Building and Leading High-Performing Teams
Chosen theme: Building and Leading High-Performing Teams. Welcome to a human, practical space where we turn big leadership ideas into everyday habits that help people thrive together. Subscribe, share your experiences, and join our community of builders who care about results and relationships.
Foundations of a High-Performing Team
When a team truly connects to a purpose, energy and ownership surge. A civic-tech squad I coached rallied around reducing emergency room wait times; suddenly, meetings got sharper, experiments bolder, and late nights felt like contributions, not sacrifices. Share your team’s purpose statement.
Hiring and Onboarding for Performance
Write a scorecard that describes outcomes, not buzzwords: the problems to solve, systems to improve, and stakeholders to influence within six months. Calibrate interview questions to the scorecard and share it with candidates. Transparency attracts builders who care about real results.
Hiring and Onboarding for Performance
Design a 30-60-90 plan tied to meaningful milestones, with a buddy, a cross-functional tour, and one early, celebrated win. Replace scattered documents with a single, navigable portal. Ask every new teammate on day five: what confused you, and how can we fix it for the next hire?
Psychological Safety as a Performance Multiplier
When teammates can say, “I disagree” or “I need help,” you get the real data sooner. A product trio I coached started labeling assumptions explicitly, then pressure-testing them together. Decisions improved, and cycle time dropped. Invite dissent early; reward the person who surfaces the riskiest assumption.
Psychological Safety as a Performance Multiplier
Run blameless postmortems that separate intent from impact and prioritize system fixes over finger-pointing. Start standups with a quick “what surprised you?” round. Celebrate thoughtful reversals. Teams that treat mistakes as information compound knowledge faster than teams that treat mistakes as embarrassment.
Communication Rhythms and Decision-Making
Adopt a weekly priorities doc with three bullets per person, visible to all. Pair it with a brief demo day every two weeks. Clear rhythms reduce status churn and prevent hidden work. Make your calendar reflect your strategy, not the other way around.
Coaching, Feedback, and Growth That Stick
Feedback That Lands, Not Lingers
Use the Situation-Behavior-Impact frame and ask for a response: “In Tuesday’s review (situation), you interrupted twice (behavior), which derailed discussion (impact). How can we ensure voices are heard next time?” Specific, timely, and rehearsed feedback builds trust rather than anxiety.
From Positions to Interests
Shift debates from rigid positions to underlying interests. Ask, “What outcome are you protecting?” and “What would make this a win?” Map shared interests visually. Once interests are visible, creative options emerge that preserve relationships while moving the work forward faster.
Change Stories That Reduce Friction
Any change needs a clear narrative: what is changing, why now, how we will support you, and how we will measure progress. Share the risks of not changing. Invite questions in writing and live, then respond publicly so knowledge spreads beyond the room.
Retrospectives That Stick
Use simple formats—start, stop, continue; sailboat; four Ls—and always convert insights to owners and dates. Celebrate one behavior you will keep. The goal is not catharsis; it is compound learning. Share your favorite retro prompt with our community.
Asynchronous by Default, Not by Exception
Adopt a doc-first culture with crisp briefs, decision records, and 24-hour response windows. Replace status meetings with updates, and reserve live time for high-bandwidth collaboration. Clear writing becomes a performance skill. Teach it, coach it, and recognize it publicly.
Time Zone Fairness Is a Leadership Choice
Rotate meeting times, batch collaboration windows, and avoid recurring meetings that punish the same region. Record sessions, summarize decisions, and publish next steps. One global team cut burnout simply by sharing the inconvenience equally—and performance improved across regions.
Digital Body Language Builds Trust
Clarity cues matter online: write descriptive headlines, state your ask, and timebox decisions. Use emojis and short videos to add tone where text might feel blunt. Small, consistent signals of respect and responsiveness create the glue remote teams need to excel.