How to improve team performance
Expert sources (3)
- 1
The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business | Josh Kaufman | Talks at Google
Josh KaufmanAuthor - 2
How to Create a Successful Mindset: The Science of Passion and Perseverance
Dr. Angela DuckworthPsychologist - 3
Adam Grant: 10 CRAZY Stats About Why Only 2% of the People Becomes Successful!
Adam GrantOrganizational psychologist
Mentioned experts haven’t endorsed RiseGuide
Summary
To improve team performance, experts recommend:
- Optimizing team size: Keep teams between four and eleven members to balance capacity and communication.
- Prioritizing group incentives: Focus on team outcomes rather than individual metrics.
- Balancing familiarity and novelty: Combine a shared history with fresh perspectives to build trust while sparking innovation.
- Structuring meetings: Focus meetings on defining problems and rewarding unique contributions.
- Supporting mental well-being: Address self-doubt and imposter syndrome to strengthen communication, listening, and collaboration.
A few things make the biggest difference to team performance:
- Optimize team size: Josh Kaufman notes that high-performing teams usually have more than three and fewer than twelve people, which balances capacity against the communication overhead each extra person adds 1.
- Focus on team incentives over individual metrics: Angela Duckworth points to shifting incentives from individual outcomes to group performance, much like a sports team that drills executing plays well rather than just practicing winning 2.
- Balance familiarity and novelty: A shared history builds trust and effective routines, but bringing in outside talent and fresh perspectives guards against cognitive entrenchment and sparks innovation, a pattern Adam Grant highlights 3.
- Structure meetings effectively: Run structured meetings that first define the problem and reward unique contributions, rather than rewarding whoever talks the most.
- Support mental well-being: How people feel about themselves affects how they communicate, listen, and collaborate, so addressing self-doubt and imposter syndrome lifts performance too.
Insight
Structure your team in a small to medium size (more than 3, fewer than 12) and design meetings around solving defined plays: agree on the problem, invite unique contributions from everyone, and track progress by how well plays are executed rather than by airtime or individual effort.
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