Individuals, Team, Context — the 3 Domains of Managing a High-performing Team
I want to build a platform that allows my team to do their best and most impactful work. I enjoy building, I’m driven by impact, and I believe that in a knowledge-driven company a people-centric approach brings the best results.
To build such a platform for teams, there are three domains to be mastered: individuals, team, and context.
On the individual level, you need to enable your teamsters to travel down a growth journey that matches their passions, interests, and strengths with what the context requires from them. Hiring, 1on1s, coaching, candid feedback, career development chats, and connecting them to the right people to further their growth, are your tools as a manager to do so.
On the team level, you need to enable the sum to be more than its parts. Enough has been written about high-performing teams, so I won’t go into the details and manifold approaches to build one. Creating an environment of psychological safety, candor, and strive for excellence & innovation are the key elements I bring to building a team. My tools are our team structure, operating cadence, meeting cadence, team development spaces, and trainings.
On the context level, everything you have done on the individual and team level turns into impact. You cannot build high-performing teams in empty space. There needs to be a purpose, something bigger the team serves. There needs to be a north star, a roadmap how to get there, a clear role and collaboration with stakeholders. Deep context understanding, an ability to reduce complexity and create a clear direction, as well as strong stakeholder networks and engagement, are the tools of this domain.
While the tools on the individual and team level can theoretically be applied across functions and industries, only once you combine them with the context domain can you achieve meaningful impact. A coaching question such as “What do you want to achieve?” only leads to a meaningful conversation if you understand the context your teamster is working in. The outcome of a team space on “team principles” will look different in a FCMG marketing department than in a Travel Tech operations department. And you will not have much credibility with your stakeholders if you present them a lofty north star without an informed roadmap as foundation.
Building a platform with these three domains requires patience. It’s a people-centric approach, and while it will yield way higher results than other approaches, it also takes more time. Once you have your team’s individuals on a continuous growth journey, the team working in close sync, and all that aligned to your context, you will see impressive results being delivered by your teams.
These results are what makes the management-as-a-platform approach an incredible value proposition for your teamsters who use it, your employer who pays you, and your stakeholders who partner with you on a journey to leave a dent in the world.
