"Everyone says they’re building high-performing teams"

We all say it.
In strategy decks, job ads, all-hands meetings, “We’re building high-performing teams.”

It sounds right. Who wouldn’t want that?
But what does it actually mean?

I once worked with a team that, on paper, looked high-performing.
They delivered on time, there was no drama, and everything ran smoothly. It was calm. Predictable. Dependable.

But after a while, something felt off.
There wasn’t much debate. The same couple of people made most of the key decisions, and everyone else just got on with things. When those “go-to” people were away, everything slowed down.

At the time, I took that calm as a sign of maturity. Looking back, I think it was more like… carefulness. The team was stable, not high-performing.

That’s the trouble with the phrase, it hides a lot.
Sometimes “high-performing” means the team ships fast.
Sometimes it means the team gets along.
Sometimes it means no one’s complaining.

But high performance isn’t a fixed state. It’s an emergent property, it shows up when the right conditions exist.
When there’s trust to speak up, clarity about what matters, and curiosity to keep learning.

You can’t measure it in a spreadsheet, and you can’t mandate it in a meeting.
It grows in the space between people, in how they react when things get messy.

Maybe the real question isn’t “How do we build high-performing teams?”​
but “What conditions let high performance emerge?”

That shift, from control to cultivation, is where leadership really lives.

Until next time,
Dermot
​The Messy Middle

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