When sharing a vision for your department, a top-down approach can often stifle creativity and limit strategic potential. Rather than dictating every detail, offering a broad sense of direction and purpose can be more effective. If decisions are made solely from the top, team members may feel less involved—and rightly so. Letting the team drive decisions tends to produce better outcomes because they are closer to the challenges at hand.

At the core, people generally want to do good and contribute positively.

With that in mind, a sound strategy for building a successful team starts with focusing on people. From there, processes will naturally evolve, and progress will follow. Initially, your primary responsibility is to recruit talented individuals and provide them with the support they need to thrive. If people feel safe to take risks—knowing they can fail fast and fail forward—they will soon realize the need for processes to streamline their efforts. From strong people comes effective processes, and from there, progress is inevitable.

1. People
2. Process
3. Progress

Provide Positive Feedback

Recognition is a powerful motivator. When people’s work is acknowledged, they are inspired to keep pushing. Interestingly, this applies even more so to leaders, who often receive little to no positive feedback themselves.

A potential approach to building a high-performing team is to focus on the following, in this order:

1. Values
2. Vision
3. Mission

Start with the most stable element—values. These guide decisions and behaviors and should remain constant over time. From there, develop a vision, which is how you want the world to change for the better if your team succeeds. Finally, define the mission—your strategy for achieving that vision. Values rarely change, while your mission can adapt to meet the evolving needs of the vision.

Career Advancement: Patience is Key

When you're excelling in your current role, it gives you space to explore new ideas and develop yourself. People want to see you succeed, and you’re in a position to experiment and learn without significant consequences. This creates ample opportunities to grow and shine.