Strong teams don’t build themselves. They need intentional strategies, clear leadership habits, and a culture rooted in trust, accountability, and continuous learning.
This guide is for HR and People Leaders ready to move beyond theory and into action. Inside, you’ll find practical strategies, everyday tools, and proven frameworks to help your teams perform to their highest potential.
If you're ready to turn talent into true team performance, let’s get started.
The Current Reality of Teams in 2025
The state of team performance in 2025 is mixed. Research by Atlassian shows only 24% of team time is spent on mission-critical work, while the rest disappears into meetings, duplicate efforts, and low-value tasks. In Fortune 500 companies alone, 25 billion work hours are lost every year to ineffective collaboration.
Some common issues:
- Unclear goals: 70% of employees say progress would be easier with fewer, sharper priorities (Atlassian, 2024).
- Communication overload: 65% feel pressure to respond immediately, hurting focus (Atlassian, 2024).
- Burnout risk: 40% of leaders expect burnout to worsen this year.
Leading organizations are making a strategic shift away from logged hours and toward creativity, innovation, and measurable outcomes.
Knowing the challenges teams face today, the next step is clear. Build the right habits, structures, and leadership practices to unlock real performance.
Here’s how HR and People Leaders can start putting the pieces into action.
Proven Strategies for Building High-Performing Teams
1. Build Trust Through Psychological Safety
High performing teams need psychological safety; where team members feel safe to speak up, challenge ideas, and make mistakes without fear.
At Elevate, we help teams build this foundation using our Building Trust as a Team framework, centered on 6 core behaviors:
- Be consistent
- Communicate openly
- Show vulnerability
- Recognize effort
- Own mistakes
- Stay curious, not defensive
One practical way teams can strengthen safety is by weaving trust check-ins into regular rhythms. For example, starting a monthly meeting with a question like, "When did we last take a risk together?" or "Is there anything unsaid that could be holding us back?" can normalize openness over time.
2. Flex Your Management Style to Match Team Needs
One-size-fits-all leadership doesn’t work, especially in today’s hybrid, fast-moving environments.
The best teams are led by managers who adapt their leadership styles based on their team's specific needs.
Enters The Flexible Management Model, where managers adapt different leadership styles based on the level of skill and will of the team member.
- Low Skill, High Will → Guide
Example: Walk through the first client onboarding step-by-step with them, then shadow their next one to offer feedback in real time.
- High Skill, Low Will → Mentor
Example: Ask what’s blocking their motivation, then co-create a challenge or stretch assignment that reignites their engagement.
- Low Skill, Low Will → Engage
Example: Have a direct 1:1 conversation to reset expectations, clarify support available, and agree on one small next step they can own this week.
- High Skill, High Will → Empower
Example: Hand off a full project with clear goals and let them decide how to run it. Then, step back unless they ask for support.
3. Align Around Clear, Shared Goals
Without clear, shared goals, teams spin in circles. Alignment means every team member understands what matters most, why it matters, and how their work contributes.
To build alignment, HR and People Leaders should help managers connect the dots in three specific ways:
What matters: Co-create goals with your team
Instead of handing down objectives, facilitate a team session that maps out goals across all three levels: individual, team, and customer.
Why it matters: Train managers to explain the “why” behind each goal
When rolling out goals, encourage managers to connect them to the broader business strategy, and in their 1-1s, connect them to the individual’s goals.
How each person contributes: Keep visibility high and priorities active
Coach managers to reference shared goals in weekly check-ins and team huddles. Use simple prompts like: "Which of our top priorities does this task support?" or "What’s one thing we’re doing this week that helps move Goal #2 forward?"
Keeping goals top of mind helps people connect their daily work to real impact.
4. Build a Culture of Accountability (Without Micromanaging)
High-performing teams need the freedom to innovate and execute in their own way (micromanagement stifles performance), but also need clear accountability for results.
We coach leaders to think of accountability with a simple formula:
Accountability = Expectations + Feedback + Autonomy
Expectations give people clarity. Start every project with a short “success briefing” that defines deliverables, deadlines, and decision-making roles. Document this somewhere visible. Clear expectations reduce confusion and make follow-through easier.
Feedback keeps work on track. Instead of saving it for formal reviews, encourage regular feedback with 4 simple sentences.
- State what you observed (or the behavior)
- Tell them how you feel about it
- Share the wider impact
- Ask a gentle question.
Autonomy gives people room to deliver. Once goals and feedback loops are in place, managers can step back. Support shows up as guidance, not control. A simple shift by asking “What do you need from me to move this forward?” reinforces trust while keeping momentum strong.
When these elements are present, accountability becomes the norm. Teams stay aligned, take ownership, and follow through. No micromanaging required.
5. Reinforce Values, Purpose, and Belonging
We encourage embedding values into teams through micro-habits, language, and rituals. Here’s how:
- Onboard values, not just tasks. Build a “First 30 Days” experience that connects new hires to the organization’s purpose, values, and team rituals.
- Use “One Team” language daily. Swap out phrases like “my department” with “our team” and model cross-team collaboration.
- Create small daily rituals tied to values. Start meetings with a “values spotlight” (one person shares how they saw a value in action). Recognize team wins tied back to core values.
