High performance is often seen as maximising output at all times, but this outdated concept misses the mark. In reality, sustainable high performance—the kind that allows for resilience and long-term success—requires a much smarter approach.
That’s why I specialise in advising world leading companies not on how to create high performance cultures, but resilient, high performance cultures. The kind that are sustainable because we are working in a much smarter way - industry leaders like Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Kellogg’s, Morgan Stanley, Siemens Energy, Aviva, Sky, Meta, Sage, and IHG.
This article explores what it takes to build resilient, high-performing teams that can thrive in any environment.
What is a High-Performing Team?
A high-performing team operates at the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness, not just in what they are executing, but how they are working together. High-performance teams share several essential characteristics that set them apart from average teams:
They communicate openly and effectively: Clear and open communication is the foundation of any high-performing team. Team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas, concerns, and feedback, which fosters a collaborative environment. Effective communication minimises misunderstandings and enhances problem-solving, ensuring that everyone stays aligned and informed
They align with the organisation’s mission and objectives: High-performing teams are deeply connected to the organisation's broader goals. Every team member understands how their individual work contributes to the bigger picture. This alignment creates a shared sense of purpose, which drives motivation and ensures that everyone is working toward the same strategic outcomes
They hold each other accountable for their work: Accountability is key to maintaining high standards within the team. Team members take ownership of their responsibilities and hold each other to those same high standards. This fosters trust and ensures that deadlines are met and quality remains high, leading to consistently excellent performance
They embrace continuous learning and development: High-performing teams are committed to growth. They regularly seek opportunities to improve their skills and knowledge, both individually and collectively. This focus on continuous learning keeps the team adaptable and ready to tackle new challenges, driving innovation and long-term success.
Why High-Performance Alone Isn’t Enough
High-performing teams are expected to deliver results consistently, but over time, this pressure can lead to chronic stress and burnout. According to Gallup, 80% of the global workforce reports being burnt out, a staggering statistic that underscores the need for a new model of performance.
Why Resilience Matters in High-Performing Teams
Resilience plays a critical role in the longevity of a high-performing team. Without resilience, even the best-performing teams risk burnout and fatigue, which leads to diminishing returns. Resilience allows teams to navigate challenges, manage stress, and maintain their high performance over time.
Resilient teams are often the most innovative and productive. They are able to push boundaries, experiment with new ideas, and recover quickly from failures. Leading companies like Dropbox and Netflix have institutionalised resilience and sustainable high performance by creating workplace environments that foster both focus and renewal.
In a rapidly changing business landscape, adaptability is key. Resilient teams are highly adaptable, able to shift strategies, processes, or tactics to meet new challenges without losing sight of their objectives. This adaptability enables them to stay ahead of the curve and maintain their high performance in the face of uncertainty.
Modern Challenges to Building High Performance Teams
The Burden of Excessive Workload
Every company I work with has a problem with excessive workload, which is any workload that has us in a chronic state of stress and overwhelm. It’s the leading driver of burnout and poor mental health, and generally not enjoying your job.
The reasons are simple:
All companies are on a growth on growth trajectory, you’ve heard the one outlined
You have to advance to remain competitive
You need to secure as many partners and customers as possible to hit your financial targets
You’ve transitioned from start up to scale up to established large organisation, big change management, which is akin to running whilst trying to tie your shoelaces
This creates a relentless workload: back-to-back meetings, projects to deliver, clients to manage, and internal issues to resolve.
Working in a high-performance environment is naturally intense, but life outside of work—family responsibilities, health management, and personal obligations—adds even more pressure. The result? We’ve reached a breaking point.
Technology exacerbates the issue. With constant notifications from email, messaging apps, and virtual meetings, there’s no escape. This leads to near-constant overwhelm, leaving our nervous systems in a perpetual state of dysregulation.
The Shift to Hybrid Work
Simultaneously, the shift to hybrid work has made collaboration in some ways deeply inefficient.
What was once a knock at the door, and a five minute chat to align on the collaboration, is a whole morning of asynchronous back and forth communication,
And then there are meetings, which Microsoft has reported have increased by 192%
Cal Newport, author of digital minimalism, calls this the Tax Overhead: all the admin that goes into coordinating the work, before you’ve even begun it.
Ever look at your diary for the coming week and see no space to do what you feel is priority?
Ever have a day of back to back meetings where you agree what you’re going to do, and then see 30 things added to your to do list, but wonder when you’re going to have the time to do it when you have another day of back to back meetings tomorrow?
A Warning About “Pseudo Productivity”
Nick Petrie, a leading researcher on sustainable high performance has identified these six key drivers that make our working lives pseudo productive and overly stressful.
1. Meeting overload
2. No time for ‘deep work’
3. Working in the evening (lack of boundaries)
4. A culture of interruptions
5. Multitasking
6. Commitment overload
This skews our notion of productivity, toward what I call ‘Mowing the Lawn’. If I get through my mountain of to dos, and signal to my manager and employees I’m crushing my to do list, I’m doing well.
We resort to a type of productivity that is grinding out tasks, which has its merits, but when you think about the decisions or initiatives that have actually been game changers, they come from creating space to not just meet, but exceed and redefine expectations.
The price we pay is losing out on WOW moments. This is when you not only exceed expectations on a project of enormous strategic value, you redefine them.
This exceptional level of delivery has your client, colleague or stakeholder taken a back, and the only word that can do it justice is WOW. This emotional experience develops a lasting bond. It could be that you create space amidst all your to dos to be a fantastic people manager and the person stays with Export Finance a long time. Or it could be that you do some complex financial restructuring for your external clients that saves their bacon.
