High-Performing Teams Playbook, Step by Step for 2027

Find out what is holding a team back and fix it together, with six workshops on trust, roles, meetings, conflict and accountability that start from an honest health check.

Who it's for

Team leaders, managers, HR business partners and consultants who want a team to work better together, not just harder. It suits a new team, a merged team or an established team whose results have stalled; each play is a workshop of 90 minutes to half a day for the whole team, manager included.

What you'll learn

• Diagnose where the team stands with an anonymous health check built on Patrick Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team and Bruce Tuckman's stages of group development
• Build trust and psychological safety, drawing on Amy Edmondson's work, with “How I Work” cards and agreed norms for speaking up
• Give every deliverable one owner and one back-up, and use Meredith Belbin's team roles to spot the roles the team lacks
• Redesign the team's meetings around the four meeting types Lencioni describes in Death by Meeting, with common rules that end in decisions
• Turn conflict into better decisions with a conflict charter, the Thomas–Kilmann conflict modes and a structured debate format
• Build peer accountability with a visible scoreboard of team goals and regular retrospectives opened with Norm Kerth's Prime Directive

What's inside

• 39 pages, 6 plays
• Every play sets out its objective, when to use it and when not to, the time, people and materials it needs, numbered steps, a diagram, a ready-to-use template, an illustrative example from a fictional UK organisation and common mistakes to avoid
• One template per play: Team Health Check, Trust-Building Session Plan and “How I Work” Card, Team Roles and Strengths Map, Team Meeting System, Team Conflict Charter and Debate Format, and Team Retrospective and Commitments Board, plus a Meeting Audit Worksheet
• A closing action plan, Your 12-Week Team Programme, that runs one play a fortnight, with a checklist for preparing each workshop and a repeat health check in week 12
• PDF in A4 format — read on screen or print
• Instant download after purchase

Contents

1. Diagnose Where Your Team Is
2. Build Trust and Psychological Safety
3. Clarify Roles and Play to Strengths
4. Design a Meeting Rhythm That Works
5. Turn Conflict Into Better Decisions
6. Hold Each Other to Account and Keep Improving

Part of The Business Library

This playbook is one of the 55 ebooks in The Business Library, available together for £109 (worth £1,437 if bought separately: the total of the individual prices of the included titles in our store). It is also included in The Ultimate Business Bundle, which adds 8 checklists and toolkits and 10 workbooks — all 73 products for £147.