How Tech Leaders Can Build and Effectively Lead Teams of High-Performers

African American woman stands in the foreground with her team behind her

High-performing tech teams usually have highly qualified team members who seamlessly collaborate, innovate, and produce at high capacity. Tech leaders with exceptional leadership capabilities typically guide and support these teams to consistently generate solutions and drive business outcomes that meet or exceed expectations. 

Leading high-performers in challenging times

That’s the ideal state, the aspirational set up, if you will. In reality, today’s tech leaders — especially new tech leaders — face real challenges trying to create that optimal scenario because it’s tough to lead their teams effectively amidst constant change, especially with minimal or no executive guidance. To add another layer of complexity, many tech leaders are technically competent but lack essential leadership capabilities. Absent these capabilities, any existing leadership gap becomes more pronounced over time, resulting in the following consequences: 

  • Teams have a lack of confidence or distrust in leadership
  • A lack of team development 
  • Low team morale
  • Decreased productivity
  • Teams perform below potential 
  • Missed targets
  • Frustrated, disengaged teams and leaders

 

Addressing and avoiding these negative results requires tech leaders to focus on identifying desired business outcomes and measuring impact. Deloitte’s 2020 report, “Virtual enablement through high-performing virtual teams and leaders,” explains that the highest performing technology teams are guided and supported by leaders who are dedicated to bringing out the best in each team member. These teams develop a ‘test and learn’ approach not unlike that found in user experience design. Thus they can reinvent themselves through iterative and incremental changes by focusing on the following top priorities:

  • Rapid decision-making and extreme prioritization that delivers on strategic intent
  • Execution built on trust to empower high-performing teams
  • Employee well-being and bringing team members’ whole selves to work

What separates high-performers from other teams?

In Gartner’s 2022 article “The New Art of Building High-Performing Teams,” Daniel Sanchez Reina highlights seven characteristics that differentiate high-performing teams in today’s working environment. They are:

  1. A common culture
  2. Trust
  3. Shared meaningful and impactful work
  4. Decision-making that’s decentralized
  5. Relatedness
  6. Seamless communication
  7. A future-focused mindset

 

But tech leaders have to be capable of building and leading high-performing teams to instill these seven characteristics. These capabilities are not always naturally available. Fortunately, this type of development can be accomplished successfully with leadership coaching. Coaching is a proven development strategy that has a positive impact on the individual being coached, and their team.

How can tech leaders build and lead high-performing teams?

In addition to attracting, training, and retaining the right tech talent, we’ve identified these 6 ways tech leaders can effectively lead high-performing teams.

  1. Set standards for group performance, group problem-solving, and decision-making.
  2. Create an open environment to give and receive constructive feedback.
  3. Delegate responsibilities equitably, and play to people’s strengths.
  4. Measure progress and performance by creating effective metrics.
  5. Collaboratively resolve team differences and tensions.
  6. Create psychological safety in the workplace.

Tech leaders need to model leadership behaviors, according to Deloitte’s 2020 report, while companies must invest in leadership development focused on the capabilities central to their desired business outcomes. Leadership coaching can accomplish both.

Focus high-performing teams on delivering the right outcomes

Companies and their tech leaders bear the complex burden of constant change, competition, the need for results, and continuous stress. To maintain their competitive edge within this context, senior talent leaders must respond to these demands strategically by developing tech leaders who are competent in technology and can maintain a human touch in their work. 

Ensuring tech leaders have the foundational leadership capabilities and behaviors needed to create and sustain high-performing teams takes time. It starts by creating a culture of shared values. A technology culture should emphasize digital transformation in a people-centric environment. It should deliver business impact throughout every initiative, and develop tech leaders who lead with empathy and create a sense of belonging.

Develop leadership capabilities focused on outcomes

The ability to harness the power of high-performing teams is often a key signal by which to identify great leaders operating with strategic intent. Senior talent leaders can play a pivotal role in helping tech leaders gain the following capabilities necessary to lead high-performing teams:  

  • Developing others
  • Conflict management and resolution
  • Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion

Leadership coaching equips leaders with the capabilities they need to engage meaningfully, address challenges, and connect with the people they lead. With the right programmatic and technological coaching support, they can develop these capabilities in a way that’s adaptable to their organization, data-driven, and scalable.

With leadership coaching, even new tech leaders with limited experience can begin to make genuine connections with others. This type of development ensures that tech leaders will be better prepared to hire, develop, and retain the right talent, and they can be equipped to transform individual team members into high-performers focused on optimal performance, building a supportive culture, and their organization’s bottom line.

