Author: Garrick Throckmorton– Chief Product and Services Officer

When was the last time you accomplished a major work milestone in total isolation? Without dependence upon another department’s resources or expertise? Without consulting others for guidance, input, troubleshooting? If you have to think back to your high school science class where you collected leaves, you are likely getting warmer! Our organizations depend upon high performing teams to drive effectiveness for great and obvious reasons. The power of a team cannot be replaced by the power of an individual.

If Teams are important, we must ask ourselves, what are the ingredients of high performing teams? Further, how does our current business environment alter the answer to this question? Beyond having the right expertise in the room, high performing teams are a collection of human behaviors that must be matched to the context in which they operate. Said differently, a high performing team in one organizational context, may not succeed inside another. These variables can be challenging to control without the appropriate team tools and science to drive the composition and development of teams.

Consider what is at risk. Poor performing teams create sub-par innovations, they hold onto the status quo, have elevated levels of politics and low levels of psychological safety. Poor performing teams miss deadlines, produce work that is binary in its thinking, and have a troublesome time attracting/retaining talent. High performing teams on the other hand make the news (internally or externally). They have prominent levels of trust, psychological safety is intact, dependability is deeply rooted, their structure is reliable, and they are engaged in seeing the meaning of their work. With elevated expectations they attract top talent and they win.

For this opportunity, we developed the KSAT (The Knowledge, Skills and Attributes of Teams) performance library. Evidenced based, and experienced tested, KSAT allows you to focus on the Drivers and behavioral Practices needed to produce a high performing team while considering your unique work context (i.e. not off an off the shelf solution). For an example, let’s take the great work accomplished at Google in Project Aristotle.

After studying 100’s of teams, Google Manager Julia Rozovsky concluded that five elements made the difference in performance at Google. For simplicity sake, below you will find 2 of those key elements discovered inside the Google context, mapped to our KSAT Team Drivers and Practices. Why? Ultimately, to impact high performance we need to go from the abstract and theoretical, to the observable behavior level to create a common language of leadership. In doing so, we can select the right team members, develop the right team behaviors, and create exceptional outcomes.

Learn more about our research-based Team solutions by viewing our Interactive Brochure below, or by joining one of our upcoming All-Access Certification Programs soon!