Resilient High-Performing Teams
In small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), numerous challenges often pave the road to success. Among these, cultivating resilient high-performing teams ranks high. Teams form the core of any business, with their performance directly impacting organisational success.
Characteristics of Resilient High-Performing Teams
High-performing, resilient teams are the lifeblood of successful small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Understanding the characteristics that define these teams is crucial for fostering a productive and resilient workforce.
- Team Confidence: High-performing teams exhibit a strong sense of collective confidence. This is not merely an aggregation of individual confidence but a shared belief in the team’s ability to navigate challenges and deliver results. They trust each other’s expertise and have faith in their collective capacity to succeed.
- Shared Understanding: These teams have a clear, shared understanding of their goals, roles, and responsibilities. They are aligned in their mission and know what they are working towards. A shared understanding eliminates ambiguity, facilitating efficient execution of tasks.
- Effective Communication: Open and transparent communication is common among high-performing teams. They regularly exchange ideas, provide constructive feedback, and resolve conflicts healthily and respectfully.
- Flexibility and Adaptability: Resilient teams are adaptable. They are adept at pivoting their strategies based on changing circumstances. They can improvise, innovate, and adjust their plans as required, demonstrating flexibility.
- Psychological Safety: High-performing teams value psychological safety, where members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, suggestions, and concerns without fear of reprisal. This cultivates trust, encourages creativity, and fosters robust problem-solving.
- Commitment to Continuous Learning: These teams are committed to continuous learning and improvement. They regularly reflect on their performances, learn from their experiences, and actively seek opportunities for growth and development.
For instance, companies like Google and Pixar have excelled in creating high-performing, resilient teams by fostering these characteristics. They encourage open communication, emphasise psychological safety, and promote a culture of continuous learning. As a result, their teams are equipped to navigate the dynamic business landscape, overcoming obstacles and consistently delivering high-quality work.
Building Resilient High-Performing Teams
1. Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Building resilient teams begins with hiring the right talent. This should involve skillsets, cultural fit, adaptability, and alignment with the company’s values. SMEs like Stripe excel in this through a rigorous recruitment process focusing on technical skills, adaptability, and cultural fit.
2. Defining Clear Roles and Responsibilities
One of the essential elements in building high-performing, resilient teams is defining clear roles and responsibilities. Clarity of roles promotes accountability, fostering a culture of responsibility and mutual respect. When team members know their roles, who they report to, and what they are accountable for, it eliminates confusion, reduces overlapping duties, and increases efficiency.
Moreover, when roles are clearly defined, team members are more likely to take ownership of their tasks, increasing job satisfaction and productivity. This also reduces the likelihood of conflicts and misunderstandings arising from blurred lines of responsibility, which is especially critical during stress or crisis.
An SME that exemplifies this is Canva. Their team structure clearly outlines roles, ensuring everyone knows what is expected of them. They have diverse roles ranging from graphic designers responsible for creating the design templates, product managers overseeing the development of new features, data analysts providing insights on user behaviour, customer support specialists handling user inquiries, and software engineers maintaining the platform’s stability.
A clear role definition is even more beneficial when considering cross-functional collaboration. For instance, in a marketing project, the role of a content strategist might include researching and creating content ideas that align with the company’s marketing strategy. On the other hand, the social media manager would be responsible for planning the content distribution across different social media platforms, while a graphic designer would create visual elements for the content.
As such, understanding everyone’s role in a project fosters better collaboration as it allows for smoother delegation of tasks, helps identify the need for specific skills, and promotes greater accountability.
In a crisis or a team member’s absence, clearly understanding roles and responsibilities can enable other team members to step in more effectively. They will know the tasks that need to be performed and can adapt accordingly to ensure continuity of operations.
3. Setting Shared Goals and Objectives
Setting shared goals and objectives is critical in building a resilient and high-performing team. Goals provide a clear direction for a team, enabling members to collectively understand what they’re working towards. The significance of shared goals cannot be understated, as they foster a sense of unity, coordination, and purpose within the team. Moreover, they serve as a roadmap to success, delineating a clear path for the team. Shared goals become vital when a team’s resilience is tested in times of adversity. Having a common objective allows the team to focus and pull together, which can be a deciding factor between succumbing to challenges or overcoming them triumphantly.
One practical methodology that can help set shared goals and objectives is the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach. Originated by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the BSC is a strategic planning and management system used extensively in businesses worldwide. It allows organisations to align business activities with the vision and strategy of the organisation, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organisational performance against strategic goals.
The beauty of the Balanced Scorecard is that it looks at the organisation from four different perspectives to determine what shared goals should be set:
- Financial perspective: Examines financial performance and the use of financial resources.
- Customer perspective: Focuses on customer satisfaction and relationships.
