The Top 10 Characteristics of High Performance Teams

What Is A High-Performance Team?

Before listing out the characteristics of a high-performance team, let’s first define what one is. A high-performance team is a group of individuals who collaborate effectively, passionately, and in unison to achieve exceptional results for an organization.

These are the teams who under-promise and over-deliver. They are the ones deployed to work on important projects and contracts that require significant results.

I have been fortunate enough to work in high-performance teams throughout my career. The energy, passion, and technical competency within these teams is outstanding and those team dynamics pushed me to produce my best work.

In this post, I’ll dive deeper into the following topics:

• The Benefits Of A High Performance Team
• 10 Characteristics of A High Performance Team:
• Final Thoughts

Let’s jump into the benefits of a high-performance team.

Benefits Of A High Performance Team

According to statistics, working in a high-performance team is beneficial not only to business but also to personal happiness. Just check out some of these stats below:

Source of Statistics: Aiir Consulting

As mentioned, I had the honor to work within many high-performance teams throughout my career. I experienced both personal and professional benefits that pushed me to become a better version of myself. Here’s a short list of the benefits I experienced:

• I was highly engaged and passionate in the work I was doing
• I was solving very complex problems and developing innovative solutions
• The team was able to scale its services in a short amount of time offering new value for the organization
• Peers gave each other feedback that helped them grow invaluable skills
• Our critical thinking skills were exponentially improving

Let’s look at the 10 characteristics of a high performance team that helped me (and the team) achieve these results.

10 Characteristics of A High Performance Team

The following is not an exhaustive list, but these are the common characteristics of high-performance teams in which I have previously worked:

1. Have A High Degree Of Trust

One of the most important characteristics of high-performance teams is having a high degree of trust among each other. Everyone wants to come to work feeling confident and secure while working in their team. It can increase productivity, workplace happiness, and allow people to bring their whole selves to work.

A high degree of trust ensures a strong sense of a psychological safe culture within the team. Check out the short video below to learn more about the importance of psychological safety and the benefits it provides to people.

2. Collaborative

Teams that work together towards shared goals are much more competitive and productive. They leverage each other’s strengths and bring different perspectives into the work. Collaborative teams often have healthy disagreements and challenge each other’s assumptions.

This is something that is typically seen as adverse but can have some impactful positive benefits in the team’s dynamic.It’s important to acknowledge that it is ok to disagree with your teammates but it’s not ok to judge them. Judging can have lasting negative effects.

In my personal experience, some of the most interesting conversations and ideas have come from challenging assumptions. When teams have a high level of trust established, having difficult conversations becomes much more normal and constructive.

Examples of collaboration can look like:

• Pairing up with a team member on the same project to leverage each other’s strengths
• Brainstorming ideas around a white board or if you are virtual, using Miro.com – an innovative an free online white board tool!
• Having regular team meetings to talk about improvement ideas and issues that need to be resolved

3. Challenge the Status Quo

Another key characteristic of high-performance teams is challenging the status quo. Being on a team that challenges the status quo are often innovative in nature. There is a constant drive in the team dynamic to use novel tools, technologies, and processes to create high quality results.

These teams normalize a culture of learning by doing, taking calculated risks, and running small experiments to see what’s possible. Additionally, these teams tend to thrive when ambiguity is high. It allows them the opportunity to be creative and leverage each other to create novel products and solutions.

Here are some examples of challenging the status quo:

• Asking more questions of why things are currently done the way they are
• Identifying an inefficiency, investigating root causes, and proposing solutions to make it better
• Running small tests of change to try and improve a problem

4. Measure Results

“What gets measured, gets done”. High performing teams show their value through results, both qualitative and quantitative. 

They tend to put a heavy emphasis on measuring the quality, cost, delivery, and customer experience of their work. These metrics typically tie back to the goals of the organization as well.

Measuring results ensures that teams can see their performance in its current state. More importantly, they can see when there are gaps in performance so that they can identify opportunities to improve.

Here’s a few examples of how to measure results:

• Displaying a set of key performance indicators (KPI’s) that measure the performance of the team
• Calculating the financial impact of your team’s work. For example, showing that your team helped save $5 million last year by eliminating inefficiencies in high volume work (a real personal example!)
• Creating outcome and process measures to show the progress made (or lack of) on an important strategic initiative

5. Diverse and Inclusive

Diversity is one of the most important characteristics of a high-performance team. Check out these statistics below from Instride.com that show how diversity can drive company performance and big results:

• 74% of millennial employees believe their organization is more innovative when it has a culture of inclusion, and 47% actively look for diversity and inclusion when sizing up potential employers. (Deloitte)
• Companies employing an equal number of men and women manage to produce up to 41% higher revenue. (Clear Company)
• The GDP could increase 26% by equally diversifying the workforce. (McKinsey)
• Gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to notice higher financial returns. (McKinsey)
• Inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovative. (Josh Bersin)
• Inclusive companies get 2.3 times more cash flow per employee. (Josh Bersin)
• Millennials are 83% more likely to be engaged at work at inclusive companies. (Deloitte)

