First, you may want to think about the type of team you are trying to create based on your organization's strategy before attempting to align your team. There are many myths in organizations that constitute what high-performing teams do or what they "look" like. Such attributes include high levels of collaboration, frequent communication, and shared goal-setting. From our experience, these qualities do not determine high-performance for all teams or work groups. To use a sports analogy, a basketball team will organize itself and work very differently than a track team. In basketball, each member of the team truly needs to be in the huddle together and must depend on each other much more in order to be successful while a track team may need to communicate and work together in a very different way. The question is, what type of team do you need to create in order to accomplish your business goals?

Regardless of the type of team you are trying to create, from our experience, trust becomes the underlying foundation that can help create high performance. To build trust you may want to begin by creating vulnerability among team members at the individual level. This requires each individual to take a look in the rearview mirror to discuss their successes, disappointments, and aspirations. This process of understanding where each person has been allows the team to understand who they are as a collective unit today and opportunities they may want to create together in the future.

A team's shared purpose and collective vision is a reflection of each person's beliefs, assumptions, and experiences. Making these explicit will not only help the team create a more meaningful future, but it will also help remove some of the root obstacles which are likely to be causing you problems.