Principles for leading high-performing “core” teams

NOTE: This blog is the second post of a two-part series that focuses on the best practices for building and leading high-performing “core” teams.

Leading core teams

Communication, collaboration, and regular self-evaluation are key to leading core teams. This article covers leadership of core teams, including setting performance expectations, forming OKRs (objectives and key results), and team planning.

Probation and setting expectations

Many companies put newly hired team members on a probationary period, which typically can last up to 90 days. This gives both the employee and the employer a chance to decide whether or not the position is the right fit for them. It’s essential to use this time wisely to help make the best decisions for the future.

During the probationary period and beyond, managers should set clear expectations of what success looks like and what metrics will be used to measure it. This should be communicated to each new employee during the onboarding process.

Toward the end of the probationary period, managers should ask themselves if they can envision the employee as a high-performing core team member and whether or not the employee has the potential to be a role model for future hires. This is equally important to both the employer and the employee, as the new hires should feel comfortable with the position and understand if they are a good fit.

To ensure transparency and honesty in communication, the hiring manager may even ask the employee directly during a one-on-one meeting, “Do you think I can build a team with your leadership and why?” On the other hand, the employee can ask a manager: “Do you see me as a person with leadership skills based on how I performed during the probation period?”. Having an open and honest dialog is key to establishing the employee-employer relationship.

The answers to these questions offer another helpful indicator on the following:

• how this new hire can help to scale your teams
• how you can help the new hire to invest their best abilities into scaling your team

If a manager does not see the employee as being a good fit for the core team member role for which they were hired, they may decide to see if there’s another role that might be a better fit. Or, there could be a decision that the new hire is not a fit for the organization overall. The same is also true for an employee’s decision making, as the new hire can also decide that they do not fit the organization.

In this case, the best decision for the employee and the team is to amicably part ways before too much time is lost for either party. Dismissing or repurposing employees that aren’t a good fit is an essential part of building strong core teams. Remember that as a hiring manager, your responsibility is not to lose talent; even though an employee is not the best fit for your team, they could be an excellent match for another one.

The service provider mentality

During the probation period, both the new hire and the manager can notice some factors that influence the team performance, like lack of skills or misalignment with team values, etc. However, there is another factor to consider — the new hire mentality type. Usually, the hiring manager may notice the following mentality types:

• Service Provider
• Solution Provider

Both mentality types can come handy for different purposes. However, when building core teams try to avoid hiring the service providers. These types of employees treat their role like they are providing a service to the company and therefore don’t feel any ownership or responsibility. A service provider may focus on just completing the tasks outlined in tickets, but not question why these tasks need to be done; a service provider doesn’t grow with the company. As well as the service provider mentality prevents employees from being good role models to other team members. On the other hand, a solution provider considers the business requirements outlined in each ticket and discusses them with the product manager or owner to confirm the end goal of each ticket and collaborates with the product manager or owner and other team members to devise solutions that work for the product now and that consider the product’s future. Sometimes it’s difficult to identify the service provider employee because there isn’t a metric to assess attitudes and the quality of their work may actually be good. These team members may even meet or exceed the outlined expectations.

Leaders of high-performing teams

The single most significant way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit for organizations that recruit good people, nurture their leadership potential, and invest to continuously develop them with new experiences and growth opportunities.

Typically, team members don’t appreciate being micromanaged on the technical side, but they love being closely managed on the career side in support of their career growth. With that in mind, it’s recommended to concentrate on three key areas:

1. Daily development and coaching of team members.
2. Constant coaching of the leadership team.
3. Cultural and structural factors that impact the team’s and its members’ performance.

Make leadership coaching a habit and assess yourself as a standard practice. This will help to build and improve strong leadership skills throughout the organization. Regularly hold yourself accountable for doing a good job of coaching your team leaders by asking yourself the following:

• Am I spending at least 20% of my time directly coaching and working with the core team leaders in my organization?
• How do I encourage leaders to be direct and transparent with their team? Leaders being demonstrably direct and transparent encourages team members to do the same, and this facilitates honesty, transparency, and accountability, which are all essential ingredients to building high-performing core teams.
• Am I giving my leaders the space and time to learn from the experiences they are having?
• Am I actively encouraging to take risks when coaching employees and be accountable simultaneously?

Key factors of high-performing teams

The secret recipe for building high-performing teams is not in immediate perfection but in the regular discipline that continuously improves the team. For teams to be successful and effective, they need to be authentic. But what makes an authentic team? Concentrate on these three criteria:

• Shared objectives
• Interdependent work
• Team effectiveness regular reviews

The team should have objectives that are aligned with the company’s goals. Be flexible and revisit objectives regularly to ensure ongoing alignment as a tech startup’s goals are often dynamic and could change in direction and priorities. The team should also be flexible and have routines in place to review and adjust their objectives. Common and continuously discussed objectives keep the team unified and focused.

The talents of each core team member should complement the whole and create a healthy balance between roles and levels. Teams should have enough professionals and roles to be self-sufficient, which in turn helps with the work distribution and keeps the team self-driven.

Teams should be able to access information about their effectiveness overall and their personal performance without asking management. Management reporting software or tools that visualize a team’s performance should be accessible for the team to create an atmosphere of transparency and data-driven management.