Let me level with you around how high performance manifests and what you can do as a coach, leader, team member or enthusiast.

Everyone wants high performance. I sometimes feel like I’m invited to an Oprah episode where a share-fest is underway: “you get high performance, everyone gets…” you get the point! The problem with this thinking is that the claims on high performance creates an expectation that “there” exists, when in actual fact there is no utopian “there”. Instead, there is a continual process of emergence and strategy that leaders and teams navigate together – and here is the key differentiator – with stakeholders.

As a systemic coach, I am constantly learning about systems, leadership, relationship, design, organisations, cultures and structures, learning, information and coaching. There isn’t a “One Thing” to create high performance, like Bohm suggests around dialogue: one can only create the circumstances and environment in which it can emerge – there are no guarantees (David Bohm: On dialogue).

So, what can be done, then, to let high performance teams take shape? Let’s explore 3 points.

1. It is a deliberate practice

2. There is a science to it

3. The Models I use

Rather than a “team lift-off” or a “project launch” where working agreements are created in isolation and processes are mapped, constraints are deliberately designed around and artificial certainty is socially constructed in order to get going; I advocate for teams, leaders and stakeholders to stay in “lift-off” mode.

In team lift off’s the team is in dialogue around Why they exist, what the work is they do, for whom and with whom they will work. Some consideration is given to formal role definitions and how work will be shaped by the team, and to some degree, how the team want to be together when they do the work. As things evolve and change, none of this is referenced or actively updated – this is why I say it is an artificial start to create artificial certainty.

It is also usually the last time, or one of the few times that people stay in dialogue – and it is almost always only with team members and perhaps their immediate superior. Why does this not lead to high performance?

Ashby’s law of requisite variety states that:

“only variety can absorb variety”

which implies that rigidity to create up-front certainty does not usually map to either the flexibility nor the variety needs of the organisation, product or stakeholders, and the team does not deliberately create mechanisms to enable requisite variety.

What teams do that are typically labelled as ‘high-performing’ is leverage their capacity to remain in community, connection and uncertainty throughout delivery. The focus is specifically around how the team works, plans, make decisions, escalate, measure success, give feedback, relate to one another and others, represent the team and create value. There is an aspect of creating agreements at the start – which remain a focus of consistent dialogue and practice.

High Reliability Organisations (HRO’s) are led by leadership teams who embody this capacity for sensing early signs of change in various aspects of the whole system, stay in dialogue about it, inquiring into symptoms and signs, making sense of it by leveraging diversity and expertise and finally adapting through a practice of experimentation and learning (Kathleen M. Sutcliffe: Managing the Unexpected).

This deliberate collective practice is a way of being that all team members, leaders and stakeholders engage in and continue to invite one another into based on their needs, their sensing of emergent changes and symptoms or problems or desired changes in direction.

This video outlines the DIALECTIC between focusing on Culture and Delivery – How we work and What we work on. This is from Kegan and Lehay’s focus on how to become a deliberately developmental organisation. Essentially, being, remaining and c=continually becoming a ‘high performing system’, to me, is and requires the practice of being deliberately developmental.

The master himself positions it in 4 minutes

What sets these systems apart from others is their ability to sense, make-sense and skilfully adapt to change. Teams I have served who live by this code and refer consistently to the disciplines and models positioned in this post, become the centrifugal force around which these practices evolve – and, they can also inspire larger systemic change as a result.

Teams who behave and think in this way inspire larger systemic change because they do not leverage their own capacity to challenge problems or outdated structures within the organisation. By staying in community with other teams, leaders and stakeholders, they leverage both their innate capacity to influence and change what is in their power, while also enlisting the capacity and influence of those they are in relationship with. The team acts as a part of a network or organism, where what affects the cell in the organist, affects the organism as a whole.

Essentially, by utilising what is suggested in this post, the team employs the relationship systems within the organisation as much as the formal structural systems of the organisation to create effectiveness, efficiency and results – of which culture becomes a byproduct rather than a deliberate focus of transformation (Peter Block: Activating the Common Good). This requires all members, in their own way, to continue to focus on What is worked on, How we work on it, Whom we are in relationship and interdependence with and, the impact of the value we provide. This is hard because only the first is typically rewarded and spoken about in traditional organisations.

How do teams make this part of a deliberate practice?

