Managing high performing teams

As the Head of Transformation at Cambridge City Council, my primary mission is to cultivate an environment where high-performing teams can thrive and deliver exceptional outcomes for our community.

When every single team member joins my team, within their first week, I point them towards my favourite book for how we can run an organisation or team differently to the norm: Aaron Dignan’s thought-provoking book, Brave New Work.

Acknowledging that a lot of my inspiration comes from his book, I’d like to share some of my own insights on defining high-performing teams, the practical barriers we face, and the techniques that can help us navigate our journey towards excellence.

What is a High-Performing Team?

A high-performing team is more than just a group of individuals working towards a common goal. It is a cohesive unit that embodies trust, collaboration, and relentless pursuit of excellence.

According to Dignan, such teams are characterised by their ability to self-organise, adapt swiftly to changes, and maximize the potential of each member. In essence, a high-performing team is both resilient and agile, capable of achieving remarkable feats through collective intelligence and mutual support.

For my own team, I have simplified it down to three mottos:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate

2. Failure is always an option, learning from it isn’t

3. Something is better than nothing

Communicate, communicate, communicate

When I first started at Cambridge City, I noticed a trend amongst my team and others that communication was mostly one way and up (managee to manager) and mostly positive.

Rarely were my team talking to one and other about what was happening in their projects, timelines for upcoming work, issues they were experiencing or otherwise. This became even less when looking at the rest of the organisation and the stakeholders they were working with it.

Unsurprisingly, for a team at the beginning of an organisational transformation, they were also extremely averse to letting those who they were working for know when they weren’t going to meet a deadline and manage their expectations. They opted for the much less scary “don’t say anything and hope they forget” technique that we’ve all used before.

All of this is very common and normal — but it gets in the way of high performance. Information is the blood that keeps a team working effectively. When you’re not constantly keeping others aware, informed and with the most up to date information, there is a chasm for misaligned expectations and tensions to grow in. And where they grow, you start to see some of the traits of a low performing team: duplication, resentment, and distrust.

Failure is always an option, learning from it isn't

This motto attempts to embrace two key aspects of high-performance: destigmatising failure and a deliberately developmental culture.

Teams that embody this mindset openly share their missteps, creating a transparent environment where knowledge is continuously built upon. This proactive approach ensures that failures serve as catalysts for growth rather than sources of fear, ultimately leading to a resilient and innovative team dynamic.

What I’ve found is that people tend to only focus on the first one of these but fail to fully understand the impact of the latter. This isn’t a get out of jail free card for poor performance — it’s a contract between manager and employee that gives managers the responsibility to provide the cover and space to learn, but also sets the expectations that learning is the responsibility of the employee.

Something is better than nothing

The final motto, which links across the other two very nicely, tries to help people work through the perception of needing something to be perfect before sharing.

This perception comes from a variety of different places, which we explore a bit in the next section. The reason it gets in the way of high performance is that it is based on two false assumptions: a single individual can create something perfect the first time and that it is better to be late than to produce something that isn’t perfect.

Neither of these are true. Taking an approach of something is better than nothing, means that you create the space for iteration, collaboration and early feedback so that it’s even better and less time is wasted if it’s going off course.

Additionally, it means that everyone involved has an early understanding of how something is progressing and can better plan their own work if they know something is on track or not (as opposed to waiting until the deadline when it’s meant to be a finished product and finding out that it needs comments, feedback and changes).

A team that is pro-active about sharing their work, collaborative in their approach and generous with their time for each other will always create better work than an individual sat alone in a dark room (unless they develop old film cameras).

Practical Barriers to High Performance

The path to developing a high-performing team is fraught with challenges. Here are some of the most common barriers we encounter:

1. Resistance to Change

In any organisation, the inertia of established processes and mindsets can be a significant impediment. Employees may be accustomed to a certain way of doing things, and altering these habits requires not only structural changes but also cultural shifts.

2. Lack of Trust and Psychological Safety

Trust is the cornerstone of any high-performing team. Without it, members may hesitate to share ideas, take risks, or provide honest feedback. Psychological safety, where individuals feel safe to express themselves without fear of retribution, is essential for fostering an innovative and collaborative team environment.

3. Ineffective Communication

Communication breakdowns can derail even the most well-intentioned teams. Misunderstandings, lack of clarity, and poor information flow can lead to conflicts and hinder productivity. Effective communication is key to ensuring alignment and coherence within the team.

4. Inadequate Role Clarity

Ambiguity in roles and responsibilities can result in overlaps, gaps, and inefficiencies. When team members are unclear about their own roles or those of their colleagues, it hampers their ability to work synergistically and leverage each other’s strengths.

