What do these teams have in common?
Formula 1 pit crews
Navy Seals
Chicago Bulls of the 90s
They’ve all had a healthy dose of paranoia that creates a better-every-day, incremental fine-tuning, mentality that creates ongoing excellence.
I see it with teams I coach, great teams can take for granted their success. But what does it look like to keep your high performing team elevating every quarter?
Today I share the qualities that will enable your team continue their run with high performance.
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Understand the Magic
The best teams have a high level of conscious competence.
They understand the ingredients and levers to pull to get the team firing on all cylinders.
For teams I’m lucky enough to work with, we generate data using Squadify for insights into the 3 Conditions for Success — Clarity, Climate, and Competence. We use this data to spark dialogue, identify growth areas, and then repeat the process at a regular cadence.
Through this cyclical process, teams elevate their consciousness around the conditions that enable their success.
You can do this, too.
In an upcoming team meeting or offsite, facilitate a discussion aiming to understand and vocalize the magic within the team.
What are the superpowers of this team?
What’s enabled our recent success?
What are we at risk of taking for granted?
Your goal is to collectively discuss the mechanics and values that underpin the team’s stellar performance.
Do your best to separate out external factors and focus in on the elements the team controls and manages.
In a shared space, document the team’s findings in this session. These points can be what you revisit as your future points of leverage.
(Of course, a quick plug…if you’d love a data driven approach, I’m happy to show you what that looks like using Squadify.)
Learn from the Magic
Understanding what enables your team success is important.
And truly great teams build a “learning muscle.”
Here’s how Dan Hammond, legendary coach and co-founder of Squadify, describes it:
It’s the constant ability to spot what isn’t working and correct it.
That habit of ongoing improvement matters more than whatever level a team is currently at.
In other words, how often is your team looking in the mirror and course correcting?
Formula 1 pit crews record every stop on high-speed cameras to find mistakes that take mere milliseconds.
The Navy Seals are famous for after action reviews, featuring radical accountability.
The Chicago Bulls were obsessive about practice, correcting the smallest flaws in their game.
Here are some areas for you to consider with your team:
Clarity
What gaps in goal clarity might we have?
In what ways might we not be clear on roles & how to work together?
Where have we gotten fuzzy on alignment with success metrics?
Climate
What shifts in decision making and autonomy might not be serving us?
In what ways have we silenced or amplified certain voices?
What else would make this a team people want to work with and within?
Competence
What changes are we seeing in folks putting their interests over the team’s?
In what ways might we have slowed down on delivering on our commitments?
What emerging skills gaps might we need to get ahead of?
Implementing a regular, judgment free, process for retroactively evaluating what the team has done and their opportunities to learn and grow is key to extending your season of high performance.
Point of reflection: to what extent does my team have a strong learning muscle?
Spread the Magic
High performing teams can be at risk of becoming siloed in their success. Seeing themselves as outstanding outliers, and at worse, embodying an us vs them superiority.
Great teams spread their magic, becoming generous models (and mentors) of greatness at an enterprise level.
I remember one of the key strengths my L&D team had was the way in which we operated as connective tissue within the organization.
We had incredible talents in being able to gain consensus, involve the right stakeholders, move decisions quickly, and identify gaps in strategic plans.
Rather than keeping those skills to ourselves, we worked to lead the charge in helping others gain confidence and competence in those areas.
In what ways might your team become generous with helping to develop folks across the business?
Point of reflection: In what ways can my team help lift the overall business?
Prepare for Loss of Magic
This is my favorite element to discuss with teams.
It feels awesome to be a high performing team when things go well.
But how about that sudden re-org? Or the policy change that just hit your customers? Or the product roll out that has set everyone’s hair on fire?
The best teams know how to bounce back.
They have a level of resilience rooted in awareness of their levers, supported by their values, and reinforced with practice.
I’ve been working with one particular team who we’ve dubbed Team Ferrari because they’re incredibly strong and they need fine-tuning vs an engine overhaul.
They are weeks away from making a very critical decision about the fate of their work and their team. It’s not going to be black and white. They have complex data to weigh against business strategy and instincts.
Rather than taking for granted that this high performing team will sail through this challenge, we’re front loading the conversation. We’re talking about:
Creating clarity around decision making processes
Aligning on norms for challenging one another
Discussing how they want to present a united front to stakeholders
Envisioning who this team will be on the other side of the decision
Resilience doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a conscious practice, grounded in honest preparation.
The best teams look ahead and prepare for the unknown.
Point of reflection: in what ways is my team prepared to thrive through our next challenge?
Summary
High performing teams don't coast on talent.
They understand their own magic, keep a sharp learning muscle running, share what they know with the rest of the org, and prepare deliberately for the moment things get hard.
That's the difference between a team that peaks once and legendary teams that keep performing quarter after quarter.
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That’s it for today! I’d love to hear what resonated. Hit Reply or drop a comment.
As always, be human and hold a high bar,
- Katie
I’m Katie O’Brien Ceccarini!
I help leaders drive stronger business results through group training & coaching.
I’m also an author, mom, triathlete, & aspiring cowgirl who loves a good martini.
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Great piece! The athlete analogy resonates a lot as a former D1 volleyball player. As an athlete, you always are looking at ways to improve and not stopping when you reach your first success. The real unlock and harder thing to do is to make that a repaeatable process, which requires constant evaluation and improvements.