Meghan Ryan
February 11, 2022
There’s no question that high-performing teams are essential to a successful business. A good team is able to bring a more diverse set of perspectives, respond and react more quickly to challenges, and achieve much more than a single, talented employee could do on their own.
There are a lot of advantages, but building a great team won’t happen without some conscious effort by the team lead. In her Prezi video on high-performing teams, CEO of Disruption Advisors Whitney Johnson looks to growth as a way to improve individual performance and that of your peers and direct reports. Watch her video here or keep reading to learn more about the connection between growth and performance.
The “S” curve of learning and what it means to your team’s growth
When you start to learn something new, growth is slow. It takes awhile for new concepts to click, and it’s easy to feel discouraged – you’re essentially at the bottom of the hill looking up at how much further you need to climb. The key is to remind yourself that this is how every new learning journey begins. You have to put in a lot of effort before you start seeing major gains.
Eventually, you’ll hit the second stage of learning – the sweet spot. This is the exciting stage, after you’ve nailed the basics and your growth really accelerates. You might still meet challenges, but nothing is too difficult that it seems insurmountable.
The final stage of learning is mastery. At this point, your growth has slowed down and you might become bored. This is when you should start learning something new, or recognize that you’ve hit a summit and continue to master your skill.
Together, these three stages of learning make up the “S” curve, a visual model that helps you understand what growth looks like. Identifying where you and everyone on your team lands on this curve will help you pinpoint what each person needs on their personal growth journey, and build a well-rounded, high-performing team.
If you’d like to learn more about building effective teams in remote and hybrid settings, make sure to tune into our webinar, “5 steps for effective remote team building” on Thursday, February 17th. You’ll hear from Jana Piske, founder of team management solutions platform Fairlinked, as she gives advice on effectively managing your teams.
