How do you measure team performance?

On one level assessing team performance may appear easy – are they winning? Is the team achieving their KPI targets? This single item measure may appear like the only indication leaders need, but this is short-sighted and will not support any leader over the long term as it negates other important measures of wellbeing and team dynamics. Accurately measuring team performance provides insight into a great deal of factors underlying team health and capacity to deliver. It is important to get it right. 

Our own analysis of team performance and from the 20 years we have spent coaching teams reveals five core elements that any measurement needs to examine. Success in these elements paint a picture of sustained high performance where team members can thrive in an environment with strong psychological safety.   

The first three relate to: 

Mindset – the quality of a team’s actions will be determined by the quality of their mindset 

Action – actions required to deliver the outcomes 

Outcome – what the team is there to deliver 

And connecting these three are two important facets that help ‘grease the wheels’ of the team: a) team leadership and b) the team learning rhythm 

Team leadership is the first of two support mechanisms for outcomes, actions and mindset. It relates to a leader’s capacity and ability to inspire, direct and clarify expectations for the team. We analyse this through the lenses of leadership theory, management best practise and coaching.  

The second support mechanism is team learning rhythm – this is the team establishing and making good use of intentional, frequent and regular opportunities to come together to learn from its own experience of its work. 

All of these elements can be measured, and need to be, if you hope to get an accurate and objective picture of the health of a team. Centre for Teams use their proprietary instrument – the Adaptable Team Assessment to do this. This survey is deployed to all team members and their leader at the start of any coaching programme so that a valid picture of the team health and current performance is generated at the start and then compared with another set of survey results at the end of the coaching programme so leaders and their teams can see how much impact their development has had on their team dynamics. 

 It is a strong evidence-based process that brings valuable transparency to the question of how you measure team performance. And importantly, highlights areas of strength that can be expanded on and areas of focus that need attention. After all, it’s not just about hitting those sales targets.