Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | GTD Experts Share Their Best Advice

Transcript

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Last month I had the pleasure of attending the David Allen Company Conference in Amsterdam with getting things done trainers and coaches from all over the world. It's a real pleasure to be part of a team that lives and breathes healthy high performance. We had lots of fun exchanging ideas and learning and hanging out with each other and just enjoying each other's company. I also took this opportunity to pose this question to our pool of experts who are leaders and business owners in their own right as well as certified GTD experts.

What are the key ingredients for building and sustaining healthy, high-performing teams? Here's what they had to say. I think psychological safety would be first. people base relationships in teams on trust. And then, of course, there has to be enough clarity and stability. People have to trust that they can have to be aware that they are depending on each other and they have to trust that they will be there for each other.

And yeah, last but not least, I would say that people has to feel a sense of meaning and that they are contributing or impacting to the ⁓ whatever they are producing or serving or doing. ⁓ human beings are searching for meaning in everything and work without it is just not worth it. So, yeah.

That would be my view on it. I think one of the key components is really clear about accountabilities. So one of the things we talk about is making sure that we understand the different roles that people have and within those roles, the definitions of their purpose, what's that role actually trying to achieve and the accountabilities. What are the expectations that other roles in the organisation would have from that role? And the thing is that understanding that people aren't their roles, they are

stewards of those roles and so they energise those roles and through that you actually end up with this thing of not using culture, not using relationships to get work done. It's actually using that clear and concise definition of the different types of roles and responsibilities in an organisation so that we can really allow work to flow through the organisation in a clear and concise way and then you can use relationships and building for the culture and creating the additional energy.

My personal opinion on what helps teams to be productive is to have a regular discussion on what is happening and what's important. I personally ⁓ like to do it myself in my teams and I also advise people to do it that way ⁓ is to use a Kanban board like Planner in Microsoft or Trello and then just have buckets that fit the GTD methodology. Like you start with an inbox where

between meetings, everybody can throw in whatever they consider important enough to be discussed in the next round. And then you have stuff that moves from the left to the right in order to show that there's flow going on. That's the important part to make sure that there's always flow going on. So you shouldn't have large topics or large tasks within an Kanban board, but you should use maybe task of an hour, something like that.

⁓ to really show that stuff is moving. And then you can always move on to the next topic from the backlog, which is basically your GTD system for the team or for you personally, the topics that you are responsible for within the topic that the team is working on. And I've always been very, very happy to work that way. And it usually really works for everybody and brings up productivity.

But aside from that, of course, being open, being respectful, trying to work towards the same common goal, having fun together is what makes life productive in the team. think there are two ingredients. It's trust and clarity. So trust, obviously, that people get to work with each other in a good way, but also trust that other people know what they're doing. And clarity in a sense that, you know,

Everybody knows what they are doing and then the team knows what are their goals and what are their vision and purpose and what are the different areas that everybody's working on. So I think these two things, and clarity is what makes teams high performing and successful. For me, the two buzzwords would be number one, perspective, number two, control.

In the perspective box, I would put, does everybody understand what the organization is about, why it exists, and where it's headed? And the where it's headed questions can be short-term, medium-term, long-term, but are we all rowing in the same direction? Are we on the same page when it comes to what our outcomes are? What is it that we're trying to achieve? Tick-off is done.

In the control area, what I would say is it's really helpful if you've got ways of working that ensure that as people make their way through their day, they are engaged in ways of working and language in particular that makes it clear what the commitments are. Who's doing what? By when? We've just come out of this meeting. What are the results of that meeting? You know, I think back to when I was in organizations, and by the way, I was managing in some of these organizations.

where I'd walk out of meetings and I'd go, ⁓ yeah, interesting ideas, but I've got no clue exactly what the commitments were. So come out of your meeting and ask yourself the question, okay, who's gonna do what by when? And if you don't have that kind of clarity, take three minutes at the end of every meeting and ask your people exactly that question. Okay, we've just had 57 minutes together, let's call it. Who's gonna do what by when? That's just one example. Another one that comes to mind is ⁓ delegation.

Right? Who's, you know, and delegation, by the way, in the 180 degree sense of delegation, not just delegating down the organization, as it were, but sideways delegation to colleagues and upwards delegation to your management. Keeping track of our delegations. And when I say that, it's not just about me saying, OK, I've delegated this to one of the members of my team. It's that they've understood and we're in agreement about what's been delegated. And again,

Getting rid of that fuzziness that exists, think, in an awful lot of organizations when it comes to delegation, again, just as another example, is something that can make a big difference. So again, two things, control and perspective and make sure that your ways of working are supporting both. So there you have it, a variety of thoughts and opinions from leaders from all over the world who are building and sustaining healthy, high-performing teams. Which ideas resonated with you?

Let us know in the comments and make sure you like and subscribe for more healthy high performance tips from us at Next Action Associates.

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