hroughout this thesis my purpose has been to examine what leaders do to influence a composition of people, working together as a team, to become high performers. In this chapter I will try to draw conclusions based on my main findings providing answers to my research questions. “What impacts a team to become high performers?” “What similarities and differences can be found among leaders?” and “What can you do as a leader to support the team to become high performers?”. Based on my analysis and discussion of theory and empirical data I believe I have discovered a number of fundamental directions a leader should take in order to enable the creation of a truly high performing team. These are presented here.
In accordance to my findings, and to answer my research questions. “What impacts a team to become high performers?” “What similarities and differences can be found among leaders?”
and “What can you do as a leader to support the team to become high performers?”, having the main focus on a ‘one team’ and not individuals are imperatives to become high performers.
Getting to know each other, creating an open team environment where team members feel free to speak one’s mind, acknowledging the persons in the team for who they are, see them and getting a well-functioning team dynamic in place contributes to the ‘one team approach’. High performance teams must have clear understanding of their goals and more importantly must consider the goals central. The goals must be personally challenging and elevating. In order to create the ‘one team’, the team must create an ownership to the work together and setting their goals collectively. The ‘one team’ demonstrates compliance, intimacy and support for other
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team members, it requires us to get to know each other well, having things in common with others in the team and it creates the feeling of being safe in the team. To create that intimacy and support for others, trust is needed. Trust is the most important part of creating group cohesiveness which is needed to enable high performance in team work. When demonstrating intimacy and cohesion, solving tasks and removing obstacles together as one team, as one unit, is enabled, and thus it improves quality of the team work. Able communication within the team makes people stop holding back and release their full potential. In order to take ownership of their tasks the team needs to feel the importance of what they are doing. Leaders should be stronger in the early phases of the team setup, in order to help the team in creating that sense of belonging and the one team approach, allowing and enabling the team to collaborate and guide the team towards team cohesion. It is unmistakably advantageous in becoming a high performing team to, discuss, ask questions, and using each other’s differences and experiences to solve tasks. Allowing a team to become truly high performers there is a need to focus on making use of each other’s competencies. It is required from the leader to have that unbroken attention to strengthen the mix and level of skills, build commitment and confidence, relationship building with unknowns, and remove hindrances to become a high performing team. High-performance teams are generally composed out of complementary skills.
Complementary skills and experiences stimulate the team members on overcoming hindrances.
In order to help the team overcoming obstacles the successful leader creates opportunities for others, creating positive outcomes within and for the team. He/she pulls the team, that want to and can, together forward and makes him/herself available for the team. A high performing team is interested in being efficient but might need guidance, and coaching. The team needs the leader to facilitate for the team and create a common vision and common goals. As a high performing team, the team and its leader have effective communication, understanding each other and the tasks that are to be performed, and if not, they have and know how to use, the available means and methods to clear misunderstandings, conflicts or disagreements. A high performing team respects differences in people and learns how to see things from different views and how this helps the team to improve performance. But it is not only about the people and their ability to work together as a team. High performing teams have clear work structures and the reason for this, is that these are said to cultivate engagement, trust and accountability within the team. There is a need to have a defined standard, structures and coordination within the team to be able to utilize complementary skills and coordinate work to be successful.
Complementary skills are seen as prerequisite for having a well-functioning team structure.
Structure was mentioned as establishment of a formal governance, for example frameworks,
methods and repetitive meetings, defining plans, setting clear mandates, roles and responsibilities, and cyclic weekly processes. A high performing team needs to have targets and something to be measured by as this contributes to develop team productivity. When the leader is not able to help drive the team forward to increase productivity, this is seen as ineffective leadership. Ineffective leadership will sabotage team productivity. A high performing team has to have a clear leadership, and preferably a motivational leadership to be productive. A supportive leadership is a leader that is motivational, and clear in communicating, being consistent in the leadership governance and giving the team clear mandates.A leader that helps in creating a high performing team need to have a desire and willingness to help others succeed, both on a team level and leadership level. This type of leadership drives encouragement and recognition to its members. A supportive leader builds a continuous relationship with the team ensuring trust and creating an environment where anyone dares to ask questions or challenge each other. When challenging each other in ways that are counterproductive, the team now and then run into conflicts. Common team conflicts are different priorities, chemistry among team members, relationship related conflicts, skills and experience-based and uncertainty or trust-based conflicts. These surface in situations where team members do not, communicate, deliver or perform as expected. In my research the teams were self-driven and self-contained, solving conflicts by communicating with each other and escalating to the leader when needed.
Nevertheless, productive conflicts were encouraged as this is considered necessary for the establishment of trust within the team. In order to manage conflicts within the team there needs to be a respect for cultural differences, country, region, and business culture. The leadership need to know limitations and boundaries of their team members and having the team to learn how to view issues or tasks from different angles as this was assumed to help the team to better understand how to avoid conflict and improve for the future. In the end it is all about collaborating and working together, delivering results, results that are appreciated and valued by ourselves and others.
However, a few questions have circled my head during the course of this study. I wonder whether the results of my research would be valid, looking at the same region, but in a wider context than the one I have chosen for my thesis. Another question is, why does the results seem to be very much coinciding, is it really a solidification of that the chosen theories are very much valid, or that the leaders I have spoken to are doing the right things in terms of leadership to develop a high performing team. Moreover, can it be due to my way of conducting the empirical research or can it simply be that in this small region, the leadership arena supposedly is small,
and people know each other and the methods they are using. Nevertheless, one of the most interesting discoveries I came across was that most of the interviewed leaders meant that giving their teams freedom and autonomy to themselves plan and act was imperative in becoming a high performing team, and on the other hand the leaders many times seemed to want to start up the work, make the initial planning themselves and set the direction for the team. This way of working is enforced as a recipe for success by both Wheelan, Larson and LaFasto and Katzenbach and Smith (1989; 1992; 1993; 2001; 2003; 2005; 2010) in saying that successful leaders establish the vision of the future, these leaders create change and release talent and energy of their team members. Successful leaders influence others to move towards the vision.
Successful leaders have a plan for change and demonstrate to team members that change is positive. Successful leaders create enthusiasm and commitment and motivate team members to deliver. Limitations in my study, and also suggestions for further research, to make such a study more comprehensive, would be to include gender diversity, country, or regional differences in terms of business culture, and ethnicity differences and/or differences of leadership style.
Sectioning different industries, educational background or technology areas would also have been interesting to find out more about how leaders work with improving teamwork to produce outstanding results. Additionally, mapping different personalities of the leaders, to understand how he or she selects and works with the team would be interesting as there is extensive research done in this area, such as Costa and McCrae (1992) and Hogan et. al; Judge et. al (2001; 2004; 2005). Also investigating how different company cultures are or are not in fact producing high performing teams would have been a stimulating area to pursue for further research. For numerous years, social research wants us to confront a gloomy inconsistency in the development of ourselves. Possessing the technical competences, physical resources, and intellectual aptitude to satisfy the basic needs of mankind, we still seem to lack essential abilities to effectively work together to solve problems.
“You gotta get lost before you can get found” (Gioia, 2012)