How to Build a High-Performing Team

In reality, a high-performing team consistently:

• Works towards shared goals
• Communicates effectively
• Makes sound decisions
• Adapts under pressure
• Delivers results

In brief, high-performing teams also demonstrate:

• Clear purpose - where everyone truly understands the team goals
• Defined roles - when responsibilities and accountability are clear and understood
• Constructive challenge - where ideas are questioned and tested, not dismissed
• Balanced contribution - the right balance of thinking / social / action behavioural styles the team needs
• Consistent execution - reliably turning ideas and plans into action.

To sum up, a high-performing team needs to be focused, aligned and behaviourally balanced.

While you can have a highly capable, skilled group of individuals, they may fall short of becoming a high-performing team.

In particular, symptoms can include:

• Poor communication
• Weak decision-making
• Lack of momentum
• Unfinished work
• Internal conflict or tension

To explain, this can happen because technical ability and team contribution are not the same thing.

In reality, true team performance depends on whether the team also has the right mix of behaviours to;

• Generate ideas
• Analyse options
• Organise work
• Drive progress
• Maintainin relationships
• Ensure completion

So, unless you achieve the right balance, even highly talented teams may underperform.

To explain, a high-performing team usually relies on behavioural diversity; different ways of thinking, contributing and working together.

Belbin defines this through nine Team Roles, which cover 3 core areas:

• Thinking
• Social interaction
• Action / delivery

To demonstrate this, success can be about ensuring the team is balanced. Not perfectly balanced, but with the appropriate level of representation of the actual roles that the team needs. And this can significantly vary depending on the purpose of each specific team.

With this in mind, here’s how the 9 Belbin Team Roles sit within the relevant categories mentioned above:

Thinking Roles

• Plant: generates ideas and solves complex problems
• Monitor Evaluator: provides objective analysis and balanced judgement
• Specialist: offers in-depth technical expertise

Social Roles

• Co-ordinator: clarifies goals and aligns people towards achieving them
• Teamworker: supports collaboration and team cohesion
• Resource Investigator: explores opportunities and builds connections

Action Roles

• Shaper: drives momentum and challenges thinking
• Implementer: turns ideas into practical action
• Completer Finisher: ensures high quality delivery and attention to detail

In summary, each role brings strengths and, just as importantly to understand, allowable and non-allowable weaknesses.

Therefore, high performance levels are typically based on achieving the appropriate team role balance for what the team requires. Not “brilliant individuals working in isolation”.

While a team may appear well-structured functionally, it may still fall short behaviourally.

For example, lets a Belbin Team Role Report identifies that a team has sufficient:

• Strong creativity (Plants)
• External focus (Resource Investigators)
• Technical expertise (Specialists)

However, it may lack:

• Delivery focus (Implementers)
• Drive and urgency (Shapers)
• Attention to detail (Completer Finishers)

As a result, the outcome is usually quite predictable:

• Ideas without effective execution
• Slower progress
• Missed deadlines

In contrast, a high-performing usually has the right mix and team balance including:

• Creativity
• Analysis
• Action
• Coordination
• Completion

To this end, using Belbin reports can deliver greater team role clarity along with many other practical applications.

Find out 10 ways you can improve your organisation using Belbin.

Belbin reports allow teams to move from guesswork to insight. Specifically, they can help identify:

• Individual behavioural strengths
• Preferred Team Roles
• Gaps and overlaps within the team
• Differences between self-perception and observer feedback
• Different styles in Working Relationships

As a result, team leaders gain a rounded, evidence-based view of how their team actually operates. They can then:

• Identify missing roles
• Reduce role duplication
• Understand potential sources of conflict
• Improve overall team balance

In short, teams can be designed for greater performance, proactively, from the outset.

Belbin theory is highly practical, easy to apply and can deliver immediate impact.

When used effectively, it can help team leaders and managers answer critical questions such as:

• Why might this team struggle to deliver?
• Why is there little challenge or debate?
• Why might individuals clash?
• What’s missing from the team?

Consequently, Belbin can be used to improve areas including:

• Team role balance
• Communication
• Decision-making
• Role clarity
• Accountability
• Delivery

If you want to build a high-performing team, start by looking beyond skills alone.

For instance, strong teams can be built through achieving greater behavioural balance. Combined with a clearer understanding of how people actually work together. It’s not all about technical capability.

While some high-performing teams happen by chance, much more often, it’s through design.

Want to Build a High-Performing Team?

All things considered, using Belbin Team Roles can help you identify the strengths, gaps and balance within your team. For the training and development that often follows, our associated website White Cube Consulting offers a wider programme.

Discover your team’s role balance with a Belbin Team Report and start building a truly high-performing team today.

Find out more about the Uses and Benefits of Belbin

Read our blogs on 10 ways to improve your Organisation using Belbinand who we think may be the only “perfect team“