What is a High Performance Team? Often referenced as HPTeams or HPTs, there seems to be a level of mystery behind them. Do they simply happen? Is there a secret to their creation? Or is there a specific strategy to help create these HPTeams out of ordinary teams?

At the basic level, an HPTeam is a group of individuals working together in harmony to achieve what others might think of as the impossible.  And frankly these tasks typically are impossible for the average team. We often hear about sports teams and athletes being "in the zone" and that's exactly what an HPT experiences. When fully charged an HPTeam can take on and achieve critical tasks quickly, efficiently, and with high accuracy. However as with anything labeled as "high performance," HPTs have difficulty maintaining their performance level without downtime, rest, and maintenance between challenges. And while HPTs need the downtime in order to remain effective, this does not necessarily remove the title from the team.
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Imagine a well maintained NASCAR race car for example. The car is a high performance car whether on the trailer or on the track. And even while on the track, the engine is not at full throttle for the duration of the race. The car also needs maintenance throughout the race and even between races. Being high performance takes maintenance and that is where most teams fail to make the connection and risk losing their title of being a High Performance Team. Managers also fail to understand this and expect that "once an HPT, always an HPT."  They too often expect that a weekend retreat or team building session is the one-time fix needed to gain the title of an HPTeam. They experience the initial success of an HPT, get excited, and expect more from their team.  Three to six months down the road they find their team weaker than when they started. Like the NASCAR example, HPTs must be maintained and require rest. Without this realization, newly formed HPTs often end as one-hit-wonders.

The concept of HPTs has been around for several decades and many companies have spent millions to transform their work teams into HPTs. Some have succeeded and many more have failed. Beyond team building exercises, companies have instituted corporate game rooms complete with ping pong tables, lounges, fitness rooms, as well as on-site daycare centers and many more amenities aimed at taking care of their company by taking care of their people.
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At the individual level, HPTeams are comprised of individuals with a shared vision, common goals, and desire to work in collaboration with others. Structure and planning are also important, however the team is more characterized as being highly responsive to the demands of the challenge at hand. Not even the most careful planning can consider all possibilities, and certainly not with any efficiency. This same concept has come to a realization within the project management world as well with a movement away from the more traditional project management methods toward more efficient and Agile methods. Also important to the maintenance of HPTs is constant feedback from team members, team leaders, and clients or stakeholders. An HPTeam must know what it is doing well in order to do more of that and to avoid those items that are causing setbacks and delays.

True HPTeams also become self-managed, self-correcting, and self-rewarding. Unfortunately this often leads to a slippery slope of independence and bad judgment. Ideally an HPTeam recognizes its leadership and management team as a "check-valve" to ensure that the team remains in balance.

There is no secret checklist or rule-book to create High Performance Teams. Like an individual person with individual needs, individual HPTs have individual HPT needs. In actuality, HPTs can be created rather quickly for one-time challenges, but at the conclusion of the task the team must undergo self-analysis to understand why it was that they were able to accomplish the seemingly impossible. The results of this analysis will then help the team and the team's management understand whether their team can be a true HPT with expectation to perform similarly as new challenges approach or whether the success was a result of temporary motivation rather than a desire to succeed based on sustainable inspiration and empowerment. If the team finds the latter to be the case (sustainable inspiration and empowerment), then an action plan for HPT maintenance should be considered in order to increase the likelihood of future success. If temporary motivation was the leading factor, then the management team must make a decision whether to risk future success based on future temporary motivations or invest in a team building program in order to rely on inspiration, sustainable energy, and empowerment thereby increasing the chances of future success with minimized risk.

Please visit hpteams.com for more information on HPTs, team building sessions, and leadership coaching.