When people consistently see values lived out, especially by leaders, trust and loyalty deepen.
6. Design Inclusive, People-Centric Norms
Teams that design inclusive company norms intentionally perform better on innovation, problem-solving, and engagement metrics.
At Elevate, we help organizations weave inclusion into everyday collaboration. You can apply this by:
- Defining team collaboration norms together. Facilitate a “Ways We Work” session once a quarter:
- How do we want to run meetings?
- What are our expectations around response times?
- How do we handle disagreements?
- Is there anything about our ways of working that makes collaboration harder for anyone?
- Making meetings more inclusive. Practices like:
- Rotate meeting facilitators.
- Send agendas ahead of time.
- Actively invite quieter voices into the discussion.
- Provide multiple ways to contribute (chat, post-meeting input).
7. Build a Learning-Oriented Team Culture
A recent survey shows 41% of employees would leave their company if they didn’t have sufficient learning opportunities. To create learning-oriented environments:
- Make learning a standing agenda item. In monthly team meetings, ask:
- "What’s one thing we learned this month?"
- "What skill do we want to sharpen next?"
- Integrate microlearning into daily work. Recommend short videos, articles, or quick trainings that employees can complete in under 15 minutes.
- Encourage stretch projects. Give team members opportunities to take on assignments that grow new skills, even if it’s outside their formal role.
8. Leverage Technology with Intention
Research shows that teams who consistently plan and track work with centralized tools are 1.6x more productive and 5x more likely to be effective.
Apply a "Less Noise, More Signal" mindset when it comes to technology adoption. Start with these steps:
- Audit and align tools quarterly.
- Which tools are helping us?
- Where are we duplicating or overcomplicating?
- What norms around tool use do we need to reset?
- Define async vs. sync communication norms.
- Async (Loom videos, Slack updates) = Information sharing.
- Sync (live meetings) = Decision-making, collaboration.
- Centralize knowledge and goals. Use shared hubs (like Confluence, Notion, or SharePoint) where project updates, resources, and decisions are documented and accessible.
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How to Scale High-Performing Team Habits Across the Organization
Building one high-performing team is a great start, but scaling those habits across dozens of teams is what sets organizations apart.
At Elevate, we’ve seen 3 core practices help HR and People Leaders build high performing companies:
1. Standardize the right behaviors
Instead of trying to replicate personalities or hiring for “culture fit,” focus on the habits that drive consistent performance. These include how feedback is given, how goals are set, how meetings run, and how recognition happens.
Embed these behaviors into onboarding, manager training, and day-to-day team rituals. Provide tools like feedback scripts, team check-in guides, and meeting templates to make it easy to adopt and repeat.
2. Help managers be multipliers
Managers are the most powerful lever for scaling performance. Enable them with coaching toolkits and create safe spaces for them to practice, ask questions, and build confidence.
3. Measure what matters
Make team health (including mental health) visible with simple scorecards that track things like clarity, psychological safety, and accountability.
Run short team surveys each quarter and provide reflection templates to help managers debrief results and take action. Include team health in your performance dashboards so it gets the attention it deserves
Real-World Case Studies: High-Performing Teams in Action
Rent Ready
One of the clearest examples of what happens when high-performance habits are embedded into daily leadership comes from Rent Ready, a fast-growing platform for apartment turnover services.
Their challenge was familiar: performance reviews were vague, feedback wasn’t landing, and managers (many of them newly promoted) lacked the tools to coach or hold people accountable. Despite clear business goals, progress stalled.
Working with Elevate, Rent Ready rolled out a customized Manager Accelerator Program built around the fundamentals in this guide: coaching, feedback, accountability, and leadership clarity.
The results were significant. In six months:
- Managers gave clearer, more honest feedback
- Performance review time dropped in half while quality doubled
- Teams used shared language around feedback and praise
- Revenue grew 48% month-over-month through better customer retention and team execution
CEO Jonathan Kite credits this growth to a culture shift where feedback became timely, actionable, and part of everyday conversations. Managers now lead with clarity. Teams perform with focus. And business results follow.
Future
Future, a fast-growing digital personal training startup, had a familiar challenge where strong individual contributors were being promoted into leadership roles without the skills to lead effectively. As a result, performance conversations lacked structure, feedback wasn’t landing, and key business metrics like client retention and sign-up conversions plateaued.
To address this, Future’s People Operations team partnered with Elevate to design a 15-week management training program focused on accountability, team trust, and performance feedback. Using Elevate’s ready-made facilitator guides and short, tactical videos, they built interactive weekly workshops and role-play exercises that managers could immediately apply.
The results were clear:
- 35% improvement in performance management
- 30% increase in team trust
- 6% lift in client retention
- 25% stronger communication skills
- 90% of managers felt more confident leading their teams
The program created shared language, raised expectations, and made learning part of everyday team rhythms. Future’s managers now lead with greater clarity and confidence, delivering stronger team outcomes and contributing directly to business success.
Teams Are the Engine. HR Is the Architect.
High-performing teams are built through clear expectations, shared behaviors, and leadership that prioritizes connection, consistency, and growth. As an HR or People Leader, you help shape how that happens. Every leadership habit you support will strengthen the foundation teams rely on to perform and adapt.
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