 

Moira Alexander is a freelancer for Sounding Board, a tech-enabled leadership coaching company designed to bridge the leadership gap. She is also the founder of Lead-Her-Ship Group, a digital content creation and marketing services company, and  a certified project management and IT professional.

Subscribe to Our
Newsletter

Stay up to date with new releases, features, how-tos, leadership tips, and more. (Don’t worry, we won’t flood your inbox or share your address.)
REQUEST A DEMO

We Develop The World's Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board offers virtual and scalable enterprise learning solutions that are flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. Powered by behavioral science and core leadership capabilities, our proven coaching methodology drives measurable business impact.

Niall MacGearailt

SVP of Finance
Niall MacGearailt leads Sounding Board’s finance division as the SVP of Finance and Operations. Niall earned a solid track record of improving P&L and operational expense management for leading companies such as Whirlpool, Logitech, Avaya and most recently Soraa, where he prepared the business for acquisition by leading hi-tech lighting company, Ecosense. In his role, he is responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Ron Buell

VP of Engineering
Ron Buell is the VP of Engineering at Sounding Board and an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management. Ron has led the development of highly scalable systems and applications across a variety of technologies for companies including OpenFeint (acquired by GREE), Rdio (acquired by Pandora), Lyris Technologies, and Lotus/IBM Software Group. In his role at Sounding Board, Buell is responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Tommy Perkins

SVP OF SALES, PARTNERSHIP & CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Tommy is at his best helping clients think through complex challenges in order to create a positive impact on their organizations. He thrives when interacting with others whether helping his team succeed or working with clients to build long-term partnerships. He has extensive experience consulting with organizations on driving their employee experience, guiding organizations through change, and working to ensure organizations are moving the needle when it comes to their results.

Most recently, Tommy was a Client Services Leader overseeing some of GP’s most prized accounts on a global level. His responsibilities included overall client growth strategy, retention, and satisfaction. He represented all of GP Strategies’ major business lines including leadership, coaching, and engagement, digital transformation, outsourced services, and technology implementation solutions.

Before GP Strategies, Tommy spent several years with TTEC Digital (formerly rogenSI) where he led the sales team,  eventually becoming the regional Learning & Performance practice leader for North America. While managing the P&L and sales team he also led the largest global relationship for the firm (Deloitte Globally). During his time at TTEC, he focused on delivering blended learning solutions that incorporate technology and hands-on training. Before TTEC Digital, he spent several years dedicated to strength-based leadership disrupting the business landscape regarding performance management and employee engagement with thought leader Marcus Buckingham at The Marcus Buckingham Company / TMBC (now ADP).

Tommy has had the privilege of working with some of the most well-known global brands in professional services, retail, technology, and healthcare including Deloitte, Facebook, Microsoft, Bank of America, Novartis, Gap Inc., lululemon, and Intel. Several projects he led for Deloitte were Global GNPS, New Partner Pivot, NextGen Partner Program Deloitte China, Present to Win, the RPM project on performance management, and Unconscious Bias.

Tommy holds a BS in Health Sciences from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Universidad del CEMA.

Drive hiring, retention, engagement, and DEI initiatives with Sounding Board’s leadership coaching solution

Sounding Board is the first leadership development platform that combines technology to scale with world-class coaches – empowering companies to solve urgent people-problems and gain a long-term talent advantage.

Join our coaching team

Our expert coaches combine top notch coaching, business acumen and organizational savvy to truly become your leadership “Sounding Board”. Sounding Board coaches are all industry certified and strongly vetted going through a 3 step qualification process and receiving ongoing supervision and development.

Lori Mazan

Co-Founder & CCO Sounding Board, Inc.
Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.
Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers. Inspired by these experiences, Lori joined with Christine to launch Sounding Board as a feedback-driven, cloud-based leadership coaching platform that could maintain best-in-class leadership coaching while lowering costs to make it affordable and scalable for leaders at every level of their careers.
Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

Christine Tao

Co-Founder & CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. As she began to manage larger teams and be responsible for growing revenues, it became clear that she needed a “sounding board” to coach her on the development of her leadership skills. That’s where her Sounding Board co-founder, Lori Mazan came on the scene. A seasoned executive coach focused on leadership development, Lori coached Christine on real-world leadership skills that had a direct impact on business outcomes. Based on her positive and impactful experience with leadership development, Christine was driven to make leadership development coaching accessible to people at all levels of the organization.
Christine advises several startups, is a budding angel investor and is also a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a foundation dedicated to investing in the success and sustainability of women entrepreneurs.
Prior to co-founding Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.