The dynamic nature of today’s business environment, the need for innovation, and competitive pressures are all fueling a demand for work groups that perform well together. In general, teams produce a higher quality of deliverables than individuals. On the other hand, poorly managed teams can impede or even halt progress, or lead to disengagement or decreased job satisfaction. Acquiring top talent is one piece of the puzzle, getting them to work well together and effectively solve business challenges is the hard part. Developing high-performing teams in the workplace requires new planning and tactics to ensure they are delivering both hard (results) and soft (morale) benefits.

The most effective teams include a set of employees with a diverse set of competencies, values and thinking styles, all committed to working towards a common goal or performance objective. Ideally, teams leverage a range of skills and personalities to ensure a balance of initiative, innovation, and achievability. However, with that comes a pressing need to manage potential conflicts, communication breakdowns, or personality clashes.

Overcoming barriers to performance is how groups become teams.
Today, leading organizations are tapping into sophisticated talent assessment and coaching solutions to create high performing teams – at any level, from project teams to leadership teams. Talent assessment solutions allow for reflection and insight into how a team is currently working together, and identify team members’ strengths and weaknesses against their performance objectives. Assessments can provide direct, targeted feedback to team members and their leader to foster higher productivity and fulfillment from the experience.

In teamwork, silence isn’t golden – it’s deadly.
Good communication is the foundation of any high-performing team. Conflicts often arise on teams because of differences in decision-making and problem-solving approaches. Or, because the organization neglected a fundamental component of team-based models – planning and design.

Team coaching uses rich feedback and a highly-interactive process that allows each team member to influence the direction for the team, from the start and moving forward. A team coach helps answer the right questions at the outset – why does the team exist? How will the team contribute to the success of the company? What is the team’s vision statement? How will progress be measured?

Similarly, talent assessments can help remediate obstacles to success or conflicts that arise. It allows company leaders to determine if they have all the right skills on the team, understand if the roles within the team and the organization are well-defined, or if objectives and mission of the team has been effectively communicated.

Teamwork is the secret that makes common organizations achieve uncommon results.
Some of the world’s leading companies rely on talent assessment partners to bring smart analytics, insight and direction to their workforce structure – creating high-performing teams that deliver unprecedented business results.