Time is made for deliberate reflection and sense-making in both retrospective and present focuses and future focuses. These happen at regular intervals as part of a regular cadence AND as often as is needed based on specific agreements or trigger events. For example: after a client failure incident, a retrospective is held to look at how we got here, what we can learn and what wants to change as a result.

No, this isn’t random and yes, traditional leaders may associate some of this with pink-fluffy stuff or “waste of time.” The traditional schools of management of yesteryear did not yet have the evidence that is now available from organisational psychology, systems thinking, organisation design, sociology and leadership science – so let’s not be too hard on those who feel pressured to “get on with delivering the project plan!”

This work leverages several sciences as mentioned above, shaped by practitioners like Peter Hawkins, Drexler and Sibbet, Arnold Mindell, David Kantor, David Bohm, Margaret Wheatley, Peter Block, Lisa Lehay, Robert Kegan, Alain Cardon, Richard Hackman, Erik de Haan, Paul Lawrence, Bob Anderson and William Adams, The Bushe-Marshak Institute for Dialogic Organization Development, Conscious Leadership Group, CRR Global and many many more). Let me create some distinctions I believe all of the above pioneers will agree with.

We need to distinguish between simplicity and what is easy (Adrienne Maree Brown: Emergent Strategy). Launching a team systemically may leverage models that are simple to understand and follow, and at the outset they may seem easy to implement, but staying with what the model demands and causes as a result is complex, sometimes chaotic where there is nothing easy about addressing what emerges as a result. This is where the science comes into the mix, or shall we say, sciences. Systems and complexity, social sciences, psychology and leadership all play a part in what the practitioners implement and follow. The practitioner, knowingly or unknowingly engages in proven methods, practices and tools that come from specific mindsets, principles and values that govern how they collaborate.

Without going into exhaustive detail, there are a few things I will highlight here:

• always seek to optimise the whole, not the parts
• transparency enables the parts of the system to self-organise and self-cohere
• this results in the realisation of interdependency and the inherent potential that arises as a result – this is generative
• systems will seek to maintain what is most articulate in their space
• everything is constructed through social engagement and through relationship(s)
• the more distinctions are created, the more complexity there is, the more centralised control is required, the more time is needed to align and the more waste there is to manage
• the system can only cohere itself according to the sophistication of thinking that is agreed to and that is persistent in the relationships of those in the system

This list is both too long and too incomplete. I acknowledge that some might challenge my assertions – which I welcome in the spirit of inquiry and collaboration.

“Energy Self-Organisises around what is most articulate in the space”

– Wendy Palmer

To keep the sciences out of it, and err on the side of making it more accessible, let me bottom line a part of my model for getting a team started. I blend several models into a Space and Practice that I help the team to explore until they find their unique expression of what is needed. This Space and Practice takes shape through coaching, mentoring and training and by following specific approaches.

Peter Hawkins: The 5 disciplines of high performance

I will only address a sub-part of this process for the sake of brevity. Systemic Coach, Peter Hawkins, starts by connecting the team to its stakeholders in a dialogic process that helps the team and the stakeholders make sense of Why the team exists, who is in the team and why they are chosen to be part of the team; what the team is there to do and when the team will be done with their mission; what is expected of the team and how the stakeholders want to be engaged with during the life of the team.

Why engage stakeholders at the start? Why not have a leader simply tell the team about all of this and become the CRM for the team? Because it creates separation and leverages our innate desire for hierarchy and power, rather than leveraging interdependence and interoperability in a network that self-organises around creating mutual value. When the team engages with stakeholders around this tacit and explicit agreements are made around how the relationship will ensure that the value required is delivered. Both parties are involved in exploring how they are interdependent and what they will need from one another.

Source: Research gate, uploaded by Paul Lawrence

If these needs change in the future, they are more likely to directly get into dialogue about it to explore the complexity, rather than engaging a manager to do it on their behalf. The stakeholder and team get to learn about the realities of the whole system, rather than only learning about the strategically positioned parts that are revealed in a negotiation process by the manager. So, what is the role of the manager then? To be part of the dialogue, to lead, guide, sense, shift perspective, mediate and place necessary constraints if needed throughout the engagement.

