High-performance teams are those teams that assess their abilities critically and collaborate in order to

achieve the desired outcomes.

The characteristics of a high-performance team include the following:

● Each team member has a clear understanding of their own roles, responsibilities and competencies
and those of the others’.
● The team achieves productivity through positive team dynamics.

High-performance teams work towards achieving optimal results, and such teams work as a single unit.

The table below shows the five dysfunctions of a team.

Dysfunction Why It Is Important How to Enable It

Trust Keeps the teams closely knit and Build transparency in teams
helps it to function as a single unit

Conflict Allows productive debates on Build a good amount of trust

ideas among the team members

Commitment Helps team members commit Ensure healthy conflicts in teams

themselves to working on ideas

Accountability Holds team members responsible Encourage team members to

for their actions commit themselves to working on
ideas

Results Helps the team achieve the Build a good amount of

desired outcomes accountability among the team
members

Trust forms the foundation of teams. Without trust, it is difficult to achieve healthy conflict, commitment,
accountability and results.

© Copyright. upGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved

Evaluation apprehension is a perception that concerns how team members think they would be evaluated or
judged by each other.

The team members may demonstrate suboptimal productivity if they have negative apprehensions of others’
perception of them.

As a leader, you can do the following to handle evaluation apprehension perceptions:

● Encourage inclusivity: Build a team culture of inclusivity so that each team member feels that their
presence and contribution are valued. This can be strengthened by ensuring transparency in the
communications and actions within the team
● Showcase skills: Organise initiatives in which even the most introverted members of the team can
demonstrate their skills and competencies. This will enable the team members to value each other
● Establish trust: Create goals that focus on the team’s output instead of individual output and share
balanced feedback with the team members

Following are the different types of team blockers in an organisation:

● Aggressor: Displays aggression in actions

● Recognition seeker: Uses a team for personal recognition
● Self-confessor: Burdens the team with personal problems
● Fun seeker: Distracts the team and does not contribute productively
● Manipulator: Uses the relationships and guides the group to further their personal agenda
● Disengager: Leaves the team in crucial situations
● Bouncer: Does not let the team focus and moves it in multiple directions
● Interruptor: Disrupts others and does not let them finish sharing their views
● Pack mule: Takes up others’ work in addition to their own
● Filibuster-er: Stops others from participating in conversations
● Agree-er: Agrees with the team to avoid conflicts and tension

Regardless of the team blockers’ intentions, you need to handle them as leaving them unchecked could be
detrimental to the team’s dynamics.
Here are some tips for leaders to handle team blockers and minimise their impact:

● Increasing transparency within teams

● Streamlining feedback cycles for team members
● Automating the tasks of team blockers
● Communicating with them and trying to understand their underlying motivations
● Confronting them about the issue
● Not engaging with them

© Copyright. upGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved

The tendency to account for information that is agreed upon by a group of people instead of accounting for
individual pieces of information is called the common information effect.

To effectively handle the common information effect and prevent delays in decision-making, leaders can:

● Encourage debates and critical thinking among the members;

● Focus more on solving problems than on making a decision;
● Encourage the team members to create a ranked order of alternatives;
● Ensure awareness about the expertise and competencies of other team members;
● Minimise team differences, increase trust and encourage sharing critical information; and
● Consider the fit of unique information to the specific context being considered or discussed.

Transparency in the workplace means:

● Presenting the truth in an understandable manner to the target audience, and

● Not hiding information that may affect the decision-making capabilities of any team member (for
example, not informing a team member about the timelines of a task).

To promote transparency in their organisations’ teams, leaders can:

● Share relevant and important information, which is essential for making decisions,
● Regularly hold feedback sessions and address concerns,
● Encourage cross-functional teamwork and
● Create an open culture.

Positive team dynamics strengthen teams and hold the potential to increase teams’ productivity.

Increasing intrinsic motivation among team members can help increase positive team dynamics.

Here are some steps that leaders can take in order to encourage intrinsic motivation among team members:

● Employee involvement: Allow employees to participate in team tasks with responsibility and
ownership
● Employee relationship: Create a sense of belonging by encouraging conversations and interactions
among team members
● Purpose: Communicate the greater purpose of accomplishing tasks to the employees

© Copyright. upGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved

The Belbin team roles framework allows leaders to recognise the roles played by the team members. The
roles are summarised in this table.

Action-Oriented Roles People-Oriented Roles Cerebral Roles

1. Shaper - Provides the 1. Coordinator - 1. Plant - Solves problems

necessary drive to help
the team maintain focus
and keep up its
momentum
2. Implementer - Executes
strategies efficiently
3. Completer/finisher -
Polishes and adds quality
to the tasks completed by
others
Coordinates the team’s
objectives and delegates
tasks
2. Team worker - Completes
the required work on the
team’s behalf
3. Resource investigator -
Brings ideas to the team
creatively
2. Monitor evaluator - Is
logical and provides
impartial judgements
3. Specialist - Possesses
in-depth knowledge of an
area

Further, if leaders can communicate the roles played by the team members to them and also
give them recognition, then it can create positive team dynamics as the team members will be
able to know each other’s strengths and the roles played by them.

Disclaimer: All content and material on the upGrad website is copyrighted, either belonging to upGrad or its bona fide
contributors and is purely for the dissemination of education. You are permitted to access, print and download
extracts from this site purely for your own education only and on the following basis:
● You can download this document from the website for self-use only.
● Any copy of this document, in part or full, saved to disk or to any other storage medium, may only be used for
subsequent, self-viewing purposes, or to print an individual extract or copy for non-commercial personal use
only.
● Any further dissemination, distribution, reproduction, copying of the content of the document herein or the
uploading thereof on other websites, or use of the content for any other commercial/unauthorised purposes in
any way which could infringe the intellectual property rights of upGrad or its contributors, is strictly
prohibited. 
● No graphics, images or photographs from any accompanying text in this document will be used separately for
unauthorised purposes. 
● No material in this document will be modified, adapted or altered in any way.
● No part of this document or upGrad content may be reproduced or stored on any other website or included in
any public or private electronic retrieval system or service without upGrad’s prior written permission.
● Any right not expressly granted in these terms is reserved.

© Copyright. upGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved