Effective Group Principles: How to Build a High-Performing Team

Contents

• What is an effective team?
• Stages of group development
• Five dysfunctions of a team and how to fix them
• How to manage teams of remote employees

What is an effective team?

Teams are effective when a group of different people achieves common goals and objectives. High-performing teams have three main features:

• Shared sense of purpose. Everyone understands how their common goal influences their work and values.
• Universal principles and rules. Collaboration is based on established norms. These rules influence how goals are achieved, uphold unified communication, and solidify the system of recognition and support.
• Distribution of roles. Everyone understands their role, tasks, and responsibilities.

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How to develop team efficiency

Everyone needs to clearly understand the company’s strategy and see how their work impacts overall results. The foundation of high performance is regular communication, including:

• Clear and measurable KPIs for the commercial team: everyone should understand what metrics are important for their job and how to track them.
• Regular one-on-one meetings with a manager: this helps collect feedback and hone actions towards what matters most.
• Sharing information: be open about company news with team members and listen to their feedback about work processes.
• Quarterly meetings: discuss the team’s interim results every three months.
• Employee surveys: measure the team’s mood every six months to identify problem areas and make adjustments quickly.
• Maintaining a friendly atmosphere: effective teams have a habit of celebrating significant events together and hanging out informally.

Stages of group development

In the 1960s, American psychologist and researcher Bruce Tuckman came up with a formula showing how teams develop over several stages like a living organism.

Forming

At first, people have a medium level of energy and high expectations. They try to be polite as they’re still on their best behavior. Group members try to understand the hierarchy and choose a leader. At this stage, it’s important to set common goals and define personal responsibilities.

Storming

This is the stage where conflicts and disagreements are common: a sign that everything is progressing naturally. People sift into subgroups, and an informal leader gradually emerges. Group members calibrate the priority of common goals compared to their own and assess how involved other people are, including to what extent they can be trusted.

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Norming

The norms of behavior in the group crystallize, and goals become clearer. People gradually get used to their established roles, are more open to communication and confiding in each other, and feel more relaxed.

Performing

All the group’s energy is directed towards achieving project goals. Members take responsibility for tasks and solve problems independently without the need for supervision. They also demonstrate openness and interdependence and support each other.

Adjourning

Once the project is over, the team celebrates its common success. Group members move on to other teams, where they will pass through all the same stages in a new cycle.

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Five dysfunctions of a team and how to fix them

Patrick Lencioni, a leadership, teamwork, and organizational development business coach, described the most frequent problems in teams in his book Five Dysfunctions of Teams. The model is built as a pyramid with each dysfunction giving rise to the next one at a higher stage.

Absence of trust

To overcome this dysfunction, leaders need to create trusting relationships in the group by showing their own vulnerability. And it has to be genuine!

Lencioni suggests a few different ways of developing trust in a team:

• “Ice breakers.” A half-hour meeting where the manager asks everyone a few not-too-personal questions (for example, about hobbies).
• “Team effectiveness.” This exercise should take about an hour. Each member evaluates the contribution of a colleague to the common goal and shares one thing they think the colleague should do or stop doing.
• “Feedback.” Team members give an honest assessment of each other’s work. But be careful: make sure that subjective assessments don’t turn into tools for manipulation or mind games.

Ten team-building ideas

Trivia, group excursions, or board game nights are just a few ideas for fun and productive team hangouts.

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Fear of conflict

When ideas collide, the leader must show composure and allow team members to come to a solution or decision on their own.

Here are a few ways of regulating conflicts:

• “The Disruptor.” One person on the team is chosen at random to root out hidden disagreements and open them up to group discussion. The discussion shouldn’t stop until everyone is made aware of how the problem was solved.
• “Moderation.” This helps teach team members not to be afraid of open discussion. If there’s a dispute and the people involved feel uncomfortable, they need to be reminded that arguments are natural. When the issue is eventually resolved, it’s important to once again draw their attention to the benefits of the dispute.

Lack of commitment

One of the most annoying dysfunctions is a lack of commitment. To minimize it as much as possible, leaders should talk more often about goals and standards for each individual employee and the team as a whole. Ideally, members will ultimately monitor voluntarily who does their work and how. The reward? Collective recognition.

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Avoidance of accountability

To ensure that deadlines are met and work progresses, you need to set clear deadlines and monitor interim progress. Leaders can delegate, push the group to discussions, set the right pace, and monitor compliance with agreements.

How to plan your workday and prioritize tasks

Learn all about the Eisenhower Matrix, Pareto Principle, and other time management methods to improve your work processes.

Inattention to results

To keep people focused on the result, you can inform a broader segment of the team and related departments about the project’s goals to make a public commitment to achieving them. The most obvious way to motivate people is to reward them for success, especially with bonuses. But financial motivation shouldn’t be the only factor.

How to manage teams of remote employees

Managing a remote team is essentially the same as managing an offline team. However, there are a few nuances regarding communication, decision-making, workspaces, and time “on the clock.”

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Tips for managing remote teams:

• Prepare online documents for onboarding remote employees.
• Record videos or screencasts to help employees get used to new software and solutions.
• Hold short, regular meetings.
• Document decisions after meetings, even if they’re only intermediate.
• Host group video chats about non-work related interests during breaks or after hours.

High team performance is unthinkable without an understanding of common goals and standards, trust, and willingness to debate. In other words, building a high-performing team means guaranteed stress. But organizing business trips should be stress-free, especially with Roundtrip: simplify booking hotels and tickets, and make working with closing documents easy.

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