Is Your Leadership Preventing Your Team from Achieving Its Potential?
Are you a leader looking for ways to help your team be more successful? Do you worry that you might be preventing your team from reaching its full potential? In this episode of The Leadership Hustle, learn how different stages of teams impact how high performing they are and discover strategies for developing successful teams. Get the knowledge you need to focus on the bigger things without worrying about your team's performance.
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High-Performing Teams: Is Your Leadership Preventing Them?
Do you have a high-performing team in your organization? Or are you still doing most of the job by yourself because you aren’t properly delegating tasks?
A lot of the time, our leadership can be lacking and prevent our team from reaching its full potential.
In this Leadership Hustle podcast episode, Andrea Fredrickson and Michelle Hill discuss what you need to be doing to develop your team in the right way.
What is a Team?
Before exploring all the right ways to develop a high-performing team, we must first understand what a team is.
A team is typically thought of as a group of people who follow the direction of one leader, waiting for instructions. While this definition is not wrong, it is definitely not one that describes a high-performance team.
Have you ever been part of a team where everyone knows their role and proactively performs their tasks without having to constantly ask their boss what to do?
This is the type of team we want to have in our organization: full of accountable and responsible people.
So, how do you develop your team to be like that?
Stages of High-Performing Teams
First, we must understand the stages of strong team development. Fredrickson and Hill highlight four essential stages for any team.
Forming: This is when a new member is introduced into the team. It's a time of getting to know each other and understanding the team dynamics.
Storming: In this stage, expectations are clarified. What does the leader expect from the new team member? What are the performance standards?
Norming: This stage involves working through expectations, having difficult conversations, and solving any discrepancies within the team to reach a healthy dynamic.
Performing: At this stage, team members have each other's backs, can solve problems, and hold themselves and others accountable.
By taking new and current team members through these critical stages, you are making sure they develop to their highest potential and performance.
High-Performing Teams vs. High-Performance Individuals
After decades of working in leadership development, Michelle and Andrea have seen a lot of leaders who believe that a group of high-performance individuals equals high-performing teams.
However, this is far from the truth. A high-performing team is not merely a collection of professional individuals; it's a cohesive unit that collaborates effectively, communicates openly, and holds each other accountable for shared goals.
Why Can’t Some Leaders Develop High-Performing Teams?
While most leaders have the best intentions at heart, many of them unknowingly hinder their teams from reaching their full potential or won’t let them go through the four development stages.
There are various ways in which leaders stop their team from reaching high performance, like solving every problem that arises instead of letting their team do it.
Team members become accustomed to the leader stepping in, causing them to be less proactive and accountable.
Some people also tend to micro-manage their team, take on extra responsibility, and won’t let them make their own decisions.
This kind of leadership style can lead to a high-performance individual who excels in their specific role but fails to function cohesively as a team or manage bigger decision-making projects.
What do Leaders Need to do to Have High-Performing Teams?
To prevent a team from stagnating, leaders must shift their focus from solely driving individual performance to fostering a culture of teamwork and shared responsibility.
Set Clear Expectations
Leaders should set clear expectations. Every team member should be aware of their roles, expectations, responsibilities, and the goals they are working towards.
Foster Autonomy and Ownership
Leaders must also create a culture that encourages autonomy. Let your team take control of their projects.
Ask to be kept in the loop, but allow them the freedom to solve problems independently. This approach not only empowers your team but also develops their problem-solving skills.
Avoid Micromanagement
Micromanagement kills creativity, hampers growth, and creates a dependency culture within the team.
Resist the urge to control every detail. Instead, trust your team's abilities and give them the space to excel in their respective roles.
Promote Accountability
When team members are held accountable for their tasks, they become more invested in their work and can work with others to reach a common goal.
Leaders can promote accountability by setting measurable, providing constructive feedback, and recognizing the efforts and achievements of team members.
By implementing these changes, leaders will not just be managing a group of high-performance individuals but leading a high-performing team.
Contact Revela and Start Developing High-Performing Teams
If you are struggling to implement these changes in your organization, you have come to the right place. Let us help develop your team to its full potential.
Why wait? Start building your high-performing team today! Contact Revela and start scaling your business.
About the Hosts
Andrea Fredrickson
Andrea Fredrickson is a thought leader and consultant at Revela, an organization based in Omaha, Nebraska specializing in the development of leaders, culture alignment, and business strategy for private and family businesses of all sizes. Revela is one of the region's most experienced thought challengers, helping individuals and companies find their greatness. Andrea has built an amazing team by believing that fundamentally people want to be successful and become better versions of themselves.
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Andrea has degrees in education, management, and business. She is the author of Insight Unseen; How to lead with 20/20 business vision. She helps people see things differently, self-reflect, and never stop looking for ways to improve themselves on a personal and professional level. Andrea has spent more than 30 years researching and developing methods to help people communicate and lead more effectively.
When Andrea isn’t working with clients, you’ll find her spending time with her family & friends and making memories by exploring new cities.
Michelle Hill
Michelle Hill is a master facilitator and coach at Revela, an organization specializing in the development of leaders and aligning the culture of privately held and family businesses of all sizes. Revela is one of the region's most experienced thought challengers, helping individuals and companies find their greatness.
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An ambitious leader, Michelle has the natural ability to create forward momentum to build teams and get results. She inspires others to look within themselves and to challenge the status quo. She helps create high-performing environments. Michelle brings a diverse background: operations, employee development, and sales in the steel, hospitality, and consulting industries.
Outside of work, you will see her competitive side engaged in her daughter’s sports and ISU athletics. She loves life, her four-legged companions, and captures all the moments through her camera’s lens.
TRANSCRIPT
Andrea Frederickson: On this episode of The Leadership Hustle, we're going to show you how you're preventing your team from becoming high performance. Hello, and welcome to the Leadership Hustle. For executives whose companies are growing fast and need leaders who are ready. As executives and leaders, we get into the routine of answering questions, solving problems, sending emails, going to meetings, and that routine becomes just part of what we do every day we're reacting. Have you ever thought about the that process, though, where maybe you are preventing your team from being all it actually could be?