High-performance teams are teams that can produce more than the sum of their parts.

They deliver value for the business, exceed their goals and create impact beyond the contribution of any one individual. But apart from their results, how do you recognise a high-performance team?

High-performance teams typically share a common goal and are willing to subordinate individual objectives to those of the team. They show mutual respect and trust, protect and support one another and communicate through open dialogue. They hold strong shared values and beliefs and are less concerned with hierarchy, losing face or internal competition.

High-performance teams have open dialogue, hold strong values and beliefs and are not constrained by hierarchy.

One thing these teams tend to have in common is a supportive climate in which they can thrive. In that climate, there is the right balance of support and tension to enable people to perform at a high level.

The Yerkes-Dodson model helps explain this. It suggests that performance increases as physiological or mental arousal increases — but only up to a point. When stress becomes too high, performance begins to decline.

At the left side of the curve, there is low tension and often low engagement. In these environments, leaders may be unwilling or unable to hold team members accountable, fail to rally people around collective results or avoid challenging standards.

The result can be a relatively comfortable but poorly engaged team.

According to Gallup research from 2017, only 15% of employees globally described themselves as highly engaged, highlighting how widespread this challenge can be. When expectations remain low and people are not sufficiently challenged, motivation can fall and employees are less likely to show up at their best.

At the other end of the curve, performance is affected by too much stress and tension.

Managers in these environments may try to drive performance through sustained pressure, unrealistic deadlines or fear-based leadership. Over time, this can create anxiety, uncertainty and defensiveness.

When the brain senses threat, it prioritises survival. The fight-or-flight response narrows attention and reduces our capacity for perspective-taking, analytical reasoning and creative thinking. Quite literally, just when we need people to think most clearly, pressure can make that harder.

While this response may be useful in a genuine life-or-death situation, it is far less helpful when teams need to collaborate, solve complex problems and think creatively.

The best conditions for high performance therefore sit somewhere between these two extremes: enough challenge to create energy, focus and accountability, but enough support for people to think clearly, contribute openly and take appropriate risks.

Where that optimal point sits will vary. It depends on the team, the individuals within it, the complexity of the task and factors such as experience, personality and emotional intelligence.

The role of the leader is not simply to reduce pressure or increase it. It is to create the conditions in which the team has the right level of challenge and the right level of support.

That means creating clarity, holding standards, encouraging open dialogue and accountability, while also building the trust and psychological safety people need to perform under pressure.

A thriving team is not one where everybody is comfortable all of the time.

It is one where people feel supported enough to stretch, challenged enough to grow and clear enough about what matters to perform at their best.