What It Really Takes to Build a Performing Leadership Team
- Nicki Crossland
- Nov 17
- 6 min read
“High-performing team.” It sounds great on a slide — but what does it actually mean?
It’s one of the most over-used phrases in leadership. Everyone wants one. Few can clearly describe what it looks like, feels like, or how to build it. And when you apply it to a leadership team, the complexity multiplies.
Performance at that level relies on two things:
Having the fundamentals of team effectiveness in place, and
Applying disciplined techniques that depend on human behaviour — which means they’re rarely simple to apply consistently.
When I talk about a performing leadership team, I’m referring to one that delivers sustained results because its effectiveness foundations are strong.
You can feel it in the room — purposeful, connected, energising, and deeply rewarding.
Through years of working with senior teams, four elements have consistently proven essential. I call them the Four Pillars of Performing Leadership Teams;
Composition, Purpose and Direction - The foundation: who’s in the team, why it exists, and where it’s heading.
Ways of Working - How the team turns intent into disciplined action.
Mindset and Energy - The tone that fuels or drains performance.
Skills and Development - The growth engine that keeps capability alive.
Each pillar connects critical people practices in a practical, actionable way. Together, they create the conditions where performance doesn’t just happen — it sticks.
Pillar 1 - Composition, Purpose & Direction
Many leadership teams skip straight to delivery — before they’re actually ready to. They focus on action, not architecture. And when results slip, they blame execution and/or each other instead of examining some of the root causes.
But performance begins here: getting the composition, purpose and direction right.
Because if you don’t start deliberately, you spend months (or years) compensating for what wasn’t designed properly in the first place. Teams falter when:
The wrong people are in key seats.
Competence is assumed, not validated.
Purpose is implicit, not explicit.
Success isn’t defined collectively.
Individuals can’t see how they contribute.
When that happens, leaders fill gaps with their own agendas — and misalignment quietly multiplies. It’s one of the most common — and most costly — leadership failures I see.
Strong teams, by contrast, are intentional. They treat design as a discipline.
Five principles that define this pillar:
The right people are in the right roles, competence validated, not tolerated.
The team’s purpose is clear, specific, and meaningful.
Success is defined collectively and cascades through individual ownership.
Roles and accountabilities are explicit and reinforced by structure, not personality.
There’s shared rhythm around priorities, decisions, and focus.
Get this right, and you unlock a level of clarity and commitment that transforms performance.
Pillar 2 - Ways of Working
Once the who, why, what, and where are nailed, everything depends on how the team works together. Because even the best-designed team fails if its ways of working are weak.
This is where clarity meets behaviour — where intention turns into disciplined execution.
Performing leadership teams operate with rhythm and rigour. Meetings have purpose and pace. Different perspectives are voiced openly. Conflict is addressed, not avoided. And decisions made in the room aren’t questioned or challenged once everyone returns to delivery — no “dirty yesses.”
Each member owns the quality of teamwork: preparing properly, engaging constructively, following through. They hold each other to account — not waiting for the leader to step in every time. That’s what distinguishes a true leadership team from a group of senior individuals.
Because without this discipline, even the most capable teams start to fracture under pressure.
And yet, many leadership teams confuse collaboration with consensus — mistaking inclusion for agreement. The goal isn’t to make everyone comfortable; it’s to create the conditions for honest debate, clear decisions, and collective commitment. That’s what builds speed, trust, and confidence over time.
Five principles that define this pillar:
Meetings are intentional, productive, and end with clear commitments.
Psychological safety and constructive challenge coexist.
Decisions stick — no revisiting, no back-channel dissent.
Accountability is peer-to-peer, not leader-enforced.
Follow-through builds trust faster than any team-building exercise ever could.
When this rhythm takes hold, the team starts to move as one — pace, coordination, and confidence aligned. But sustaining that rhythm depends on something less visible — a shared mindset and energy that fuels performance from within.
