Want to Shape a High-Performing Team? Here's how

One of our corporate clients has been working on building their teams to be high(er)-performing, which is a worthy goal irrespective of whether you’re the function’s manager, a specific team’s leader, or a member of that team. Who wouldn’t want to be part of an awesome team?! Given the universal appeal of this goal, I thought it would be helpful to share some general tips on boosting team performance.

You’ve probably heard of the forming-storming-norming-performing-adjourning model of the stages a new team goes through. It’s also known as the FSNPA model and is built on Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 theory on the stages of group development. It highlights that conflict and tension arise as the team evolves. While that model is simple, I find teams (and their leaders) need more detail in order to diagnose the state of their team, and more direction in order to improve it. I therefore prefer another model, developed by Alan Drexler and David Sibbet, naturally called the “Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model”. 

Please be aware that shaping a high-performance team takes time, even with the conceptual support of a model, and willing participation of everyone involved. Developing humans (with all our brilliance, insecurities and quirks) is not as straightforward as a series of if-then processes. In fact, the stages in the Drexler-Sibbet approach don’t have to be linear – teams can move back and forth, repeating loops as needed. However, don’t be tempted to skip steps to speed up – you need to fully immerse the team in each one to ensure long-term success. Every group goes through every stage (even if they seem obvious or minor in your specific circumstances).

Read more to dive deeper into the stages of the Drexler-Sibbet model, which can help your team to discuss their purpose, build higher levels of trust and commitment, and reach their goals successfully (through disciplined execution). 

The Drexler-Sibbet model has 7 stages of team development: 4 developmental stages to build the team, and 3 performance stages to keep them delivering greatness. Another fundamental element is that the team starts higher-level, with more freedom to ideate, and then moves into more detail, becoming more realistic and grounded as the team better understands its members, goals and constraints. Once it starts to implement, it bounces to higher level concepts again.

The 7 steps each have an associated question to ask at that point, as well as feelings that arise during the stage, plus others once it has been successfully completed. To self-diagnose the state of your team, consider together which adjectives (feelings) apply to assess how far you are. Then, consider what you need to do together to reach the next stage. Remember that open conflict and discussion are better than leaving things simmering… unresolved aspects could derail the team later, requiring you to loop back to address them.

The 7 stages, with their respective question / overarching thought are:
1) Orientation: Why am I here?
2) Trust Building: Who are you?
3) Goal Clarification: What are we doing?
4) Commitment: How will we do it?
5) Implementation: Who does what, when, where?
6) High Performance: Wow!
7) Renewal: Why continue?

Stage 1: Orientation
During this initial stage of purpose and intention, the unresolved feelings are of disorientation, uncertainty and fear. Once the team has addressed the question of their ‘why’, they feel a sense of purpose and belonging and have a team identity.

Stage 2: Trust Building
While in the trust building stage, the feelings of caution and mistrust are common, with members feeling like they and others are putting up a facade. Once they know each other better, understand their collective skills and competencies, and form trusted connections, they have mutual regard. They feel they can rely on each other, and can be candid with each other.

Stage 3: Goal Clarification
In stage 3, the team decides what they will be doing (at a high-level): goals/targets, assumptions, constraints. Before this, they feel apathy, scepticism and irrelevant competition. Indicators of resolution are a shared vision, clear and integrated goals, and the team knows what the explicit assumptions are. 

Stage 4: Commitment
This fourth stage is about the team agreeing how they will perform e.g. timelines, budget, resources. Until this is achieved, they feel resistance and dependence. On completion of this stage, they have assigned roles, allocated resources and decisions have been made. 

Stage 5: Implementation
By now the team is questioning the details: what, when, where? They can feel conflict/confusion and non-alignment and be experiencing missed deadlines. After they’ve agreed, the outcomes are alignment, clear processes and disciplined execution. 

Stage 6: High Performance
In this stage, things begin to hum. But, the downsides that arise can be overload and disharmony among the team members. Once they work through these, they surpass results, feel synergy, and experience spontaneous interaction. The team requires little direction, respects and supports each other and focuses on delivering the common goals. High performance in action! 

Pro Tip: what keeps great teams at maximum performance is an attitude of continual learning and improvement i.e. resist the urge to rest on your laurels as the team may then regress. 

Stage 7: Renewal
In this final stage, the team questions whether it is necessary to continue working together. Members can be feeling bored or burnt out from the effort required in Stage 6. The environment, purpose or team composition may have changed – is regrouping needed? Upon resolution, there is recognition and celebration of what has been achieved, a feeling of mastery, and (if they continue) recommitment to staying together. 

To hear David Sibbet in action, and watch him sketch out his model, see this roughly 11 minute video:

We end this overview with some parallel thoughts on elements necessary for highly effective teams: 

• the purpose must be clear to all team members in the context of both the organisation and their specific team i.e. the team’s essence / ‘why’ 
  
• the people in the team should be competent, and the team processes/systems should be functional, with the right people doing the right things (matching their abilities and interests) 
  
• when issues arise, the team should work on them together to solve them i.e. psychological safety is important, with errors seen as opportunities to learn and improve 
  
• the team should have a shared fate: open sharing of the rewards of success and well as risks, issues and failures – this requires trust and commitment 
  
• the measures of success must be aligned to the purpose, and actively monitored to mitigate unintended consequences

What aspects have you found to be most important in the awesome teams you’ve been part of?