High-performing teams need flexible leaders

High-performing teams can provide a business with the ultimate competitive advantage. Teams are considered high-performing when they are very effective at producing superior results. High-performing teams take time to reach sustainable peak performance state and mature over a period of time. When a team is not yet high-performing, team leaders instinctively bemoan lack of productivity, but I want to suggest a different approach: hit your bemoan pause button and instead use a maturity model to make sure you are being the leader your team needs, a leader that provides your team with appropriate support. These four maturity models can help you better support your teams as they transition to high-performing teams.

One of the most popular team maturity models was proposed by Bruce Tuckman. Tuckman‘s model has 4 stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. These stages are all necessary for the team to grow, face challenges, identify solutions and ultimately execute as a high performing team to deliver results.

Leaders in this model have to adapt their style based on the team’s maturity. It may make sense to use a directing style in the forming stage but slowly change to a more participatory style and eventually move to a completely delegated style as the teams become autonomous. An obvious downside here is a leadership change will cause the teams to slip back into storming phase as a new leader challenges the existing norms.

Another popular model is the Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model. It was originally called the Life Cycle Theory of Leadership. The fundamental underpinning of this model is that there is no single effective leadership style and that it depends on the team’s maturity level, their goals, skills, and ultimately their willingness to take responsibility.

There are four stages in this model- Telling, Selling, Participating, and Delegating. The model is very similar to Tuckman’s as the leader changes their behavior from directing at the task level to ultimately delegating completely to teams.

Katzenbach and Smith proposed a similar type of team development model that describes the journey of a working group to a high-performing team using a team performance curve. They define a high-performing team as:

“A small group of people so committed to something larger than themselves that they will not be denied.”

In a working group, the team members make decisions to help each individual perform within their area of responsibility where as in a high-performing team, the team members are deeply committed to each other’s personal growth and success while outperforming all other teams.

Another recent entrant on team maturity models is Brandon Hall Group’s High Performance Team Framework. This model focuses on four key areas- Team Strategy, Team Selection, Team Development and Team Performance. As part of the Team Strategy, the framework proposes that high performance teams need a coherent mission that aligns individuals and teams to organizational goals. Team Selection focuses a lot on who is on the team and their communication and decision making styles. Team Development has a lot to do with the team learning by suspending assumptions and genuinely thinking together. Lastly, teams are high performing only when individuals transition to leaders and the teams feel accountable and know the impact they want to make.

At the end of the day, all these frameworks and models are communicating similar concepts. As leaders of your teams, here are some tips to take home:

• Understand that it takes time for teams to mature and reach a sustainable high-performing state. Support your teams by being there and being calm.
• Provide a meaningful purpose that aligns with your organizational objectives. A well defined purpose can act as a powerful tool to shape the behaviors of your team-members.
• Be flexible and adapt your leadership style as the situation demands. This will require you to set aside your personal beliefs and prejudices and believe in the team maturity model.