I have often been asked how the High-Performance behaviors of successful teams differ from the not-so-performing teams I have met or worked with over the years. Here’s a selection of topics – by no means all inclusive – that show this. Look at this as a spectrum: most teams fall between the two extremes – but usually they lean towards one column or the other.
| High-Performance Teams | Low-Performance Teams |
| Objectives:
Teams collectively define objectives before discussing how to do a task. Team members can articulate a clear answer to: “When can I stop working on this?”, so work does not de facto expand to use all budgeted hours. Team leaders are seen pondering how to improve their team as they appear to have lots of free time. They get promoted quickly. |
Objectives:
Team leaders assign tasks by defining what needs to be done – often in much detail – expecting that team members follow the steps exactly to lead to the Team leader’s vision of the objective. Team leaders are always harried and busy – so much to check on. They cannot be promoted: how could the team survive without them? |
| Risk:
They expect risk. They look for it. No matter what they do, they believe that yet another issue is just waiting to pop up. They get a kick from seeing risk coming and mitigating it at any time, any day. As a result, they constantly look for, and become great at mitigating risk. Even on the smallest task, a team member can usually identify two or three possible issues they are keeping an eye on. |
Risk:
They abhor risk. They believe it can be removed. They participate in day-long risk meetings and attempt to mitigate all known risks once, at planning time (or maybe once a month). They return to work expecting it to go smoothly – since they have removed the risk. They tend to be surprised by unseen risk. They generally do not believe that smaller tasks require much risk analysis. |
| Measurement:
Team leaders have objective measurements of their progress which they maintain themselves – and usually are more detailed then typical project reporting. |
Measurement:
Team leaders tend to view measurement reporting as a chore which must be handled quickly so they can get back to their real work. |
Leadership style: Encouragement
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Leadership style: Rewards & Punishment
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This breakdown clearly shows the difference between collaborative and team-based culture thinking and the thinking and performance of Individualistic cultures. The first facilitates accountability and responsibility at the team member level and the latter places it in the hands of team leaders. The recording and benchmarking also shows how team members in team cultures are excited to measure their success as it occurs while it becomes a tedious responsibility of leaders in individualistic cultures.
Dianne Crampton, Author
TIGERS Among Us — Winning Business Team Cultures and Why They Thrive (2010 Three Creeks Publishing)
Your point about where the accountability and responsibility is placed is insightful. I have observed that high-performance team leaders do place the responsibility with team members rather than try to use the team members as extension of themselves (I use the caricature of a robot: the leader is the processor – arms, legs, tools are the team member – which must do as i say…). Your comment however, suggest that this is more then mere observations of a result.
It suggest that a leader who wants to achieve high performance can do so by consciously deciding to stop being the cpu of the robot – i.e. to place accountability and responsibility with the team members. In this way, leaders can steer the team to the path of high performance. Very interesting indeed. Thanks for your comment.