The dirty little secret about teams

By Madelyn Yucht

High performance teams! High performance teams!

We talk about them. We write about them. We read about them (A Google search returns over 118,000,000 “high performance team” entries).

We strive to be in them―and we certainly aspire to have our organizations comprised of them―but―there is a truth that no one wants to tell: There just aren’t a lot of them.

After working with hundreds of teams in hundreds of organizations from the top of the house to the front line, one simple truth has become clear. Lots of teams have lots of good stuff going for them, but rarely are they able to pull it all together in a way that leverages all of the talents, ideas, and strengths of the team members to actually achieve peak performance. And sustaining peak performance? Even harder.

So, the dirty little truth is that most organizations are made up of (and are settling for) good teams—not great—just good.

Is “just good” good enough?

About Madelyn:

Madelyn Yucht is a Principal Consultant and the co-leader of Linkage’s High Performance Team practice. She is also an entrepreneur, consultant, and academic with over 20 years of experience working with leaders and their teams to improve performance and achieve strategic objectives.