The Secrets of High Performing Teams

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

The secret sauce that high performance teams have is. Is. Well, let me tell you exactly what it is. Recently I was speaking at a conference and when I'm speaking at a conference, I absolutely love listening to the other speakers. So often I'll listen to the speakers before me and after me or if we're on a panel, I'll be really keenly listening to them because it's a constant pursuit of learning and understanding. So recently I was speaking at an event and, and Gilbert Inoka was also speaking. So Gilbert has been with the All Blacks rugby team for over two decades and has been part of their world championship success in the early stages. He was their mindset mental skills coach. And of course that's what I do. I run the mental skills program for Canterbury Rugby. So I was listening in going, look, Gilbert's got a wealth of knowledge, you know, what's his perspective and what's his takes. And he said a few things I just wanted to share with you and I think they're really valuable if you're committed to being a high performer, if you're committed to bringing value to the team or organization or family that you're a part of. And to me, this is the secret sauce of high performance teams. And this is my take on it. This is, you know, I heard what I heard, but I really put my filter of it on. The number one thing that really shone through was that when you're wanting to achieve excellence, not average, not above average, but excellence, the number one thing that your Team must experience. And every individual on that team. Is this the B word? Belonging. We need at a human level to feel like we belong. When we feel we don't belong, we tend to shy away, right? People will definitely go to a place where they are needed, but they will stay in a place where they are valued. And that you think about a workplace, you'll go there because they need your skill, they need your input, they need your wisdom. But you'll only stay if you feel valued, you feel like you belong. You know, I remember my first, first ever time walking in, working with the Canterbury rugby team, and there was a real strong feeling of, whoa, I don't know this team yet. I'm new here, I don't know how I'm going to fit in. It's going to be interesting. You know, we all have imposter syndrome. And certainly when I walked in there, I was like, this is totally outside my comfort zone. And the culture there was phenomenal. I had about 25 fist pumps within 10 minutes of arriving. Many people already knew my name. When I started speaking, there was just full focus. And by the time I left on day one, there was this seed inside of me feeling like, hey, I belong. I felt today like I belonged here. And so I came back the following week with so much more courage and excitement and engagement. So I want you to ask yourself, wherever you are, whatever organization or team you're a part of, what level of belonging do you feel? Are you just a number? If you're the team leader or the CEO.

Are you helping people feel like they belong or do they feel like a number? How do we create belonging? Well, it's. You do that through story, you do that through visual imagery, you do that through music, you do that through rituals.

What are the things that you do that make you feel like you belong in your family or your organization? You know, it could be a certain handshake, fist pump, it could be some vernacular, some words that you use. It could be imagery up around the walls that tell a story of your lineage, of the company or the organization.

Creating a sense of belonging takes effort, takes intention. But that's the number one aspect of high performing teams, is that they create the sense of belonging. You know, you'll hear of incredible soccer players, think Michael Owen was a great example where he felt right at home with, I believe, Liverpool for many, many, many years. He felt a deep sense of belonging. He grew up there, he was valued there. And, and towards the end of his career, he flew over and played with a European team and he was really honest in saying that I didn't feel like I belonged. There was so much disconnection. I wasn't really welcomed. It was very, very difficult to really get embedded. And he didn't last there. You can have a team of superstars, but no sense of belonging. At the end of the day, we want a champion team, not a team of champions. The second ingredient was environment. What's the environment like? If the environment is really healthy and high performance focused, then people tend to thrive and we get high performance results. But if the environment is toxic, low energy, it's vague. Well then what happens is people are not driven, people are not clear on expectations. So, you know, creating an environment that's really intentional to help people succeed is very important. That comes down to simple things like do you bring in a tray of baked goods? Yeah, that's great intentions. But when you look at the nutrition and what it does to the brain and energy levels, bring in the croissants and the cream pies. It's not going to do your staff, your team, your organization any good. Bringing in a really healthy veggie platter with hummus and olives and sun dried tomatoes. Now we're talking, you know, that's right away. That's an environmental thing. You know, setting up an environment that's clean and decluttered will allow people to think more clearly. Setting up an environment where people have to brush shoulders, you know, open plan offices, great. Having some quiet spaces where people can go and do their deep work or focus. Fantastic. The environments that I see working the best when I'm working with small, medium or even very large organizations are environments that are thoughtful environments that seek input from everyone involved around what would make this better for you. So I want you to think about what's the environment that you're working in that could be from home as well. What does your home office look like and feel like? Is it clean? Is it dusty? Are the things everywhere what works for you? The third was values. You know, having values that are important but not having 100, but having a few values that really drive performance. And the last but not least is vision. Right. Having a really clear vision of where we're headed. But it doesn't start there. It starts with belonging, then creating an environment, then having the values that drive the vision. So that's my takeaways from listening to Gilbert Anoka and I wrote pages and pages of takeaways. But I'd really encourage you to think about what does that look like in your environment? Are you a high performing team. Have you thought of belonging? I'll tell you what, if you haven't got it, you need to get it. It's a book called Belonging by a friend of mine, Owen Eastwood. And if you haven't heard it yet, I interviewed Owen last year. So you can go back through the podcast and listen to it. Owen is incredible. His insights around team belonging, phenomenal. Work with the Proteas in South Africa, the world class cricket team, work with the English fa, the Scottish rugby team, like the list goes on. He's phenomenal. But it's all around this sense and this ancient cultural code of belonging. And if you're interested in just understanding your nature and the place that you work in or you serve at a deeper level, read that book. It will transform form your thinking. In fact, I think Air New Zealand recently it's a national airline for New Zealand. For those of you who are not here in New Zealand, they bought like 600 or 700 copies of that book for all their staff. That says a lot, right? Amazing book. Look, I hope today's episode added some value. If you enjoyed it, please share it with one person that you think might want to learn a little bit more about high performance culture teams. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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