The Passion Newsletter, September Issue, 2019 2The Passion newletter September 2019 | Page 24

THE ART OF PERFORMANCE
A high performing team needs to perfect the overall
dance as well as develop individual dancers.
“Alison Young”
With that in mind I just had one question to find a
solution to “what underpins a team’s success? The
personalities in it, the team leadership or simple luck?
Some teams certainly gel more quickly and seamlessly
than others, and go on to achieve great things. But that
doesn’t necessarily mean they are high performing-
there may be hidden and untapped potential in such
teams that, if explored and exploited, could help them
accomplish even more.
There are also teams that meet and even exceed
targets - but only at a high cost to team members, who
may suffer stress, even burnout, as a result. Should
teams like these be considered high performing when
there are such heavy personal costs at stake?
Consider, too, those teams that are high achievers despite their lack of collaboration with other teams:
they may be causing damage to members in terms of morale. These types may achieve well in the
short term, but their success may not be sustainable for the individuals in them over the longer term.
Diversity Squeezed Out
Teams that don’t take time out to reflect and learn may not be able to respond sufficiently to threats.
Sustainable high performance can only be built on a strong foundation that starts with;
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•
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The team knows that its work is needed and valued by the wider organisation say Rotary.
The criteria for success are shared, transparent and tangible.
Individual team members’ roles are understood and agreed by all team members.
Individual team role boundaries are negotiated and agreed.
It’s important to address each point here with the whole team present together so that no one is
left to second – guess or make assumptions, or question whether they can rely on their colleagues.
Team members need to talk about the interdependence of their roles and how their work fits into the
broader team; merely to assume that is the case without explicit agreement is not in itself enough to
build trust.
Team members need to have real dialogue about what sits below the intellect: emotions, beliefs,
motivations, behaviour and fears.
Furthermore, the team will benefit from shifting the focus away from developing individual dancers
and towards investing time in how they can perfect the dance. This means shifting the spot light off
individual team members and onto the dynamics of the team as a whole: the timing, the trust, the
communication.
A high performing team is one that meets its goals, creates sustainable high performance, develops
its members as individual leaders, and develops, learns and grows as a team. Sometimes the team
simply needs to pause, reflect, learn and integrate that learning before it can go faster again.
BY
Sylvia Ntongo.
MEMBER, ROTARACT CLUB OF KOLOLO.
PROUDLY SPONSORED BY THE ROTARY CLUB OF KOLOLO.
Rotaract District 9211
District 9211
The Passion
Bulletin
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