Some organizations I work with set out to attract and retain "the best people".
However, in the real world we can't all recruit the "best people", whatever that really means.
In truth, most hiring requires some degree of pragmatism, even compromise. This may be true on both sides, from the point of view of employers and prospective employees.
What seems to be more meaningful and realistic than focusing purely on finding the most amazingly talented people is to ensure above all, that the people you can attract, are able to work in a healthy, high performance work environment. People discover their talents in places where high performance is possible.
It is also all too common for companies to attract extraordinary people and make them ordinary. Clearly this results in frustration, disappointment, and early unwanted departures of expensive, high potential recruits.
The building blocks of any high performance organization are teams. Agile, innovative businesses achieve results by empowering teams to make things happen together, rather than simply trying to get people to do what they are told.
Today, there is more fluidity than ever before in how people are deployed and in the ways in which they can collaborate to deal with complex problems. So, ensuring there is the right awareness and understanding of how to develop effective teams is mission-critical for leaders and managers at all levels.
There are many different psychologically grounded frameworks and tools which can be used to develop high performance teams. These include Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, GRPI, and a wide array of high performance teambuilding methods.
When coaching teams, I tend to use a simple and user friendly process which enables leaders and team members to self-assess their own current performance against clearly defined behavioural criteria for team performance, then chart their own way forward together. This results in a written 'team charter' which teams can use to remind themselves of the kind of behaviour they want to see from each other. This also helps people hold each other to account.
The ability to collaborate is the core of high performance and agility. This ability is important for everyone. Even those without teams to lead directly are collaborating with others constantly to get things done, whether they are in a front-line operational role, or working in a corporate function. The health and effectiveness of teams matters at every level, in every location, and across cultural boundaries.
Focusing on teams and their norms is an essential prerequisite for the development of an agile culture, capable of constant innovation. The benefits of effective teams are very visible.
If a team is underperforming due to sources of conflict and emotional toxicity within the team, or in its relationships with other teams, this will be a serious impediment to its success. Fixing this requires careful facilitation, honest feedback, and anchoring team effectiveness in an evidence-based approach.
Try to ensure that there is a robust, simple, and user-friendly process to enable the right conversations within, and, where required, between teams. Open dialogue and self-awareness make all the difference.
A high performance team is other than the sum of its parts. Clearly, there is case for finding and nurturing star performers in many, if not most professions and industries. There is an equally strong case for making sure that the teams they join are able to work together in the right way, to get extraordinary results.
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