The term “high functioning team” is used frequently in leadership and management books, and is spouted at seminars and in meetings. But what is a high functioning team? How is one created? Is it possible to maintain a high functioning team over a long period of time?
A high functioning team is what every manager dreams of; a team that effortlessly achieves great results, is in harmony with itself and other teams in the organisation, and always seems to be having fun while they are achieving these amazing results. Have you ever experienced one of these teams?
In my 20+ years of working life I may have experienced one of these teams. Some came close, and others weren’t even in the same postcode. But the thing is, that was my view of the team, it was not a quantifiable measure of a team’s performance, the team members’ wellbeing, the output or performance of the team to meet its goals and targets. It was my personal view.
Similarly, for the teams I considered to be underperforming or dysfunctional: were they really as bad as I thought? Or was I just in a bad spot at the time, and wasn’t mentally on board? Were these teams still achieving what they needed to achieve and just lacked a bit of fun that other teams had?
Was it just a couple of personalities or people who I had a good (or bad) connection with that made some teams seem better than others?
This is the issue with the high performing team, there is no standard assessment criteria you can use to assess all teams to determine if they are high performing or dysfunctional. I’m not saying you can’t identify a truly dysfunctional team straight away, what I’m saying is that once a team starts to function more effectively, getting better at what they do, and achieving the results they have targeted, when do they start to be considered a highly functioning team?
A high functioning sales team will work differently and have different views on success than a manufacturing team, who will function differently to a project management team. A standardised assessment process and pass/fail grade is subjective. To be relevant, any goal needs to be set by the team as a collective.
And here lies the dilemma: we would all like to be part of a high functioning team, we all want to be part of something successful and we will likely be swayed to slightly lower the targets we set for ourselves rather than aim high and commit to achieving them!
I totally agree with the management books that frame the behaviours of high functioning teams around trust, respect, commitment, real goal setting, accountability, safety, and more. However, these are team behaviours that you ultimately need all the individuals in the team to adopt and buy into.
As the great Australian movie character Dennis Denuto sums up his case in The Castle by referring to ‘the vibe’ of the situation, a high functioning team needs a vibe, but that’s just the start!