“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed in a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable…” — Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith

Leaders want high performance teams that are effective, focused, driven and committed to organisational goals, so that they can deliver superior performance and better results.

However, high-performance teams do not materialise by themselves. It is a leader’s challenge to create a conducive environment that can stimulate improved performance and execution from the people within the organisation.

Yes, having the right people is crucial. But, once on board, it’s only an effective leader that can improve their performance. Just like a great coach improves the performance of an athlete, an effective leader can improve his team.

So, how can a business leader create a high-performance team? There are three key elements employees need in their workplace to be more engaged, committed and productive:

• Challenge

• Stimulation

• Reward

The first step is providing meaningful and challenging work that meets the needs and desires of team members. No matter how stimulating the goals are or how wonderful the rewards, if the work is not interesting or challenging enough, it will be difficult to motivate people, which will reflect in their productivity.

Employees need to find their job satisfying and enriching to deliver their best. The more variety, challenge and autonomy they get in their job, the more satisfying they will find their work.

For instance, a retail worker who stocks shelves every day and is out of the customer limelight might be doing his job efficiently, but he might not find it challenging enough. If such an employee is assigned the task of customer assistance — where he needs to help customers locate products or explain product features helping them to buy — he might find it interesting to interact with customers and inherently satisfying to help them.

The next motivator to a high performance team is setting clear, stimulating and attainable goals for your employees. An employee without goals is a lost soul; he will be carrying out his duties very well, but he will be directionless.

He won’t know when to scale up efforts to deliver more and achieve better results. Also, it’s important that those goals are stimulating for the employee to put in more time and effort.

The goals should be SMART — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. They should outline exactly what needs to be accomplished and when it will considered as achieved.

They should also be measurable, unambiguous, attainable, consistent with other personal goals as well as organisational goals.

The retail industry is influenced by constant changes in the economic, social, political and technological spheres. A skill learnt last year may be outdated by next year, and hence employees are under constant pressure to remain relevant.

In such a scenario, it only makes sense to provide rewards and recognition to appreciate their efforts and motivate them to deliver better, consistently.

A formal review process once or twice in a year is not enough. Observe their efforts and appreciate their contributions daily.

Appreciate small victories that lead to bigger achievements. Rewards can be in the form of monetary compensation, opportunity to learn or upgrade skills, vertical or lateral promotion, etc.

A combination of providing challenging work, setting stimulating goals and providing an effective reward system can lead to a high performance team in any organisation.

However, a lack of even a single element can affect performance.

• If your employees have challenging work and stimulating goals but no rewards, it will result in their burning out.

• If they have stimulating goals and an effective reward system, but do not find challenge in their work, they will be a blunt instrument or lose their mojo.

• Lastly, if their work is challenging and they enjoy rewards and recognition, but there are no stimulating goals, they will be bored.

All these three factors are vital to creating a high-performance team. However, having said that, it’s equally important to understand that each employee is different.

Hence, their skills are different, their personal goals are different and even their motivational factors are different. Though there are some common denominators in motivation like fair wages, healthy work conditions, good relationships with team members and supervisors, other motivators like challenging work, learning and growth opportunities, work from home/more time-off or recognition differ from individual to individual.

Hence, as a leader you need to look at the individual employee and decide which factors are apt for him. Meeting people’s needs, providing challenges, using a variety of rewards and matching them to the right people are critical to create a high-performance team.

The writer is CEO of Thought Leaders Middle East.