5. Lack of feedback culture

If there isn’t an expectation or skills within a team to both give and receive feedback, teams get stuck in the “Storming” phase of team development more often than not. To be able to work together effectively, and embrace diversity, teams need to be able to articulate themselves and work together to actively resolve conflicts, as opposed to just suffering through and hoping it works out.

The most important person to learn how to receive feedback is he manager. Mangers tend to be used to giving feedback, but not receiving it. For a higher performing team to exist, the person with the most traditional “power” must also be aware of this and create an environment where people are not afraid to provide feedback and believe it will be acted upon.

Techniques for Building High-Performing Teams

Overcoming these barriers requires deliberate and strategic action. Here are some techniques that can help move your team along their journey to high performance:

1. Embrace Agile techniques

While I don’t personally think agile methodologies work for most teams, I do think some of the techniques within it are very useful and can empower teams to be more adaptive and responsive. Agile practices such as iterative development, regular retrospectives, and cross-functional collaboration promote continuous improvement and flexibility.

2. Foster a Culture of Trust and Psychological Safety

Creating an environment where trust and psychological safety are prioritized is crucial. This involves encouraging open dialogue, respectful disagreement, and vulnerability. As mentioned above, leaders play a pivotal role in modelling these behaviours and setting the tone for the team.

3. Enhance Communication Channels

Investing in effective communication tools and practices is essential. Regular check-ins, clear and concise messaging, and active listening can significantly improve the quality of interactions within the team. Establishing transparent communication norms helps ensure everyone is on the same page.

4. Define Roles and Responsibilities Clearly

Clarity in roles and responsibilities is fundamental to team effectiveness. Clearly delineating what is expected of each member and how they contribute to the team’s goals can reduce confusion and enhance accountability. Role definition should be revisited periodically to adapt to evolving team dynamics.

5. Encourage Continuous Learning and Development

A high-performing team is one that continuously evolves and grows. Providing opportunities for professional development, skill-building, and knowledge sharing can keep the team engaged and equipped to tackle new challenges. Encouraging a growth mindset where learning from failures is valued can drive innovation and resilience.

Case Study: Transformation at Cambridge City Council

Within my own team at Cambridge City Council, we have embarked on a journey to transform ourselves into high-performing units. Over the past three years, we have implemented several initiatives to address the practical barriers and embrace the techniques outlined above.

One of our key strategies has been to adopt agile techniques across our projects. This shift has enabled our teams to be more adaptive, collaborative, and focused on delivering incremental value. Projects are encouraged to have pre-mortems, pre-project lessons sharing sessions, and regular retrospectives, all of which have provided a platform for candid feedback and continuous improvement.

We have also prioritised building a culture of trust and psychological safety. Through a curated recruitment and induction process, we very deliberately set out the expected culture, behaviours and values of our team and do deliberate training sessions to ensure that everyone has the soft skills needed to be high performing (e.g. a specific session is dedicated to giving and receiving feedback techniques for all new starters).

To keep these skills sharp, at our 6-week away days, we provide supplementary training and workshops, to make sure they remain equipped with the skills to foster open communication and support their team members. The exact content of which is determined by the team, but it allows us to see and address gaps in knowledge, while bonding as a team.

We have also purposefully developed a cultural of collective ownership for continuous improvement and problem solving within the team. In practice, this has meant creating specific roles within the team for delivery of some traditionally “management” problems/activities. Communication Champions (who work with the whole team to understand improve how we communicate), Wellbeing Champions, Skill Champions and Social Champions all have specific remits for their work and are given free reign to define how they best can achieve their outcomes. By devolving down responsibility for solving team issues, we put it in the hands of those effected by the problem to help solve it.

And it’s worked beautifully! I could do a whole workshop on the tangible impact this approach has had on moving us along the high-performance journey.

For the purpose of this blog, thanks to our communications champion, we have invested in iterating our collaboration tools and established clear communication protocols. Regular team meetings, transparent project updates, and active listening sessions have significantly improved our internal communication and alignment.

Lastly, we have emphasized continuous learning by offering various professional development opportunities. From training sessions to mentorship across our management team, we are committed to nurturing the growth and development of our team members.

Conclusion

Building and managing high-performing teams is a dynamic and ongoing process. By understanding the definition of a high-performing team and addressing the practical barriers with effective techniques, we can create an environment where teams can thrive and deliver exceptional results.

Within Transformation, our journey is a testament to the power of trust, communication, clarity, and continuous learning. We are committed to transforming ourselves as well as the rest of the Council and, ultimately, the services we provide to our community.

Together, let us strive to unlock the full potential of our teams and achieve new heights of performance and excellence.