Lepaya Talent Talks: Unpacking Lattice’s blueprint for high-performance teams

According to McKinsey, the highest performers in a role can be up to 800% more productive than their average counterparts. But high-performance culture isn't built overnight. From leadership's role in inspiring employees to fostering a growth mindset, Mollie Duffy, Head of Learning & Development at Lattice, shares her expertise on the essential factors that contribute to creating an environment where employees can thrive.

In this interview, she explains the importance of continuous learning, professional development, and how performance reviews can drive improvement across teams.

What are the most important factors that contribute to creating a high-performing team?

While company culture is often assumed to be intangible, it’s actually based on the infrastructure that shapes how employees are set up for success: HR policies, manager enablement, and people programs that balance performance and wellbeing.

Building a high-performance culture requires implementing the right processes, behaviors, and values that help people thrive and bring their best to work every single day.

Here are the key characteristics of a high-performance culture:

• Leaders inspire and motivate their workforce

Leaders have a huge influence on organizational and individual performance. In a high-performance culture, leaders are a key component of inspiring and motivating employees to work at their best — but they also create an environment that prioritizes transparency, trust, authenticity, and mutual respect. They set the state for a company’s values and mission by modeling the behaviors and beliefs that make up shared culture, and get the best out of their people.

For example, the best leaders share the reasoning behind major decisions with their employees. They also provide a space for employees to ask questions. At Lattice, we have a bi-weekly all hands meeting, and at the end of it there is time for employees to ask questions through our Q&A board.

• Employees feel empowered to work at their full potential

Where there are strong leaders, there are high-performing, highly engaged employees. A 2021 study on employee performance found that when employee engagement is high, it increases performance because employees are more willing to go the extra mile, overcome obstacles, sustain commitment, and feel excited to immerse themselves in meaningful work. In a high-performing culture, engagement and motivation is nurtured by employee autonomy, continuous growth, and a sense of purpose.

In a nutshell, high-performing employees care about more than just a paycheck. At Lattice, we train our managers on how to empower their reports and provide the autonomy they desire.

• Teams are built on a strong growth mindset

How motivated and empowered we feel to learn and share our knowledge at work connects directly into organizational success. According to a 2021 meta-analysis on organizational knowledge, companies that actively promote a strong learning culture see gains in both their financial and overall performance.

High-performance cultures are forged with growth and continuous learning at their core. When employees know their growth is valued and prioritized, they’re more likely to think outside of the box to generate new ideas, and prioritize learning the skills and knowledge that fuel high performance.

At Lattice, we offer growth opportunities through manager and leader development programs, skills-based workshops, and access to e-learning content. We also ensure all managers have a career development conversation with their reports at least twice a year.

• Trust and psychological safety are central to culture

An organization’s culture is the foundation of how employees connect, interact, and perform their roles on a day-to-day basis. Trust and psychological safety are the cornerstones to enabling high employee performance — when these factors are high, team members feel a greater sense of empowerment and autonomy. They feel safer taking risks, making mistakes, and engaging in healthy conflict that leads to continuous learning.

And because team members feel that their contributions are valued, everyone is more likely to perform at their best. At Lattice, we train all managers in how to create psychological safety on their teams. In our internal manager development program, Manager Blueprint, we have a session where managers learn about psychological safety, and the specific actions that build up and tear it down. We also do a 360 assessment for our managers that asks raters to rate them on the level of psychological safety they create for their teams.

How can continuous learning and professional development contribute to sustaining a high-performing workforce?

As employees progress in their careers, they will need to refresh their skills and knowledge. Businesses can overcome skill gaps by allocating budget for workshops, certifications, courses, and conferences that provide training for both hard and soft skills. Allowing employees to focus on professional development during working hours also demonstrates your commitment to their growth.

Remember: Giving your employees the chance to upgrade their skills on the clock isn't only a great way to drive engagement and programme adoption, it’s an investment in long-term performance and productivity.  At Lattice, we offer an annual learning and development stipend for all employees.

What role do performance reviews and feedback play?

High-performing teams recognize the business value of reviews and feedback, two key performance management tools. HR teams shouldn’t look at implementing performance reviews and continuous feedback as an “either-or” proposition.

Performance reviews give organizations important insight into the type of work employees are doing and the overall value they bring to the company. Reviews also give employees a chance to know where they stand within their team and the organization as a whole. Apart from these high-level benefits, there are a number of reasons why performance reviews are a core element of performance management:

Firstly, performance reviews rely on concrete benchmarks to make accurate assessments of employee performance. By using data to determine how effectively an employee is or isn’t delivering on job competencies and objectives, performance appraisals provide much-needed structure to the evaluation process. This objective approach is also useful for identifying top performers and employees in need of support, and it indirectly pushes companies to document key factors behind decisions that affect employees, such as compensation and promotions.

Performance reviews serve as progress markers for employees with an eye on advancement and career development. Performance reviews are a chance for managers and direct reports to sync on past results and future expectations, including opportunities for career growth.

Lastly, performance appraisal systems are valuable tools for combating bias and promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the workplace. Without the standardized criteria of performance reviews, it’s common for managers to rely on their “gut instinct” when evaluating employees, which can have a detrimental impact on crucial decisions around compensation and promotions. Performance reviews prevent this by ensuring that performance management processes follow the same procedure for all team members.

Internally at Lattice, we re-imagined what performance looks like to provide a lightweight, impactful process that creates growth within the flow of work. Instead of traditional annual or bi-annual performance reviews, we have quarterly check-ins that facilitate focused 1:1 conversations about performance impact, as well as growth and development. These smaller, more frequent conversations have resulted in more meaningful, timely, and impactful conversations that go beyond simply “ticking the box.

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