- Internal process perspective: Look at organisational efficiency and how well the business runs.
- Organisational capacity perspective: Centers on employee training, corporate culture, and continuous improvement.
For instance, an SME like Slack uses the Balanced Scorecard methodology to set clear, measurable goals for their teams. By doing so, they align their teams with the company strategy, ensuring everyone is working towards the same objectives. This drives unity and purpose within the team, creating a resilient workforce capable of dealing with the rapid changes and challenges in today’s business landscape.
Shared goals and objectives, especially when created using a strategic approach like the Balanced Scorecard, can serve as the glue that binds a team together. They steer the team in a unified direction and foster resilience in adversity.
4. Cultivating Team Confidence
Cultivating team confidence is integral to building a resilient, high-performing team. This collective confidence isn’t merely the sum of individual confidence but a shared belief in the team’s collaborative capabilities.
The cornerstone of cultivating team confidence is clear communication of goals and expectations. This provides direction and makes the team feel more prepared and capable of achieving these objectives. Leaders play a pivotal role here, demonstrating faith in the team’s abilities, highlighting past successes, and recognising each member’s value.
Teams are more confident when they are encouraged to participate in decision-making processes. This empowers team members and fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility, enhancing confidence. For example, companies like Spotify have cultivated team confidence by encouraging team autonomy and allowing them to make decisions close to the action.
Finally, celebrating team victories, no matter how small boosts morale and confidence. Teams that regularly take time to acknowledge and appreciate their accomplishments collectively are more confident in their abilities to succeed. This confidence, in turn, fuels their resilience in overcoming adversities.
5. Creating a Roadmap for Teamwork
A roadmap outlines the roles and responsibilities of team members and how they interrelate. This foresight aids in planning and can be crucial during crises when one member needs to cover for another. It’s also about knowing who holds specific knowledge or skills to be called upon in times of need.
6. Encouraging Improvisation
Teams should be able to improvise, which comes from a thorough understanding of their roadmap and diversity of thought. This encourages team members to share, leading to creative problem-solving during crises.
7. Fostering Psychological Safety
A psychologically safe environment encourages team members to voice their thoughts without fear of reprisal. Such an environment is vital for resilience as it promotes open communication, trust, and mutual respect.
8. Continuous Learning and Development
Continuous learning promotes adaptability, equipping team members with the necessary skills to respond to changing market conditions. SMEs like Buffer provide continuous learning opportunities through various development programs.
SME Success Stories
Building a resilient team isn’t just theory; many SMEs have succeeded in this endeavour.
Example 1: Basecamp – With their lean yet highly effective team, Basecamp attributes their success to clear role definitions, open communication, shared objectives, and psychological safety. They maintain a flat hierarchy that promotes communication and innovation.
Example 2: TransferWise (now Wise) – This fintech company has achieved massive success thanks to its high-performing and resilient team. TransferWise focuses on hiring the right talent, cultivating a culture of team confidence, encouraging improvisation, and fostering a safe environment where everyone feels free to share ideas.
Example 3: Evernote – Despite turbulent times, Evernote has managed to bounce back due to its team’s resilience. Evernote emphasises shared goals and continuous learning, allowing them to adapt to changing market conditions and rebound from setbacks.
Navigating Team Challenges
While building high-performing, resilient teams is rewarding; it comes with its own set of challenges.
Dealing with conflicting personalities involves promoting a culture of respect and understanding. Recognising individual differences and leveraging them for the team’s benefit is a trait of successful SMEs like InVision. They promote a culture of inclusivity and respect, helping their diverse team work effectively together.
Overcoming communication barriers requires establishing clear, open communication channels and fostering an environment where all team members feel comfortable expressing their views.
Resistance to change, often a significant roadblock, can be addressed through effective change management strategies. Implementing a culture of continuous learning is a powerful method to tackle this. Shopify, an e-commerce platform, consistently encourages employees to learn and adapt to new technologies and trends.
Celebrating Success and Learning from Failures
Once a project or task is completed, teams need to take time to reflect and learn from their experiences. This is where debriefing sessions become crucial. Identifying the ‘roses’ (successes) and ‘thorns’ (challenges) encountered during the project can facilitate learning and better prepare the team for future challenges. This reflective process helps cultivate a culture of continuous improvement, a cornerstone for high-performing and resilient teams.
Building high-performing and resilient teams is an ongoing process that requires patience, persistence, and the right strategies. In adversity, such teams demonstrate exceptional capabilities in making sense of situations, coalescing, and persisting towards their goals. This resilience is the key to longevity and success in the challenging SME landscape. As you strive to build your high-performing and resilient team, remember the journey might be challenging, but the rewards, exemplified by SMEs like Basecamp, TransferWise, and Evernote, are undoubtedly worth the effort.
