What Does a High Performing Team Look Like?

72% of all organisations Bandran Hall Group surveyed reported team performance has a positive effect on overall productivity. But what attributes produce a high performing team? Discover if your team is displaying traits of a high performing group with our guide below.

The Team is Cohesive.

Teams with a high level of cohesiveness are successful with their business ventures. Cohesiveness can be defined as the degree of every team member corporates and remains united when working towards a common goal. According to Schneider, Gruman and Coutts Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems – high performing teams may not always agree, but their differences don’t affect the achievement of the goal.

Richard Daft and Dorothy Marcic wrote in Understanding Management  – a high performing team will respect their team members and assume the rest of the team are acting on the best intentions for the sake of the task.  They tend to focus on the task ahead of them, instead of how the individual feels about each decision. Fully committing to decisions creates a sense of shared responsibility. This increases communication, producing a higher morale, a friendlier environment and loyalty to the group.

The dedication to the tasks allows the team to feel united and happy when the team succeeds, raising an individual’s self-esteem to feed into an increase in performance. Unsure how cohesive your team is? Place your team on the path to high performance with Cognisess Team Fit.  Assess their cohesiveness and compare employee attributes. Team Fit collates the data into a user friendly graph, allowing you to observe how dynamic your team is. A strong team will have a varied skill set, for instance, if one individual’s weakness is creativity it will be another’s area of expertise.

Individuals Have a High Level of Emotional Intelligence.

According to Judith Ross in “Make Your Good Team Great,” Building Team Trust and Cohesiveness high performing teams display a high level of emotional intelligence. This is the ability to perceive and understand emotions. Each high performing team member trusts one another, has confidence in themselves and has a strong team identity.

A study by Myra Beam on Emotional Intelligence and Team Cohesiveness found emotional intelligence positively feeds into a team’s level of cohesion. Emotional Intelligence enhances decision making, regulation and self-management, which are important in teamwork. Emotional intelligence is a measurable dimension on Cognisess Pro through a variety of assessments, including the Emotion Test and Emotional Self-Appraisal. Discover how emotionally intelligent your employees are individually to be a stronger team long term.

An emotionally intelligent team practises these three key methods that organisational behaviour experts, Vanessa Druskat and Stephen Wolff, uncovered:

Allocating time to appreciate individuals skills.

Managers organise team building activities as an opportunity to appreciate everyone’s skillset. Participating in games aid discovery of individual skills on a personal level. The activity is usually organised outside their normal working hours and location.

Team members who interact away from their normal environment will have greater empathy for each other and a sense of togetherness. Teams must develop a sense of awareness of each others skills and personality. If employees are well acquainted they gain a higher level of trust with each other. Trust improves motivation and if individuals are more motivated, they are also committed to being high performers.

Discovering a method to diffuse negative emotions.

Tackling the emotional concerns of the team are essential to remain on track to success. Managers aim to establish with the team how they will express any tension, anger and frustration that can occur when working in a project –  converting it into positive energy.

Team members could participate in a weekly half an hour meeting to voice any grievances and share how they are feeling with one another. This platform allows employees to tackle issues with each other, which could have produced a negative atmosphere long term.

Celebrate their success.

A high performing team needs to have the opportunity to express positive emotions, such as admiration, to build their collective emotional intelligence. The recognition of their achievements will cement the team’s identity, showcase their effectiveness and their ambition for excellence.

A high performing team is not a rare occurrence, it is an achievable goal accomplished by  focusing on your team’s skills, cohesiveness and emotional intelligence. But you cannot start a journey if you don’t know where you’re going. Cognisess Pro is able to support a team’s development with AI analytics, kickstarting your journey to high performance. Start your journey today to a better team and a better business.

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