High Performance Teams

Supportive organisations have long understood the value of team work and the fact that regardless of how much talent you have at your disposal, if the team does not operate within a unified, supportive, and fluent manner then this individual talent can go to waste.

As much as individual feedback, capability alignment, and development is crucial to individual performance – an effective team that shares resources, engages with stakeholders, has a common purpose, and has a balance of skills and capabilities is just as important.

Of course on the sporting field, in most cases it is clear what everyone is trying to do as you’re on the same field at the same time trying to outscore your opposition.

In an organisational setting, this sometimes is not the case. People have their own priorities, their own work, and are not necessarily always working on the same things.

How, then, do we build an effective high performance team when people have their own individual responsibilities?

OPIC’s High Performance Team program looks at developing four crucial areas of high performance teams which is linked to the global research on high performance organisations.


  1. Understanding the team make-up. Each team needs a purpose. It also needs a set of rules and insights that help perform to its maximum capability.

    Step one in this is establishing individual and team values that lead to insight and understanding of individual and collective core drivers.

    Establishing team values as phase one of the High Performance Team program sets the foundations for the way the team will work together moving forward.

  2. Team roles. The second part of the High Performance Team program is developing a clear understanding of people’s capability.

    OPIC uses a variety of validated assessment methodologies to build a Team Grid in understanding the team’s strengths and the role each person plays within that team.

    This forms the second part of the program, but leads two things:

    1. Individual development activities.
    2. Collective team development activities to balance the team capability out.
    3. Impacting on our stakeholders.

High performance organisations collaborate internally and compete externally.

Whilst this idiom may seem obvious, the reality is that much of internal waste in organisation occurs because we do naturally compete with each other. This competition can occur within organisations, and whilst it not be overt, it certainly is covert.

  1. Part three, therefore for the High Performance Teams program is the establishment of individual and collective stakeholder plans along with the development of individual and team actions to implement these plans.

Using OPIC’s Stakeholder Management Planning process the following is undertaken:

  1. The identification of all key stakeholders.
  2. An evaluation of the effectiveness of that relationship.
  3. Clarification of the key abilities and business activities that stakeholders can assist us in achieving.
  4. A plan of how to engage, collaborate, and ultimately influence that person through mutual benefit.
  5. This part of the program builds individual and team influencing capability.

  1. Establishing Team Protocols and the Team Brand

The difference between high performance teams and high performance individuals are the goals they are trying to achieve and how they are trying to achieve these goals.

High performance individuals have very personal goals and tend to pursue these in a somewhat tunnel-vision manner.

High performance teams have overall and collective goals, and the achievement of the overall goals and the methods in which these goals are achieved are critical.

Part four therefore combines an opportunity for establishing clear team protocols and completes the program with an integration of:

  1. Individual development planning.
  2. Team development planning.

OPIC's High Performance Team program can transform a team using a range of OPIC's proprietary methodology and products including:

  1. An OPIC 360° review.
  2. OPIC's Stakeholder Management plan.
  3. OPIC's influencing process.
  4. Capability development planning.

Contact us to find out more.