1. Talent Magnet
To spot a strong team you simply have to look for the team everybody wants to be on. For example, Google recruits on the basis of having passion, intelligence and a “learning animal mindset”. The insight here is to look for potential stars who are looking for challenges and a place where they can demonstrate their skills.
2. Healthy Heated Debates
The difference between HPT and LPT is that a heated debate doesn’t cause HPTs to fragment. Instead of becoming more isolated during tough times, these teams actually gain strength and develop cohesion. According to Gallup, HPTs contributed more equally to team’s discussions, rather than letting 1 or 2 people dominate the group. As a team leader you should make sure that everybody talks in equal measure and keep their contributions short. Team members should face one another keeping conversations and gestures energetic.
3. Diversity
Diversity unlocks innovation and drives market growth. Most engaged teams welcome diversity of age, gender, and race, while disengaged teams may do the opposite. Apple has made diversity a priority by hiring 65% more women, 50% more Black and 66% more Hispanic employees. In the process of putting together your team make sure you have people with different backgrounds, gender and strengths.
4. Mind Reading
Researchers from M.I.T. found that HPT members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes. It measures how well people read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible. It is also known that people with high emotional IQ work well with others and are effective in leading change. For instance, Google relies more on recruits with emotional intelligence rather than the grades they received in school. Therefore, find a suitable test or interview format to find people with higher emotional IQ.
5. More Women
In this case it is not “diversity” that matters for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women. Teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. Coming back to the previous point, it’s partly explained by the fact that women, on average, are better at “mindreading” than men. In order to have a HPT, recruit more women on your team or company who also have other “high-performing” qualities.
6. Laser-like Focus on Goals
HPTs are able to keep the larger goal in view. They are consistently able to put what’s best for the organization ahead of their own egos. In addition, they seek out evidence and try to remain as objective as possible. Once a decision is made, these teams are remarkably quick to rally around it. As a team leader, you should establish an overall goal and make it visible for the whole team and set key metrics to measure them. The most popular method for that is Objectives and Key Results, which is used by the likes of LinkedIn, Google and Intel.
7. Doing Your Best Every Day
Deloitte used the Gallup 1.4 million employee study to see what are the similarities between high and low performing teams. Most powerful commonality between HPTs is the belief that they are doing their best every day. In order to capitalize on that knowledge, team leaders should help team members to define their strengths and give tasks accordingly. For instance, Deloitte set out a clear goal: “We want to spend more time helping people use their strengths”.
8. Work-life balance
Most successful teams have members who are equally engaged to their personal lives as they are to their work. Mervyn Davies, former chairman of Standard Chartered’s, said that he took as much pride in the amount of time he spent with his family as he did in his bank’s extraordinary performance. Therefore, you should look for people who are equally committed to work and their free time.
9. Group Engagement Outside Formal Meetings
According to M.I.T. Human Dynamics Laboratory, the best predictors of productivity are team’s energy and engagement outside formal meetings. These two factors explained ⅓ of the variations in dollar productivity among groups. The laboratory used a call center for their study and asked the manager to make the employees have a coffee break at the same time. That little tweak increased the overall efficiency by 8% and 20% in worst-performing teams. As a team leader, make sure you create communication opportunities for your team outside the formal environment.
The reasons to digitize your records are simple: paper documents put your information at risk, cost you money and slow your business down.
