Jeremy Akin

Dana Barnett

PMG 320

2/9/23

Module 5 Paper: Building High Performing Teams

“A team is not a group of people that work together. It is a group of people that trust each

other”—Simon Sinek

Strong leadership is best seen through the cohesiveness of the leader’s team. This module has

taught me the importance of quality communication throughout all stages of a project. This past week

has been one of the most fruitful and dense learning experiences I have had as a developing project

manager. The PERFORM acronym, the tips on how to run successful meetings, and the different choices

of communication methods recommended within a project summarize my greatest takeaways from

module five. All three examples are different dimensions of communication that are essential to a high

performing team and a successful project.

The first form of communication I would like to highlight from the module five power point is

the PERFORM acronym (purpose, empowerment, relationships, flexibility, optimal productivity,

recognition/appreciation, and morale). This tool, created by Ken Blanchard, highlights the characteristics

of a high performing team. Each characteristic has a great lesson to learn and advice I will carry on into

my career. A team with no purpose has no drive. Team members that feel empowered are more

creative and more productive. Steve Jobs highlights the effectiveness of empowerment in his video

about managing people. Steve mentions that Apple has no committees and is made up of people that

are empowered to create a product and make decisions to protect that product. This idea alone has
created the many different successful products that Apple has released over the years. Steve Jobs

touches on the concepts of relationships, flexibility, and optimal productivity in his video on the NeXT

team and what it meant to leave his position at Apple and start up his own company. Steve’s team was

comprised of people that believed in him enough to leave their job at Apple to come work for NeXT.

Jobs challenges his team throughout the start-up process and challenges them to be flexible. A moment

arises in the video where tensions get high and true leadership is seen by Jobs. Jobs gets frustrated and

says “So somebody’s gotta say here’s what we can do, and we can make it happen, and here is the level

of ‘thing’ we can ship in sixteen months... and what I hear him saying is, well anything more than a Port

of Mac Author, forget it. And, boy, that just makes me smoke”—Steve Jobs. Steve is challenging the

closed mindset of his team and telling them to be more open-minded. Productivity is maximized by

establishing that a clear goal needs to be put on the table with tangible and measurable results. As a

leader, Jobs is challenging his team to be better every day. In tandem with challenging team members, it

is important to nurture them equally. Providing recognition and appreciation when things go well will

boost morale and condition a team to maintain high performance.

A fantastic way to execute the PERFORM tool is by hosting an effective launch meeting followed

by strategic team meetings. As described in our textbook, “An official project launch represents the very

first project milestone, telling everyone, we begin this journey together, and we begin now” (Harvard

Business Review Press, p. 66). Establishing a vision for the team and introducing all the stakeholders in a

personal way is a bonding experience that builds a high performing team. Communicating clear

expectations where all stakeholders are present creates accountability that can be leveraged in times of

underperformance. All team members understand what success looks like and are given the tools they

need to succeed. Meetings that follow the launch must be run with best practices that keep the vision

living. Ron Rosenhead provides tips and tricks to making meetings effective in his list of meeting rules

for successful teams. His rules paint the picture on who should be attending the meeting, how attendees
should be physically positioned in the meeting, and the progression of communication that should take

place in the meeting (Rosenhead, 2008). Meetings are the chance to calibrate mindsets within a team. It

is also the setting to gather opinions and establish expectations. They can also be used to document

decisions and measure progress. Success that cannot be measured is not truly success.

Communication that happens between meetings is just as important as the level of

communication during meetings. In the power point presentation of module five, we learned that

communication, when working on a project, should take one of three different forms: interactive, push,

and pull communication. Having different forms of communication used at the right time will maximize

efficiency of the team working to accomplish the project. High-performance teams use the right kind of

information, at the right time, to save resources like time and payroll from being wasted. If information

can take the form of a memo and has no needed response, it should be push communication. If

provided resources answer the questions of multiple team members, the information should be

accessed through pull communication on a website or database.

Communication may take many forms, but the success and performance of a team depends on

the leader’s ability to match the right communication style to the situation at hand. Strategies discussed

in this module such as the PERFORM acronym, the tips on how to run successful meetings, and the

different choices of communication methods will help any team to be high performing. Similarly, these

strategies will help me lead future teams and work with diverse people groups. Within my current job at

Costco, a recent poll suggested that communication and recognition were two of the lowest warehouse

ratings amongst employees. Effective communication strategies like the ones I have learned this week

may be the key to changing the way managers communicate with employees or the way staff meetings

are run. The usefulness of these strategies does not stop at my current role at Costco, they will be

effective tools in my leadership tool belt for positions further down my career path.