Teams are incredibly versatile when leveraging experiences, perspectives, and expertise of the individuals. A diverse team also means there is more opportunity to hold each other accountable to implicit bias, check each other’s assumptions and come up with solutions

Examples of how to build diversity on a team could be:

• Hire people from different technical backgrounds. Not everyone needs to have a business or engineering degree
• Hire people from different cultural backgrounds. They can bring in unique perspectives and reduce bias when making decisions
• Encourage a psychologically safe environment where ideas and concerns can be openly discussed
• Provide education and training on the importance of diversity in the workplace. The two-minute video below gives a great overview on the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace – consider sharing it with your team!

6. Continuous Learners

Having a team of continuous learners is always a competitive edge in an organization. They focus on self-development and actively listen and learn to develop their skills. Additionally, there is a lot of passion for exploring and testing out new ideas.

Continuous learners are also better at adapting to change. This becomes a powerful characteristic especially as there are always emerging new trends, new technologies, new processes, etc to learn. 

Having teams that are not forward thinking and continuously learning can be stifling for an organization to be at the forefront.

Examples of continuous learning are:

• Enrolling in a technical course that your company offers
• Taking on work that is typically regarded as outside of your expertise
• Executing on passion projects that are align with company goals
• Establishing a book club on the team where discussions can be had about learnings, ideas, and more
• Having different team members learn from each other. For example having someone share the process they took to accomplish significant results

7. Practice Peer Coaching

Coaches aim to develop other’s skills so they can perform better. A great characteristic of high-performance teams is when team members actively seek opportunity to coach and build each other up. 

The team cares deeply about each other’s development and growth. For example, a more senior consultant can teach and transfer best practice knowledge to a junior consultant. By mentoring the junior consultant, they can shorten their learning curve and expedite results for the good of the team.

Examples of coaching in the workplace can look like:

• A senior consultant teaching best practice knowledge to a junior consultant. By mentoring the junior consultant, they can shorten their learning curve and expedite results for the good of the team.
• Roleplaying with a peer before a big meeting and getting feedback
• Having team members host learning sessions to share best practices with the entire team.

8. Are Systematic Thinkers

People who a systematic thinkers can see the bigger organizational picture instead of getting tunnel vision. The benefit of being a systematic thinker is that they don’t just think about how their work will impact their immediate work, but how it impacts the ecosystem in which they are a part of.

They are constantly thinking about cause and effect, dependencies, and the impact to people inside and out of their organization. Systematic thinkers tend to be very intentional and methodical in their work.

Examples of systematic thinking can be:

• Building out a process map or swim lane diagram to understand the different stakeholders in a process
• Surveying different demographics of people to learn about their perspectives, needs, and wants
• Taking the time to understand the bigger picture of your work by asking questions such as: how will this impact all of the people who touch this work? What are the constraints in the system? What are the next 5 steps that will need to get done (vs. what is the very next step)?

9. Have A Shared Goal

Having a common shared vision, mission, and goal ensures strong alignment to the work. When teams are dedicated to deliver the best work in pursuit of a shared goal, the quality is higher, it’s delivered faster, and there is better customer satisfaction.

Here are some examples of having a shared goal:

• Frequently talking about the organizations vision, mission, and values, and ensuring the work you’re doing is aligned with them
• Regularly checking in and talking about the goals of the team

10. Celebrate Their Wins

Lastly, another key characteristic of high-performance teams is that they celebrate their wins often. Whether it is a leader or fellow peers who acknowledge and celebrate the great work, it is a frequent and common practice. 

Celebrating is very motivating and effective at perpetuating a high-performance culture.

Here are some suggestions for ways to celebrate:

• After a project is completed recognize the team member for their hard work and results
• Do a quarterly team celebration and be sure to recognize at least one great thing the team members did
• Publicly acknowledge and recognize when goals are met
• Increase your team members salary if you have the authority

Final Thoughts On Characteristics Of High Performance Teams 

The characteristics of high performance teams stated above were the most prevalent traits among the teams I’ve worked on during my career. I’m hoping the statistics and data also made a compelling case for why high-performing teams can be so advantageous.

Creating high-performance teams is not an overnight process and will take time, and maybe a lot of it. However, the ROI is incalculable.

Whether you are in a leadership position or a team-member, I encourage you to assess what some of the characteristics are on the team you work with. Ask yourself, how do they compare or contrast with the characteristics I’ve listed above. If there is room for opportunity and improvement, try out the examples I’ve provided.

Lastly, remember that the characteristics above are not a comprehensive list. There are many additional ones that you may have experienced yourself. If you have, please share them with our readers in the comments section below!