starts one level higher: the team functions, but deliberately wants to raise its standard, tempo and robustness.

Isn't this just teambuilding?

No. Teambuilding is an experience that opens up collaboration. A high performance programme is a set of agreements on standards, roles and feedback that are trained and followed up.

Do you use Lencioni's model?

We use it as a shared language where it fits, and we say clearly that it is his. We do not build the programme on one model, but on the team's own situation.

How long does it take?

Typically a programme across three to twelve months with modules, training and follow-up. A single day can create insight, but not a new standard.