Every impact-driven business leader wants to know how to energize their team to create the ultimate teamwork.
At Higher Playbook, we believe dream teams start with awareness and alignment. To inspire leaders to take the pulse of their people and culture, we’ve outlined the characteristics of high-performing teams into 3 categories, classifications which serve to clarify three key questions at the core of your people and culture:
I. Human Characteristics
Who are the unique individuals operating within this company?
Beneath the roles and responsibilities of a workforce, you’ll find a layer of human potential looking for space to flourish. These are the natural talents, gifts, skills, abilities, virtues, and qualities that inform our individuality as people. With the proper attention toward personal growth and professional development, a workplace can harness their human characteristics.
- People reflect a diversity of demographic backgrounds, including gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, religion, and socioeconomics.
- People reflect a spectrum of neurodiversity, with unique ways of thinking and seeing the world that influences the perspective they bring to their everyday work.
- People possess unique qualities. They are recognized and valued for the individuality they express in their roles and responsibilities.
- People have relevant life experiences that inform their perspectives and directly support the work that they are doing at your company.
- People are growth-oriented. They invested in their own self-mastery, being their best self and contributing to your company in meaningful ways.
- People have multifaceted identities, which inform the personal value systems that guide their decision-making.
II. Energetic Characteristics
What is the People’s Potential, as measured by the Energy Leadership Index Assessment (ELI)?
These are the attitudinal tendencies of people, both individually and collectively. Every person on a team brings a unique collection of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to their work. This is their energetic potential, and it is influenced largely by contextual factors of the workplace and how much perceived stress exists on a daily basis.
When you pulse your people with the ELI, you can start to see high-level themes and patterns. These are energetic characteristics that reflect the commonly held thoughts, feelings, and actions within the team.
- People have a high level of purpose. They possess a deeper why that they bring to their everyday work, which fuels their passion and commitment to the company mission.
- People have a high level of self-awareness. They consider, “what’s in it for you, what’s in it for me, and what’s in it for all of us?” and are motivated by win-win-win outcomes.
- People have a high level of curiosity. They are interested to learn, grow, and master their knowledge in areas of interest.
- People have a high level of creativity. They are innovative and have great ideas they wish to contribute.
- People have a high level of connectedness. They care about one another and take time to connect and deepen their relationships.
- People have a high level of altruism. They see their impact as the part they play toward bettering humanity and feel driven by something greater than themselves.
III. Contextual Characteristics
What is the company culture are people entraining to?
Every team member can rise as high as the walls – physical and perceptual- of their workplace. Culture is confined by contextual factors: perception, what people experience and observe on a daily basis; operations, what standards and policies exist; accessibility, what opportunities there are to connect and contribute; and climate, what conditions people are consciously and unconsciously confined to.
These cultural norms become enacted across entire teams, and the contextual characteristics influence how people apply their human and energetic potential in their work. This creates an overall attitude in your workplace called the ARL, average resonating level of energy, which can be a powerful indicator of your company culture.
- People are celebrated and recognized within their workday, with operationalized ways of connecting as a team and promoting visibility of individual contributors.
- People are encouraged to connect and contribute, outside of their everyday role and responsibilities, through collaborative workspaces and workplace experiences.
- People are given opportunities where they can experience their interconnectivity: how they play a unique part within a much larger ecosystem of impact.
- People have flexible schedules and environments and feel empowered to ask for the accommodations to support them in reaching their potential.
- People believe that their leadership genuinely cares about them, which creates an atmosphere of trust, transparency, and reciprocity.
- People are invited to go beyond the walls of their workplace and do meaningful work in the world through their participation in Special Projects.
How is your team measuring up?
This Classified Checklist is here to help you assess your People and Culture. You can click here now to download the Classified Checklist PDF and use it as a starting point to initiate transformational culture work.
While every team has its own ways of actualizing their high-performing potential, conscious leaders like you play a powerful part in developing their People & Culture. Sam Walker, author of The Captain Class, says it perfectly: “the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.”
Interested to assess the potential of your team? Higher Playbook can help you to identify how your team is measuring up– and what you can do to harness the high-performing potential of your organization. You can begin by unlocking the high-potential characteristics of your team with the People’s Potentials Activation. Find out more here.
