High Performance is Just the Beginning…

I work with many teams and have been considering what we actually mean when we talk about a ‘high performing team.’ This is because this term can be overly mechanistic, implying that an effective team is one which simply delivers their agreed business metrics.

Obviously achieving results is essential. But we also know that this single lens can hide dysfunctional behaviour, ignores high staff turnover, fails to notice unhealthy internal competition and can mean that cultural problems are kicked up the road to be dealt with by future leaders. So, in reality, success is not just about performance. It is also about team effectiveness, and this includes learning, behaviour, systemic outcomes, and sustained progress.

A new paper in Organisational Dynamics by Dhar et al. (2026) has put evidence based research behind our experience at The Team Lab. We see that a focus on performance can sometimes crowd out the conditions that help people, teams, and businesses to grow. The authors draw a distinction between a culture of performance and a culture of development, arguing that organisations need both, and development needs to be seen as having value in its own right, rather than being just another mechanism for driving performance. They also use physiological evidence on motivation and behaviour which ‘suggests that the neural networks and hormonal systems that underlie a person’s learning and development are antagonistic to those that underlie performance focused activity.’

The key point here is that the human dynamics we draw upon when focused on metrics, targets, problem solving, and delivery are different from those which are associated with empathy, openness, creativity, learning, and relationships. This raises an interesting question about what happens when teams spend most of their time focused on performance.

I believe that this distinction is thought provoking when working with teams. A team can have a clear strategy, strong individual leaders, and ambitious targets. But, if the relationships underneath the surface are not strong enough to support honest challenge, curiosity, disagreement, reflection and learning, there is a limit to what a team can achieve together over the long term.

Their paper describes seven building blocks of a developmental culture. This includes the quality of relationships, emotional and social intelligence, inclusive development, a growth mindset, and the ability to think at multiple levels across individuals, relationships, teams, and the wider organisation. For us who work at the Team Lab, this last point is particularly important because teams don't perform as a collection of talented individuals. They perform through the relationships, conversations, and patterns of behaviour between one another.

To shift our perspective towards these dual lenses of performance and effectiveness the authors suggest that we start by asking two questions and giving these equal weight when we make decisions: How will this decision affect the performance of the organisation? And how will this affect the development of the people within it? 

I agree that this way of thinking is a powerful lever by which we can co-create sustained success for leaders, their teams, and the business.

*Dhar, U., Boyatzis, R., Smith, M., Taylor, S., and Van Oosten, E. (2026) ‘Creating an organizational culture of development to complement a culture of performance’, Organizational Dynamics, 55, article 101251. doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2026.101251