Building High-Performance Teams: Keys to Success

Sermon Summary

Building high-performance teams is a multifaceted endeavor that requires intentionality and strategic alignment. The journey begins with selecting performance-oriented individuals and positioning them for maximum impact. It's crucial to hire doers, not just thinkers, as it's easier to educate a doer than to activate a thinker. Once the right people are in place, clarity around the "what" and "why" of the team's mission is essential. This clarity defines the win and ensures that everyone is aligned with the organization's goals. Without this, teams may set their own, potentially lower, standards for success.

Organizing the team to support the "what" is the next step. The structure of the organization should facilitate the team's objectives, not hinder them. This requires orchestration and evaluation of all processes to ensure predictability and progress. High-performance teams thrive on making things more efficient and less complex, always striving for improvement.

From the employee's perspective, it's important to recognize when one's strengths are not being fully utilized. Employees should feel empowered to raise their hands and express a desire to shift responsibilities or join different teams where they can add more value. This requires a culture of open communication and a willingness from leaders to listen and adapt.

For both employees and employers, finding the intersection of skillset, passion, and internal wiring is key to job satisfaction and high performance. This alignment allows individuals to do what they are naturally good at, skilled in, and passionate about. It's a shared responsibility to create an environment where this alignment can occur, leading to a thriving organization.

Key Takeaways

1. performance teams start with selecting individuals who are doers and positioning them for maximum impact. It's easier to educate a doer than to activate a thinker, making it crucial to hire those who are action-oriented. This foundational step sets the stage for a team that is ready to achieve great things. [00:37]
2. Clarity of Purpose: Defining the "what" and "why" of a team's mission is essential. This clarity ensures that everyone is aligned with the organization's goals and understands what success looks like. Without it, teams may set their own standards, which might not align with the organization's vision.

3. Organize and Evaluate: The structure of the organization should support the team's objectives. Orchestration and evaluation are key to ensuring predictability and progress. High-performance teams thrive on making processes more efficient and less complex, always striving for improvement.

4. Empower Employees: Employees should feel empowered to express when their strengths are not being fully utilized. A culture of open communication allows individuals to raise their hands and seek opportunities where they can add more value. This requires leaders to listen and adapt, fostering a thriving environment.

5. Align Skills, Passion, and Wiring: Job satisfaction and high performance come from aligning one's skillset, passion, and internal wiring. This alignment allows individuals to do what they are naturally good at, skilled in, and passionate about. It's a shared responsibility to create an environment where this alignment can occur.

** [00:37]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[00:17] - Recap of High-Performance Team Essentials
[00:37] - Selecting Performance-Oriented People
[00:53] - Clarifying the What and Why
[01:31] - Organizing to Support the What
[02:10] - Orchestrate and Evaluate
[02:48] - Employee Perspective on Value
[03:09] - Thriving in the Right Role
[04:23] - Raising Your Hand for Opportunities
[05:28] - Manager's Role in Employee Success
[06:28] - Creating a Thriving Culture
[07:20] - Ambition and Career Goals
[08:38] - Ingredients for Job Satisfaction
[09:50] - Aligning Skills, Passion, and Wiring
[11:22] - Discovering Your Sweet Spot
[14:43] - Learning from Misalignment

Sermon Clips

Select performance-oriented people. If it's a team that's doing something, you need to hire doers, not just thinkers. It's easier to educate a doer than to activate a thinker. Very offensive. We talked about that last time, number two, so, so again, number one, select performance-oriented people. Position them for maximum impact. [00:00:38]

High-performance teams need that. What and why? Because that defines the win. And teams like to win. If we don't define the win, teams define their own win. And sometimes it's not. They might set the bar a little low. So they can win, right? Because I want to feel like I won, right? [00:01:18]

Organizations do what they're organized to do. So we need to make sure as leaders, that our organization is organized to support the what that we're asking our teams to engage with. And then number four is to orchestrate and evaluate everything. Everything gets orchestrated that this is how we do it here. [00:01:52]

Orchestration is predictability, evaluation is progress. And again, high-performance teams, they don't necessarily always want to be told how to do something, but what needs to be clear? And if there's a sense of orchestration and an evaluation, then things will get better because high-performance teams want to make things more efficient, less complex, and they want to make things better. [00:02:13]

Our fully exploited strengths are always the greatest value add to our organization, not our marginally improved weaknesses, because a weakness is just always going to be a weakness. So when that's the situation, I think this is when we literally or symbolically raise our hand and say, Hey, I would like to have an opportunity to either shift more of my time to X. [00:04:09]

I think I can add greater impact on the team if I had a different responsibility or a different assignment, and a secure leader or manager, when somebody comes to them and says, essentially, I want to make you more successful by being more successful, well then even if there's not anything I can do immediately, and generally you can't do anything immediately. [00:04:43]

One of my questions I always ask in one-on-ones is, what do you wish you could do more of? If you could rewrite your job description or the way it says on my little card is, what do you wish you could spend more time doing? Well, that opens up the door to a high-performance person saying, you know what? [00:05:50]

So when your skillset and your natural internal wiring is lined up with your passion and your interest, you're going to love your job because you're going to do something you're naturally good at. You're going to do something you're skilled at, and you're going to do something you're passionate about. So the responsibility of finding the intersection of those three things, the responsibility really belongs to both the employee. [00:09:45]

People come into the organization are rarely going to be optimally positioned for a variety of reasons. But over time, if our systems are good and our culture is good, and if we're paying attention and if they have permission to raise their hand, if we're asking good questions in our one-on-one, if we're doing employee satisfaction surveys. [00:10:44]

A high-performance team is made up of people who have discovered how to create greater overlap of those three things. And it's both their responsibility and our responsibility as managers to help them do that. There's a gentleman on our staff, I tempted to say his name, but I won't. He's been with us for 20 years. [00:12:26]

High-performance teams are made up of people who are high-performance oriented, but again, they're bringing a skillset and they're bringing their passion. And again, you get those things lined up, position them. It's gold. And then get out of the way, right? Because amazing things are going to happen. [00:13:49]

You don't want to waste the opportunity to learn from what you don't want to do. Goodness, that is exactly right. Yeah. Don't waste your sorrow, right? That's the name of a book I read years ago. Don't Waste Your Sorrows. It wasn't about this. As long as we're learning and feeling like, okay, I'm learning about what I don't want to do, what I'm not good at. [00:14:51]

Ask a question about this sermon

Chatbot

Transcript

What was the most surprising thing in this sermon?

Were there any personal stories shared?