Developing Leaders: A High-Performing Team Developing Case Study

These scenarios cover a wide spectrum of experiences, but all of them have a similar effect – your team has become a “working group,” focused on their individual performance and only interacting on a transaction, informational basis.

This helpful graph shows how your team’s performance and effectiveness affect each other.

What to Do When “Working Group” Is NOT Enough

A “working group” of leaders should not be the goal. Effective leaders and CEOs want to foster a truly high-performing team.

Given the challenges and setbacks of working in and through a global pandemic, you may have had a high-performing team that has slid into “working group” mode.

You may have a new team that hasn’t reached its potential yet.

Or maybe you have a team that has just never gotten past the “working group” stage.

Regardless of how you got here, you know that “working group” is not where you want your leaders to stay.

But how do you initiate change?

It all comes down to building connections and TRUST.

Trust is the foundation of a high-performing team. When trust is present, your leaders experience the psychological safety they need to make mistakes and learn from them, be vulnerable with one another, hold each team member mutually accountable, and be ready and willing to share professional wins and failures.

That is the true picture of a high-performing team.

Let’s look at an example in action.

Developing Leaders with Trust

In 2001, a newly-formed executive team that was brought together in a restructure post-acquisition. (Never an easy position to be in for any leader.)

The team members joined the new team from different functions in different companies with the goal to provide a new analytic function to the organization.

This group of individuals – the very definition of a “working group” – had the opportunity to move through the “Team Performance Curve” (see graph above) to establish a common purpose, performance goals, trust, and accountability.

They had 12 months together, and they needed to make significant progress in the 5 core behaviours of a cohesive team:

• Trust
• Conflict
• Commitment
• Accountability
• Results

The team was pulled together for monthly leadership development sessions where they covered these behaviour and then were helped to apply what they learned in their own monthly meetings. They could practice demonstrating each behaviour in real-time as they came together to address their business agenda.This approach supported and developed an effective, cohesive team post-merger and reorganization.

Developing Leaders: The Results

In the first meeting, the leaders on this team were asked to score themselves in the 5 core behaviour. After 12 months of working together, they were re-assess and significant improvement across all FIVE behaviour were demonstrated.

Their growth in the 5 core behaviour helped this team move from a “working group” all the way through the curve to a high-performing team.

The leaders’ results were also seen across the organization, and our team’s mission became a new corporate pillar for the entire organization!

Want to Improve Your Team’s Performance? Start with Trust

It can feel overwhelming and impossible to make changes with your senior team devolves or can not seem to move past the “working group” stage. But you will see results when you start with trust. Building trust among your team is the foundational first step to moving through the performance curve and becoming the established, high-performance team you want to acquire. Furthermore, when your team of leaders becomes high-performing, you are going to elevate the performance of your entire organization.