Building high-performing teams: Converting mystery into reality

IN today’s hyper-competitive landscape, high-performance teams, being those elite units that consistently exceed expectations, are an elusive rarity. What fuels their relentless drive for excellence has been a subject of much discussion. We have been made to believe that there is a mysterious intangible which separates a great team from a good team and that there is an ethereal alchemy of traits and behaviours which combine to produce a binding, collaborative force.

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The determination to win and the pursuit of excellence, which are hallmarks of high-performing teams, do not emanate solely from the brilliance of individuals who form the team and/ or their collective intellectual capacity. Nor do they arise from heart-tugging organisational posters, the contrived kick of an annual offsite brainstorm or the ‘razzmatazzic’ thrill of a corporate event. Based on my experience, and contrary to popular belief, there are simple, consistent actions which carry the latent potential to transform groups of individuals into unstoppable forces.

Actions which give tangibility to mystery. Actions which foster unwavering trust among team members and lead to a solidity of belief in each other. They give life to the psychological safety that underpins undiluted candour, the clarity of purpose which eliminates ambiguity and the leadership that empowers rather than dictates in high performance.

I have been fascinated, and inspired over the years by the achievements of ‘high performing’ sporting teams ranging from “Bradman’s Invincibles” in cricket in 1948, Clive Lloyd’s West Indian, and Arjuna Ranatunga’s Sri Lankan, cricket teams of 1984 and 1996 respectively, Brazil’s 1970 world cup winning football team led by Carlos Alberto Torres and including the great Pele, the gold medal winning United States of America (USA) basketball “Dream Team” of 1992 co-captained by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to Francois Pienaar’s world cup winning South African Rugby Union team of 1995 and Richie McCaw’s the world cup winning All Blacks Rugby Union teams of 2011 and 2015, being a few among the hundreds which immediately come to mind. Whilst these teams had some superstars, their consistent success was difficult to explain.