Creating A High Performance Team

As an NLP Trainer I have worked with many teams over the years, where many stakeholders wanted me to help them create high performance teams.
These were exciting assignments for me. I knew it would be highly visible to see the difference between starting point and end of project. Unleashing potential in an individual was thrilling enough, what more a team!

Before embarking on such an assignment, a forewarning to stakeholders. Some who were deemed as having high potential may not cut the mustard. Others sitting outside on the periphery of this inner circle were perhaps waiting for the tools to set themselves free.
Here are some thoughts of what to look out for, based on my experience with aligning cultures in organisations:
1.    Create Self-managed People
Having the aptitude, skills and knowledge is building IQ. Going beyond to create emotionally and spiritually intelligent people is truly bang for your buck. There are many NLP courses that deep dive into aligning an individual’s values and beliefs, to solidify identity.
Sounding difficult? Not at all. Once people learn these replicable processes, they are then able to share with their teams and elevate the entire organisation, eventually.
2.    Create Managers as Coaches
This is how leadership becomes truly focused and results come in, more than expected. Managers become coaches which minimise the need to manage teams. Employee engagement heightens and team cohesiveness makes it easy to design a strategic direction going forward.
Coaches possess sharpened conflict management skills and deep rapport building skills which assist in fluid situations, especially when the organisation embarks on a change journey. Getting it right upfront serves to save a lot of time in later years.
3.    Create A Communicative Culture
No matter how hard the terrain, when leaders were able to open communication and encourage transparency, it arrested to a large degree, conflict situations from arising.
In many organisations I worked in I found that cascading communication down the line informing people of the latest initiatives, were fundamental to installing trust in the system. People felt a sense of belonging and engaged at a deeper level.
4.    Create A Starting Point Together
A good starting point to installing an organisational culture as above, is doing the exercise of designing or refreshing the Vision, Mission and Values together.
In one organisation I worked with, all employees were invited to contribute in this creation stage. This anchored people and attached strength to the entire organisation’s purpose.
5.    Create A Communicative Culture
Doing de-briefs after the event, an important aspect of the feedback loop, were often forgotten. These skills taught in an NLP course were fundamental to creating an environment of ease in giving feedback. 
This feedback loop culture created open, healthy relationships between colleagues. It lent credence to a light team culture where humour was encouraged to diffuse an otherwise tense context.
6.    Create A Common Language
One organisation in particular comes to mind where the CEO commended me on installing a clean culture where people could use technical language and understand each other.
For example they understood what “flying to the ceiling” meant, a term used to dissociate emotionally from a negative situation. People in fact found it humorous and more often than not laughed the situation off.  
These are some thoughts based on experience that propel an organisation to amazing heights. Easily done when people are trained with NLP tools. Giving team members the opportunity to seek clarity and make decisions well turned out to be a great investment in terms of time and money.
Organisations forged ahead with agility, in a matter of months. Creating pillars of success as detailed above, were fundamental to achieving objectives set.
Sylvia Fernandes is the Founder & CEO of VIA Frontiers. She is a Master Trainer of NLP who is specialised in corporate applications.
She started her business in Sydney in 2002 and has been operating in the Asia Pacific Region ever since. She is currently based in Singapore.
She is also the author of Bye Bye Black Cat -- Turn Your Luck Around and Realise Opportunities. Visit VIA Frontiers for more information.
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