How to Build a high performance team

 How to build a high performance team?

For every leadership role building a high performance team is a must, and this is another most important question which is being asked in Engineering leadership interviews.

There are typically many ways to answer it, for example you can answer in 10 strategic steps, or you can use a framework to answer it, or you can choose your own way. Usually you can’t answer this question wrong, which means almost any kind of answer will be fine. And that is the tricky part, if there is no wrong answer, how to choose the right answer, point is interviewer is not looking for the right answer,  In my experience interviewer expectation is following,

1. Can the candidate put his thoughts in a structured way to form his approach as a method?

2. Is that method easy to communicate? And trainable? 

3. Is that method aligned with the company's vision and value system?

Here is my approach to answering this question

Define vision and goal

• Building a team is a must at all the Org, everyone does this.
• Building a high performance team is essential at all the Org, but not everyone succeeds.
• Building a high performance team based on Org’s vision and Value system is tough, less number of Org’s succeed in this.

We should definitely re-iterate the Vision, Leadership and value system of the Org while we talk about building a high performance team. However Value system is another big topic to discuss, so as of now we’ll quickly cover the Leadership role.

Strong Leadership

Building a high performance team also needs strong leadership, so what is expected from leadership, my manager and expected from me as well

1) Promotes clarity, motivation and inspiration - Drive vision, Large picture, Impact driven stories, Magic building

2) Encourage leaders to be approachable and supportive

3) Open to feedback, Humble, Respectful 

Definition of high performance team

What is the definition of a high performance team, what kind of goal or metrics will be evidence to call a team as a high performance team, so we need to define a clear vision and set specific, measurable and time-bound goals. For example, I used to set these kind of goals

1) C2D(Commit to Delivery) should be 100%

2) Production incidents should be almost zero, and In case of incidents - MTTD, MTTA, MTTR should be as lower than the benchmark

3) We should innovate by building library, any tech platform, common tech capability, simplify the system, reduce the cost, publish a blog, share knowledge, present 3 stories to tech talk show

4) We should aim to grab reward and recognition for the team and individuals of the team

Build the team

1) Hire the right guy - Hiring a another big topic, will cover in a separate blog 2) Explain the Team structure - Different engineers, how they are placed in the team structure, From SDE1 to Architect (PE), Manager etc. 3) Define role - Every engineer should have the full clarity of their role. For example, who is responsible for PR/CL approval, who will merge, who will publish guidelines for the coding, who will do the QA, who will deploy 4) Define role-wise competency and expectation - Every Org will have a competency framework, if not set we should definitely define it, and explain to the team about it, and how competencies play a role in your overall performance.

Refine the team - Continuous process

There is one simple way to evaluate and refine the team using the 4 Quadrant approach. In this framework, all the folks belong to 4 quadrants, A, B, C and D and based on their quadrant our approach will change. 1) A - High capability, High commitment - Acknowledge and appreciate them, make them promoters 2) B - High capability, Low commitment - Acknowledge their contribution, and Challenge them for commitment, Set goal 3) C - Low capability, High commitment - Acknowledge their commitment, and challenge them to build capability, Set goal 4) D - Low capability, Low commitment - First try to move them in B or C, if doesn’t work - let them go

Build Culture - Continuous process

Building the culture is core, as that will sustain this method, driven by a value system, predominantly driven by Ownership, Excellence and Trust. If the value system is not well defined, we should define that first and then build the culture.

1) Empowerment and Ownership - We should empower team members to take ownership of their work and decisions, we should also Encourage autonomy and provide the support needed to act independently. We should encourage innovation and risk-taking within reasonable boundaries.

2) Effective Communication - Communication is the key. We should establish clear communication channels and practices.

3) Foster an environment of feedback where team members feel valued and heard.

4) Culture of Trust and Collaboration - We should build a team culture that emphasizes trust, openness, and mutual respect. We should encourage collaboration and collective problem-solving. We should come together and solve the problem, with defined responsibility.

5) Recognition and Reward  - We should definitely have regular recognition and reward programs to celebrate achievements and milestones. We should also have rewards aligned with value systems or principles.