This is all hard to do under stress and pressure, better to keep our heads down and get through the basics.
The Resilience Equation
To move away from “mowing the lawn” and begin on the path to genuine, sustainable, high performance, you need to understand the resilience equation.
Too many demands (which we all have) + unrealistic expectations (interestingly this isn’t just your boss, but it’s also the expectations of perfectionism and over achievement you place on yourself) + crucially a lack of replenishment = burnout
This is where you are exhausted, have reduced efficacy, and interestingly, enthusiasm for the work can be replaced by cynicism.
The Solution: How to Build a High-Performing, Resilient Team
I specialise in advising world leading companies not on how to create high performance cultures, but resilient, high performance cultures and teams. The building blocks to doing so are always the same.
Foster Psychological Safety
Manage Workload and Expectations
Build a Culture of Rest and Renewal
Create Space for Deep Work and Reflection
Focus on Conscious Leadership
Fostering Psychological Safety
The concept of “psychological safety” is foundational to building resilient, high-performing teams. It refers to creating a workplace where individuals feel comfortable taking risks and expressing themselves without fear of negative consequences.
According to research by Dr. Amy Edmondson, teams with high psychological safety are more innovative, adaptive, and successful. Google’s Project Aristotle identified psychological safety as the most important factor in team performance. When team members feel safe, they’re more likely to contribute new ideas, ask for help, and collaborate effectively..
In practice, fostering psychological safety involves leaders actively promoting open communication, encouraging feedback, and modelling vulnerability. Leaders should normalise mistakes as learning opportunities and create environments where everyone’s voice is heard. This atmosphere not only drives team performance but also strengthens resilience, as individuals feel empowered to share their challenges and collaboratively solve problems.
Managing Workload and Expectations
One of the biggest drivers of burnout is an unrealistic workload combined with the relentless expectations of perfectionism, both from management and from individuals themselves.
Sustainable high performance requires managing expectations, knowing when to push hard, and recognizing when to pull back.
The Yerkes-Dodson human performance and stress curve is a useful tool in understanding the importance of managing workload and expectations.
The general idea is that optimal performance is a state of optimum stress, where you are engaged and focused, but it develops a discernment of when you are going over your capacity, and entering the red zone of being fatigued, and avoiding going into chronic states of exhaustion that eventually lead to breakdown.
Optimal performance knows its limits, it pulls back from the danger zone
think about a body builder that bench presses until they feel the burn, the muscle fibres breaking so they regrow bigger, if they don’t listen, and keep pushing, they are out for two weeks
This is crucially important: I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t be going above and beyond. Depending on where you work in the business, you may have to work late into the night and on the weekend.
But overall, sustainable high performance is about staying inside the peak of your capacity, and then doing resilience practices to expand your capacity over time…
Building a Culture of Rest and Renewal
An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is “maximum effort = maximum results.” It doesn’t actually work that way in reality, but many managers still believe that it does. Their core assumptions are often more akin to a bad 1980s motivational speaker. (Think: “No pain, no gain,” “No guts, no glory,” and “Give it 110%!”)
In reality though, optimal performance isn’t about giving 100% effort all the time. As per the Harvard Business Review, research suggests that high-performing teams operate at 85% of their capacity to avoid burnout.
Source: HBR
The 85% rule counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort.
Power moves at the executive level don’t come from a “bursting-your-gut” energy. The people you lead, the customers you meet need a calm, positive, reassuring presence. That doesn’t come from a place of stress.
Innovative product development comes from a place of deep creativity. That doesn’t come from a place of stress.
You need to avoid boom and bust cycles.
In practice, it means asking you and your teams, what does it feel like to operate at 100% capacity, now ask what it feels like to work at 85% capacity, experiment with that.
This requires building in regular cycles of rest and renewal, ensuring that teams are not constantly running on empty. Incorporating deliberate periods of rest allows teams to sustain their energy and creativity over the long term
Creating Space for Deep Work and Reflection
Deep work, as described by author Cal Newport, refers to uninterrupted, focused time dedicated to cognitively demanding tasks. This type of work is crucial for high-performance because it allows individuals to engage in complex problem-solving, creativity, and innovation.
Yet, many workplaces prioritise shallow tasks—such as email and meetings—over deep work. Newport notes that frequent interruptions, multitasking, and fragmented schedules significantly reduce productivity.
To enable deep work, leaders should protect blocks of time for their teams to focus without distractions. This can be achieved by limiting meetings, setting clear communication boundaries, and creating a culture that values focus over constant availability.
Research shows that individuals who engage in regular deep work produce higher-quality results and experience greater job satisfaction
Focusing on Conscious Leadership
Conscious leadership involves being aware of one’s emotions, actions, and impact on others. Leaders who practise conscious leadership foster environments of trust, collaboration, and resilience.
According to the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, conscious leaders focus on emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and open communication to create healthier, more productive teams.
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Conscious leaders model calm and composure under pressure, which helps their teams avoid reactive, stress-driven decisions. They encourage regular feedback loops, emphasise personal growth, and prioritise well-being alongside performance.
By leading with intention and empathy, conscious leaders create cultures where individuals can thrive both personally and professionally.
A Summary: Building Teams That Thrive
Building a resilient high-performing team is not about maximising effort but about working smarter and sustaining performance over the long term. By fostering psychological safety, managing workload, encouraging deep work and embedding cycles of renewal, leaders can help their teams thrive in any environment.
If you’d like to discuss in more detail how to transform your team into a resilient, high-performing powerhouse, contact me today.
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