The key to building successful teams isn’t bringing together a group of all-stars and asking them to accomplish a goal. I have experienced firsthand the joy of seeing a group of individuals come together to experience immense team success and the frustration of leading a team of talented individuals that never came close to reaching their potential. Successful teams understand that they must invest in building a team environment and practicing behaviors that support shared success.
All teams face a universal tension that will drive their success or become the primary reason they fail. This ongoing tension is the need for the team to have a laser-like focus on accomplishing the team’s most important goals and creating a culture of trust, safety, and inclusion. In other words, teams must continuously achieve results and develop relationships. For teams to achieve and maintain healthy high performance, they must be deliberate about creating an environment and practicing the behaviors that enable team members to feel heard, connected, and capable of doing great work.
10 Behavioral and Environmental Factors For Developing Healthy High-Performing Teams
Below are the 10 foundational behavioral and environmental factors that enable employees to build strong professional relationships and deliver excellent results.
1) Credible (Behavioral)
Team members must demonstrate the necessary expertise, experience, knowledge, and abilities for others to trust them. A team’s most important first task is to build a team of people who are capable of advancing the team’s goals. Team members must have the right technical expertise and problem-solving skills to identify problems, generate alternatives, evaluate those alternatives, and make competent choices.
2) Accountable (Behavioral)
Are your team members reliable, and do they do what they say they will do? Do they consistently deliver on their commitments?
Unfortunately, many people perceive the concepts of trust and accountability to be at odds with one another. The truth is that establishing a culture of accountability is the foundation for teams that have high-performance and trusting relationships. Have you ever worked on a team that lacked accountability? If the answer is yes, you probably experienced some of the following repercussions:
- Missed deadlines
- Team members who blame others
- Low-performance levels
- Ongoing team conflict
Accountability builds team trust by enabling clear expectations, an environment where team members deliver on commitments, and a sense of accomplishment through delivering on goals.
3) Psychological Safety (Behavioral)
Psychologically safe teams trust each other to experiment without judgment, voice opinions without being shamed, and fail without being labeled a failure.
The best teams invest in creating a trusting work environment and take the necessary steps so that teammates feel safe to take risks. They are confident that no team member will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea. Establishing an inclusive team environment that invites equal voice and values all team member’s perspectives is not created by accident.
4) “We” Perspective (Behavioral)
Do other team members believe you understand and have their best interests at heart, or do they feel you leverage the situation for selfish gain? Trust will be low if others see team members focus only on their self-interests. To build trust, team members must approach working with others with a self-orientation of “we” versus “me.” Do team members believe others care about their best interest in the situation and during ongoing conversations? The goal is for team members to:
- Genuinely seek understanding
- Help others feel heard, respected, and safe
- Demonstrate an inclusive environment
- Allow themselves to be influenced when appropriate
- Uncover challenges before sharing perspectives.
5) Live The Values (Behavioral)
A team’s shared values are one of the most underutilized but essential tools for creating a culture of meaning and community for its employees. Although values seem somewhat of a “soft” concept to many people, it is much more tangible than it seems. Establishing, communicating, and practicing shared values gives team members the following benefits.
- Motivation – Shared values increase motivation by creating a workplace culture built on principles that employees believe in, which helps them find more fulfillment in their work and relationships.
- Meaning – Research shows that employees who find meaning and purpose in their work are happier, healthier, and more productive. Employees with values aligned with their organizations have a purpose within their daily work.
- Community – Effective values provide team members with one defined and understood identity of “who we are” and “what we stand for,” which helps create a sense of community.
- Consistency – When people trust that peers will act in alignment with the core values, especially during challenging situations, it increases engagement and performance.
6) Clear And Meaningful Goals (Environmental)
The importance of clear, aligned, and meaningful goals on team performance is well-documented. Goals provide direction to a team, allowing them to understand where they are now and where they want to go and unite each person’s effort in getting there. Common goals are what makes a team a team. Goal clarity includes Purpose, Values, Team, and Individual Goals.
7) Evolving Team Priorities (Environmental)
With the increase in virtual work and matrixed reporting relationships, creating clear expectations for employees has become a growing challenge for leaders. Teams must develop the capacity to continually assess and reset, when necessary, their priorities to meet new challenges and remain on track for success. The following questions can help teams reflect and adapt to a shifting environment.
- What has changed?
- What have we learned?
- How do we need to update our goals, priorities, or processes?
- How do we need to work differently?
- What new knowledge, skills, and habits must we develop?
8) Role Clarity (Environmental)
Clear and synergistic roles and responsibilities are essential for team success. Everyone should clearly understand who is responsible for what and how people must work together to accomplish shared goals.
9) Effective And Efficient Core Processes (Environmental)
Effective processes for decision-making, problem-solving, communication, resource allocations, learning, etc., support team goals by defining the important interactions needed for success.
- How we meet together
- Essential work processes and systems
- Decision making and problem-solving
- Communication
10) Adequate Resources (Environmental)
All work teams rely on resources outside the group to sustain them. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of the team to perform its job effectively. Adequate support from management and the larger organization is necessary for them to succeed in achieving their goals. To work effectively, teams need access to resources to complete the task on time and to a high enough quality.
Conclusion
More than ever, organizations need high-performing teams to produce results and build strong relationships. Ongoing assessment and adjustment are a continuing process, and teams need to understand the foundational environment and behaviors to establish healthy high performance.
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