Why you're failing at developing high-performance work teams

What is a high-performance work team?

See, here's the thing: Everyone says they want a high-performance work team, but no one can define exactly what that looks like. That's because a high-performing team looks different in every organization.

Generally speaking, a high-performing team is one that communicates effectively, possesses the skills necessary to excel, understands individual and organizational goals, and is able to achieve both.

But speaking in generalities isn't helpful when it comes to developing and sustaining high-performance work teams at your organization, now, is it? Because without a specific roadmap that's catered to your business needs, you won't know how to get there.

The thing is, there is no single playbook to create a high-performance team. For every team and every role at your organization, the criteria for "high performer" will be different. Yet, many companies try to take a one-size-fits-all approach, which is why so many fail at actually developing and sustaining high-performance teams.

That's why every assessment of a high performer must take into account the unique needs of each individual organization.

What makes a high performer?

That's a great question and one that F4S has committed to answering through research.

Starting in:

The F4S assessment: Based on 20+ years of work motivation research

The F4S assessment is not a personality test. Rather, it's a measure of each individual's unique motivations; unlike personality, motivations are science-backed traits or affinities that influence the way we work, communicate, digest information, and make decisions.

This is crucial because the prevailing belief, backed by research, is that personality traits are pretty stable⁴ (they typically don't change much over time). So when an employee takes a personality test for a job, they can feel stuck or pigeonholed because if their personality isn't the "right" fit for the role, it seems there's little they can do to change that.

Motivations, however, are changeable, so you can turn a blind spot into a strength! In fact, that's what F4S focuses on, a growth mindset. Employees are not punished for having blind spots (traits where they score low in relation to the role); blind spots are just opportunities for growth, and we actively work toward strengthening those areas through coaching.

We score motivations along a spectrum with a numbered score. The farther away the score goes from zero in the positive direction, the more motivated you are by that specific trait. The farther away the score goes from zero in the negative direction, the less motivated you are by that specific trait.

Here's an example: One of the 48 motivations that F4S research has identified is External Reference, which is the level of importance one places on seeking external data, research, and feedback before making a decision. Someone who scores 165 on External Feedback is highly motivated by asking others for their opinions before they decide.

So, as a team leader, if you know one of your direct reports is highly motivated by External Feedback, you will demotivate them by telling them to decide now without allowing them to seek advice. Conversely, you will motivate them by connecting them to experts they can consult with before having them make the decision.

We don't want to throw around the word "science-backed" without showing you the research we've published over the past two decades. (Below are just some of the papers; dive in-depth into all of our research here.)

• Can Entrepreneurial Success be Predicted 2016: This 15-year qualitative and quantitative study looked at businesses in three different categories: entrepreneurs (founders who started and exited a business within five years), business builders (founders/owners who profitably grew a business over 10+ years, and bankrupt (those who were currently bankrupt from a failed business). It then identified the work attitudes and motivations that set the successful founders apart from those that failed in business.
• Startup Genome - Entrepreneurial Mindset 2018: For this study, F4S along with Startup Genome asked founders around the world about their founder mindset to identify the mental attributes crucial to entrepreneurship. It featured more than 12,000 survey participants and over one hundred interviewees.
• She Loves Tech 2022 report: F4S and She Loves Tech analyze 2020 data from more than 2,000 tech startups in 60+ countries.

What is the F4S XFactor Model?

Simply put, the F4S XFactor Model is a scientifically proven way of identifying low, medium, and high performers, building a model of the unique motivations that drive high performers, and then developing and sustaining high-performance work teams by starting at the individual level.

An "XFactor" is the "secret sauce" that makes a recipe for success. The F4S XFactor Model is a science-backed method of using statistical analysis and contrastive assessment to identify the common characteristics that distinguish high performers from medium and low performers.

That specific group's XFactor Model is at the confluence of those key characteristics, and it can be used as a benchmark against which organizations, team leaders, teams, and specific roles can measure their progress. From there, you can conduct interventions to develop employees and coach them to succeed against shared goals.

F4S develops XFactor Models for specific roles at 2 levels

Global (Broad)

These global-level XFactor Models are loaded into the F4S platform and made available to the general public for benchmarking and ranking. That means anyone can take the F4S assessment and see how their 48 traits stack up against Entrepreneurs and Business Builders.

So far, we've built global XFactor Models for:

• Founders
• Startups and scale-ups
• Software engineers (in progress!)

Organization (Narrow)

These organizational-level XFactor Models are developed for your organization and are not available to the general public. These allow you to craft a custom model for specific roles, such as sales representative or product manager, to identify and develop high performers.

Why does this matter?

Imagine what you could do if you had a personalized map to success for each role in your organization, an evidence-based way to predict who would be the best fit for each position.

Here are some uses for the F4S XFactor Model:

• Find and hire the best talent
• Benchmark your current employees
• Manage your teams to maximize cohesion and performance
• Identify employees for leadership positions, promotions, and job changes
• Develop your workforce
• Coach every individual to their full potential

How to identify and model your high performers by building a custom XFactor Model for your business

Step 1: Have all team members take the evidence-based F4S assessment

It all begins with the F4S assessment, which takes 15-30 minutes to complete, and results are available online instantly.

This alone will give you a wealth of information about what makes your team tick, identifying everything from individual communication style preferences to the biggest sources of potential conflict among your team members (and how you can leverage this for productivity).

Step 2: Identify the high, mid, and low performers in a specific role of your choosing

What qualifies as a "high performer" varies by organization and role, which is why we let you decide which individuals are categorized as such.

Step 3: The F4S team runs your custom XFactor Analysis

We'll take it from here! Using the data from your team's completed F4S assessments and information you've given us on your low to high performers, we'll create a custom XFactor Analysis to identify which traits are necessary to be a high performer in this role at your company.

Step 4: F4S team presents the results

To help you understand how to leverage these insights, the F4S team will present a quantitative analysis for review. We'll then fine-tune the XFactor Model with qualitative input from your team.

Step 5: Load your custom XFactors into F4S for use in future hiring and development

Lastly, we'll load your custom XFactors into your F4S dashboard so you can use them in future hiring and development. The next time you're evaluating job candidates, you can have them take the F4S assessment, and F4S will load their information into the platform and benchmark these candidates against your top performers in the given role. You'll also be able to look at your existing team members, benchmark them against top performers and receive AI-powered performance coaching through Coach Marlee to develop their motivations to align with the high performers.