Pillar 3 - Mindset & Energy
Once the structures, systems, and routines are in place, performance depends on something far less visible — the mindset and energy that drive how a team shows up. Because this pillar is the one that sustains all the others
Mindset is the lens through which we interpret everything — challenge, change, and success. It shapes the assumptions, beliefs, and stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening around us.
Energy is the result. It’s how that mindset shows up in our behaviour — the tone, emotion, and intent we bring into every conversation, decision, and relationship..
The two are inseparable. When mindset changes, energy follows. When energy lifts, so does perspective — and the reverse is also true.
And here’s the most important part — both are completely developable. Once a team understands the link between mindset and energy, they can change the climate in the room, the quality of decisions, and even how they experience challenge.
This pillar isn’t soft — it’s strategic. And it’s completely developable.
Teams that embrace this work unlock something extraordinary. They stay constructive under strain, resourceful through change, and energised even when things are difficult.
Low energy slows everything down — decision quality, pace, engagement, and resilience all suffer. When energy rises, clarity sharpens, communication improves, and progress accelerates. The external conditions might be the same, but the team’s internal state transforms how it performs within them. That’s why this pillar is a performance lever, not a wellbeing exercise.
Five principles that define this pillar:
Mindset is conscious and intentional — the team recognises how it interprets events and reframes when needed.
Energy is the behavioural outcome — noticed, named, and managed.
The link between mindset and energy is understood and actively shaped.
The team manages its collective energy to stay resourceful under pressure.
Shifts in mindset and energy are seen as skills to develop, not traits to accept.
Mindset and energy aren’t just individual disciplines; they’re the invisible layer that strengthens every other pillar — especially the team’s ways of working. And when this awareness becomes a habit, it becomes a multiplier — fuelling performance and resilience when others start to fade.
Pillar 4 - Skills & Development
By the time a team reaches this pillar, development is already happening. Because when a leadership team is consciously working on its composition, purpose, ways of working, and energy, it’s already learning — about itself, about others, and about what great leadership really requires.
But Pillar 4 takes that implicit growth and makes it conscious. It’s about recognising that development is the ongoing discipline that sustains performance. No one is ever a finished article.
For some teams, this means building new skills. For others, it’s about strengthening existing ones — or going deeper into concepts they already know but haven’t fully mastered. Because growth isn’t always about adding more; often it’s about refining what’s already there.
Performing leadership teams treat development as a strategic advantage, not a remedial exercise. They make learning visible — in how they reflect, give feedback, and coach each other in real time. They use challenge as a catalyst, not a criticism.
And they understand that knowledge only creates value when it’s applied. Knowing isn’t the same as doing — and doing once isn’t the same as sustaining.
This pillar is what keeps performance alive long after the offsite ends. It’s what turns improvement into momentum.
Five principles that define this pillar:
Development is deliberate — it’s built into the rhythm of how the team works.
Learning isn’t linear — it includes deepening, refining, and relearning.
Feedback and reflection are part of daily practice, not special events.
Application matters more than acquisition — growth is measured in behaviour, not theory.
Curiosity and humility are recognised as strengths, not signs of inexperience.
When all four pillars connect — Composition and Purpose, Ways of Working, Mindset and Energy, Skills and Development — performance stops being something the team drives and becomes something it embodies.
Performing leadership teams aren’t born — they’re built. And they stay that way by continuing to learn, together.
Bringing It All Together
Performing leadership teams aren’t born — they’re built.
Each pillar matters on its own, but it’s the connection between them that creates sustained performance.
Composition and purpose set the foundation.
Ways of working create rhythm and accountability.
Mindset and energy define the tone and climate of the team — the human context in which performance is either fuelled or depleted.
Continuous development ensures the team keeps evolving as the business does.
None of this happens by chance. It takes intention, consistency, and courage — long after the buzz of a team offsite has faded.
This framework has been shaped through years of experience, tested in the real world, and proven across industries. Applied with discipline, it delivers what every organisation needs but few achieve: real effectiveness that enables sustained performance and impact.
If you’re ready to strengthen your team’s foundations, start where every performing leadership team begins — Pillar 1: Composition, Purpose & Direction.
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