What percentage of teams are highly performing?

According to Gordon Curphy, an eminent scholar on teams, only 20% of teams are highly performing. Do you believe it? I do.

I’ve worked with many teams across various industries over the years and have only encountered a few that are consistently performing at a high level.

Why is this?

Poor leadership. According to Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, the authors of Extreme Ownership, there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
Too much churn. There are companies out there who are addicted to reorganizing and it wreaks havoc on team performance.
Bad actors. Some teams have the presence of members who are actively disengaged and it affects the team’s morale and performance.
Members of the team are not getting along. The presence of acrimony between team members also affects morale and performance.
Lack of focus on team cohesiveness. Some teams are so flat out busy that they never work ‘on the team’, which means that little issues that could be resolved with some focused effort get ignored and become bigger.
Brand new team. There are newly formed teams that need to go through the stages of development before they can become highly performing.
Company in a downward spiral. When the ship is sinking, it’s hard to be highly performing amidst the doom and gloom.
No training and development. If no one is getting training, coaching, mentoring or sponsorship, how will they get to the next level of performance?
Lack of resources. When you have outdated materials and no budget, high performance is really challenging.
Irrelevance. The company is probably going to shut down the team but hasn’t yet.
No why. The team doesn’t understand why they exist and what they are driving towards as their north star.
Lack of clear priorities. The team’s busy but not aligned and rowing in the same direction.
Disconnection with stakeholders. Outside stakeholders are not feeling as if the team’s focused on the right priorities.
Lack of accountability. The leader doesn’t model accountability and peer-to-peer accountability is non-existent.

Undoubtedly there are other reasons why teams don’t get in that rarified 20% group. If your team isn’t there, which of the reasons above stand out to you?

A few of these areas are difficult to address – downward spiral and irrelevance – whereas others are very much in your control. Know this, your team likely knows if they are highly performing or not. Furthermore, your team likely aspires to be highly performing.

You are the linchpin to take them there. Here’s the approach.

First, identify which factors on the list above are causing your team to underperform.

Second, if it’s something you need to handle such as helping two team members get back to a positive working relationship, or modeling accountability, get to it.

Third, if you believe the team doesn’t know their ‘why’ or is confused about priorities, prepare your talking points, then pull them together and have a thorough conversation to ensure they leave with clarity.

Fourth, if managing up is needed to get better resources to support the team, prepare your argument and go to upper management to get this approved.

Fifth, have the conversation with the team that you want them to be in the 20% of highly performing teams and are open to feedback about what you can do differently to lead them there. Also, open it up to discussion about what the team can do differently. This should be the first in a series of meetings where the team works ‘on the team’. Once a month is a good cadence for such a meeting.

You can lead a stronger team. Imagine how rewarding it will be to join the 20%! Start now.

Study our other resources and consider coaching to further your development. To further assist you, we’ve created the Building a Cohesive Team self-assessment to help you identify opportunities to strengthen collaboration, trust, and alignment within your team, or check out our team coaching services.

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