How to know if your team is high-functioning

Here’s how to spot the difference between high- and low-performing teams, and what to do about it if you find yourself stuck in team dysfunction junction, writes Stephanie Bown.

As a performance coach and adviser to leaders and leadership teams for the past 20 years, I’ve had an incredible vantage point from which to observe what separates high-performing teams from dysfunctional ones. It all comes down to team dynamics – the nature of the interactions between team members.

High- v low-performing teams

High-performing teams are teams that effectively leverage collective capacity to achieve team synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergy is not a new concept. Human Synergistics – a global company devoted to the research and practice of team synergy (as their company name suggests) – defines it simply as being better together – delivering a better result together than any one individual could do alone. These teams are innovators; they leverage collective intelligence to find new solutions to existing challenges.

In contrast, dysfunctional teams deliver low performance. They operate like islands, focused on serving their own interests above the interests of the collective. It is particularly damaging to company culture if dysfunctional dynamics play out in the top team. The ways in which leadership teams interact set a tone that resonates throughout the whole organisation. When top teams are stuck in dysfunction junction, we see a silo mentality, internal competition, and politics play out, which wastes effort and distracts people from achieving company directives.

Somewhere in the middle are functional teams. Functional teams will often meet the standard required. But they will rarely go beyond the exceptional. Functional teams are great collaborators – they are great at finding the member with the most expertise and collaborate well with them to achieve the outcome. Most teams will find themselves somewhere in this middle ground, missing out on taking that next step towards high performance – elevating beyond their best.

Human Synergistics research suggests that one in three teams will realise team synergy when tested with a problem-solving task. In my experience, it’s more like one in five when the complexities of real workplace challenges come into play. This means there is an enormous amount of latent potential in teams just waiting to be realised!

How to spot the difference

How do you know if your team is high-functioning? You can spot a high-performing team by observing their interaction dynamics. There are five basic observable functions that determine the nature of team interactions, and these are:

• Contribution – the proportion of individual contribution to the group.
• Voice – the honesty and diversity of views shared.
• Listening – the degree to which ideas are understood and incorporated.
• Questioning – the degree of curiosity, inquiry and testing of ideas.
• Decision making – the process for how decisions are ultimately made.

High-functioning teams are actively leveraging collective potential to perform better together than any single individual could do on their own. This is a high-trust, high-respect environment in which members feel safe to openly challenge, question and explore ideas. In high-functioning teams:

• Contribution is proportionate – it’s afforded to the individuals who have the most knowledge, experience or responsibility to contribute, depending on the nature of the problem to be solved.
• Voice is diverse – there is diversity of thinking and an acceptance that increasing breadth and depth of ideas contributes to better solutions.
• Listening is active – individuals do not only listen but seek to confirm their understanding by paraphrasing and checking in.
• Questioning is exploratory – expanding on good ideas and opening further possibilities for new and different pathways.
• Decision making is characterised by consensus. Just because all individuals have power does not mean they will wield it. Decisions are driven by a desire to find the best solution for the business or organisation.

Dysfunctional teams are stuck in dysfunction junction, working in ways that slow or hinder performance of the collective. Because members fundamentally lack trust and respect, they are more concerned with self-preservation. In these teams:

• Contribution is unbalanced – dominant voices tend to fill the space.
• The voice is masked – true opinions are hidden to fit in.
• There is no listening, only turn-taking.
• Questioning is for the purpose of leading to foregone conclusions.
• Decision making is characterised by conformity to those with the most positional or perceived power.

Leaders need to lean in

The imperative for team synergy is stronger than ever. It’s not enough just to hire great people; we need great teams. We need to activate the collective pool of intelligence of our existing workforces and realise their full potential to not just meet the demands of today but also prepare our organisations for the change of tomorrow. By asking more questions, encouraging more honesty, sharing authentically, and listening with a more open mind, leaders can enable their teams to turn up, lean in, and leverage collective capacity.

Stephanie Bown is an author, speaker, and high-performance partner.