When results are delivered, stakeholders are more likely to want to be directly involved in testing, trying and giving feedback about the value being delivered. When the team needs information, opinions, guidance or decisions to be made – time is saved by having interested and accessible stakeholders who can provide this crucial function just in time. When the team is constrained by a lack of expertise or capacity, the stakeholder can be a potent advocate for the organisation to address the localised concern.

Peter Hawkins’ model and a dialogic approach (Sarah Hill and Dialogic Team Coaching) to team engagements (coaching) is outlined (amongst others) in this anthology edited by Clutterbuck. It is an accessible read full of wisdom and practical approaches that both leaders and team practitioners like Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Project Managers can benefit from.

The next model that plays beautifully into the Hawkins 5 disciplines model comes from the work of Drexler and Sibbet. The Team Performance model by Drexler-Sibbet positions a methaphor to advocate for setting up teams with the appropriate amount of time and focus on various aspects. The methaphor is a ball being thrown with force to the ground so that it makes contact with the ground, and as a result, has an energetic release of the energy into a direction – aka, performance.

It implies that leaders cannot expect performance if it doesnt have the neccesary focus on the forces that inform the potential positional energy in the downward trajectory of the ball’s path. Before the ball hits the ground (commitment), there are steps that need to happen for the team to be able to have energy and direction.

By combining Hawkins and Drexler-Sibbet’s concepts, I have mentored leaders, Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters and Project Managers to amplify the results of their traditional “team lift-off” while also, simultaneously, enabling lasting results by setting up the conditions for dialogue and systemic alignment to continue to happen.

Getting the team members into dialogue about the Why, Who, What and How alone might create a level of performance, and depending on the complexity and constraints present in the organisation may become brittle over time. However, by having the same conversations with stakeholders and those who deliver with the team first, and then continuing the conversation internally as a team ensures far greater:

• alignment and shared understanding
• shared accountability and ongoing awareness of responsibility towards a common goal
• contentedness and awareness of interdependence with an expectation of allegiance towards a greater good
• ongoing dialogue about how “we” will deliver the desired results and what those results look like
• who needs to be involved and what our roles are
• dialogue about how our processes, execution and culture serve our shared outcomes and what needs to change
• staying connected through something bigger than any one of us

This video shares learning from the field: from the accountability for leaders program where leaders share their insights and wisdom as a result of group coaching engagements in the leadership development program for leading accountability.

There are other models that are useful, which I formally dig into as part of this process when I train or mentor people to be able to set up and sustain this level of engagement towards greater results. Kantorian Structural Dynamics is useful when we look at the quality and resilience of both communication and leadership behaviours, which is as applicable to teams as it is stakeholders. Often times teams have different communication and social structural expectations and norms to those of stakeholders, especially if they are across verticals in large organisations. Like Larman says: “In established organisations, Culture follows Structure and in small and/or young organisations structure follows culture.”

Working with Inner and Outer roles of systems and constellations, help stakeholders and teams make sense of both the formal systems roles they step into in order to get work done, but also the social roles they tend to fulfill in order for the social or relational system to find balance. All systems are in balance, always – and sometimes we step into social roles habitually, which make the system inflexible and brittle under stress or strain. Part of the enduring practice of high performing teams and leaders is to identify when this happens and to call for or introduce the necessary variance.

I stop here for temptation of becoming prosaic.

In this blog, we explored by “team launches” or “project kick-off’s” don’t always deliver on the promise they used to be able to in the past – why? simply because the complexity and interdependence of the work we do and the systems we deliver in require a far more resilient, adaptive and intelligent organism than that which these traditional approaches used to create.

We then positioned the broader sciences that these approaches come from and outlined why they may be dismissed by traditional organisational structures, after which we explored snippets from mainly two models: Hawkins 5 disciplines for high performance and how it interlaces with Team Performance by Drexler-Sibbet to provide a much more resilient and interdependent dynamic that supports delivery and amplified the team’s capacity to perform.

This is the theory.

Putting it into practice is a whole different story. In my experience, it requires a mixture of training, facilitation and mentoring over a period of several months where people are given the ability to focus on their development in both individual learning, social learning and experiential learning. I do this through a mixture of training, implementation workshops, observed sessions, group coaching, individual coaching and the establishment of a community of practice for practitioners. This ensures lasting results and continual learning so that I can step away and they can exceed my capacity to do this work.