Characteristics of a High-performing Team
Characteristics of a High-performing Team are below. Teams that strive for excellence in these areas generally outperform their peer teams and companies. The strength of our teams is the foundation of our ability to delight our riders and a competitive advantage for Lyft Bikes & Scooters.
The Bike Team will prioritize Team Dynamics around the following High-performing Team characteristics:
Accountability: High-performing teams win together and lose together. They collectively own their charter, the customer, and all of the work necessary to deliver on the strategy. Team members optimize their work to deliver collectively on the short-term and long-term team goals. No one works alone, no one is an island. There is no such thing as “I did my part” when the team has failed and the customer loses. Team members hold each other accountable while supporting their success.
Self Organization: Empowered, self-organized teams are motivated and realize the full potential of team members. Self-organization drives a stronger sense of ownership, learning, personal growth, productivity, and performance. Self-organizing teams decide how to implement, how much work to take on, and how to improve themselves.
Teamwork: High-performing teams optimize team throughput over individual efficiency. Teams that work well together are multipliers of their own productivity. High performing teams have a high level of trust between team members that drive effective collaboration and greater confidence in delivery. Team members work together on features and technology for their customers and help each other in need. Senior team members mentor other team members to fuel growth and make everyone feel like a member of the team.
Effective Conflict Resolution: High-performing teams know they will have conflicts in strategy, implementation, priorities, and how things get done. They are flexible and compromise when needed, always with the needs of the customer in mind. They have effective conflict resolution methods, have confidence in the system & their leaders, and don’t shy away from resolving as soon as possible. Decision making responsibility is clear and decisions are made within the context of the larger strategy and priorities. If resolution cannot be reached locally the escalation path is clear to everyone involved and resolution at higher levels is swift.
Transparency: Full transparency builds trust. Providing full transparency to everything the team does allow customers and stakeholders to engage and partner in the process of building solutions to satisfy their needs. Transparency allows the team to be self-organizing and self-correcting while enabling help from outside the team to remove obstacles.
Adaptable and agile: High performing teams adapt quickly to new information. They possess the agility to pivot quickly when necessary to respond to new customer needs or changes in priority or strategy. They do this by limiting WIP, breaking down work into small vertical chunks, carrying little technical debt, maintaining 100% test passing, and listening to their customers. The only constant is change — which relies on our ability to adapt fast.
Credits; thank you to the amazing mentors at Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and Lyft who have helped me to tune this approach over many years.
