High performing teams are one of the only sustainable competitive advantages you have left. Competitors can copy your ideas, match your prices and even recruit your star employee but they can never beat your high performing team.

Building a High Performing Team is better than a raise or a promotion when it comes to motivating your people to perform at their best.

People are more loyal to their team and their team leader than they are to your company. If you want to attract and keep the best people, make sure they are joining a high performing team with an effective team leader. Many team leaders are weak and inexperienced when it comes to building and leading teams.

People are the most engaged and effective when they have a clear vision, team goals, team values, code of conduct and a collaborative environment where it is okay to speak up and give open and honest feedback to each other and their leaders. Creating an environment where there is a high level of trust and respect is one of the best things a team leader can do.

Team Building Exercises & Assessments are a great way to motivate your team. Have each member of your team complete a Team Performance Assessment on their team. They will be asked questions about how effective they are in terms of making decisions, communicating, collaborating, overcoming challenges, being innovative and achieving team goals. This assessment will identify their team’s strengths and areas to improve. The team will review their assessment and work together to create an action plan to improve their overall performance. This collaborative exercise enables the team to discuss their long-standing challenges and gives them a plan to create the type of team that they would all like to be a part of. We all want to be a part of a winning team and doing an exercise like this creates a shared ownership and accountability for the team’s success.

4 Ways to Motivate your Employees using Courage, Growth, Discipline and Commitment

1. Courage means that your team is willing to set ambitious and exciting goals and will not back down when faced with challenges and obstacles. Team members are not afraid to speak up and push back when they do not agree with something. They have the courage to give open and honest feedback to everyone on the team including their team leader. Some teams are so busy being nice to each other that they never have the difficult conversations that they need to have to be successful. Having the courage to challenge the way things have always been done is often the only way to have a breakthrough in productivity.
   
   
2. Growth means that your people are continuously learning and growing each day. They have the opportunity to use their greatest strengths every day in the jobs that they do. One of our clients used to motivate their employees by offering them the opportunity to be promoted. Today they are finding that giving their people interesting work and an opportunity to learn and grow is even more motivating. They moved from a philosophy of UP or OUT to GROW or GO. The willingness to let your people try something new and allowing them to fail without punishment will build a sense of trust and respect for the team leader. This is also one of the best ways for your people to learn and grow.
   
   
3. Discipline means that the team has clear processes, systems and tools to do great work every day. They know that it is more important to complete a task correctly than to complete it on time. Rushing to meet unrealistic deadlines will create much more work afterwards to fix and redo things. They are clear about their priorities and will renegotiate deadlines and refuse projects that are not aligned with their team vision, goals and strategies. The team knows where they are going and what they can and cannot do successfully. They have the discipline to tackle unpleasant tasks quickly rather than procrastinating and hoping they will go away. When the same problems continually surface they have the discipline to re-invent a broken process in order to solve the problem for good. Continually fighting fires without planning and a clear and proactive strategy is one of the best ways to burn out your team members and kill their productivity.
   
   
4. Commitment means that everyone trusts and respects each other and they get things done in a collaborative and harmonious way. When they make a team decision they all buy in and make it happen together. They have strong agreed upon team values and they make decisions based on these values and then support each other 100%. Team members like each other and enjoy working together. They work hard and have fun at the same time. They have conflicts but they work them out quickly rather than ignoring their problems hoping that they will go away. When the team says they will do something you can trust that it will be done. They are committed to each other and they all take responsibility for the team’s success with no excuses or blame. “All for one and one for all” is their motto.

Maintain your competitive advantage by building a winning team. Successful teams attract and keep the best and the brightest people and together there is nothing that a high performing team cannot do!!!!

Building a High Performing Team is what Peak Performance 2 does best. Give Paul Fergus a call at 1-877-633-9555 or email him [email protected] and let us help you to bring your team to the next level of performance and achievement.