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The cost of an underperforming team varies based on where you look, but there is a cost. Just like when you鈥檙e fixing a car or treating a health condition, it鈥檚 vital to get to the root case of underperforming rather than simply treating the symptoms.聽

On our Benefits podcast, we sat down with Jess Almlie, who is our vice president of learning experience. Almlie shares her experience and knowledge about how to elevate team performance. Keep reading to learn her five steps to improve team performance, or watch our podcast episode below for our complete conversation with her.

1. Define your ideal team results

Before diving into enhancing team performance, you have to first identify what that ideal team performance should be. At this point, you鈥檙e not concerned about how your team achieves desired results. You鈥檙e only concerned with what the desired result should be.聽

Almlie likens it to ordering groceries and having them delivered to your house. You鈥檙e not as concerned with the process that resulted in groceries being delivered. Your primary concern is that the desired outcome 鈥� groceries arriving and getting what you ordered 鈥� was achieved.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e looking for results the team should be achieving,鈥� Almlie said. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e not looking for how they should achieve them at this point in the process.鈥�

2. Define current team behavior

Next step is analyzing how your team is currently performing. What is going right? What is not going as well as you鈥檇 like it to go?聽

Almlie suggests paying particular attention to three key employee groups:聽

• The top performers, who Almlie describes as the people 鈥渨ho seem to knock out of the park no matter what.鈥� These are the people who are achieving your performance outcomes. It has nothing to do with likability.聽
• The standard performers, which is where most of the team sits. The standard performers have possibly not figured out processes that work for the key performers, or the key performers have thrown out steps or re-imagined new ways of doing things that this group hasn鈥檛 adopted.聽
• The managers. Almlie said sometimes the managers have unrealistic expectations or the expectations are unclear.聽

鈥淲hat you want to find out is what do the key performers do that sets them apart,鈥� Almlie said. 鈥淲hat have they figured out. Think if you could take everyone in that average part of the bell curve and just shift them up a little bit to work like the key performers do. You would shift the whole performance of your team.鈥�

3. Find the gaps

Step 3 is your opportunity to identify where the gaps are after analyzing the three groups outlined above. What are the things that your top performers are doing differently from your standard performers? Or is it simply that your manager hasn鈥檛 effectively communicated something to the entire team?聽

The gaps holding your team back could be:聽

• Team structure, workflow, or processes
• Resources (time, money, people, technology)
• Access to information they need
• Knowledge or skills
• Rewards and incentives
• Personal capacity or capability
• Hiring wrong skills or profiles

鈥淣ow is when we take all the data about what should be happening and is happening, and we鈥檙e looking for trends,鈥� Almlie said.

4. Apply best solutions

You鈥檝e identified the gaps. Now, it鈥檚 solution time. Your solutions could be implemented quickly, or they might take time.聽

鈥淭he way I like to think about solutions is looking at two things: difficulty and impact,鈥� Almlie said. 鈥淗ow difficult will it be to implement solutions? And what鈥檚 the impact?鈥�

Almlie said workflow or process issues might require just a few process tweaks to make the changes. However, if the gaps require new technology or involve development, that could take longer.聽

5. Evaluate performance

Step 5 puts you back to where you were when we got started. Compare today to where you were at the start. Did you move the needle? Are you seeing positive results in your performance metrics? If you are, great. If not, you鈥檒l want to go through the process again.聽

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