Rethinking productivity: What is the key to building a high performance team?

To achieve competitive advantage, leaders have an obligation to build high performing teams. A high performing team is one that leads people-first, prioritising true collaboration, the individual, and trust.

Traditional time management strategies are rooted in industrial-era thinking, where productivity is measured in units of time worked rather than in quality or impact of output. In some sectors, working longer is a badge of honour, a proxy for working hard—without or without the quality of output for comparison. Today, high performance in the modern workplace is becoming nonlinear; it follows energy, not the clock. Cognitive performance and focus varies daily, peaking at different times for different people, according to the latest research from neuroscientists. Engagement suffers when people are forced to operate out of sync with their natural rhythms, leading to disengagement and burnout. Optimising for energy may be the missing key to building resilient, high-performing teams.

Rethinking productivity: Overview

• Defining the framework
• Design for autonomy
• What leaders can do
• Closing thoughts

Defining the framework

The key to leading your team and optimising for energy is to recognise individuals. High-performing teams are not built through uniformity, but through thoughtful alignment of diverse working styles. Leaders must start by asking: 

• How well do I really know my team? 
• When are people most focused? 
• When do they tend to hit their cognitive low or high points? 

Creating space for individuals to explore and communicate their energy patterns fosters both trust and higher performance. Psychological safety is imperative here. Companies that value this encourage open discussion, creative risks, and disagreements without fear of judgment. McKinsey writes that vulnerability and speaking truth to power is easier when psychological safety is present which creates a more innovative community. The more honest employees are about when and how they work best, the better teams can begin aligning individual patterns with team expectations. 

With this covered, the next step could be to rethink the structure of your team could be beneficial. APM (Association for Project Management) recommends agile project management. In an agile business structure, teams structure their work into short development cycles—sprints— that involve a specific objective within a short, fixed length period that the team plans and works on together. Originating in software development, its core principles of adaptability, collaboration, and iterative development can be applied across industries. Breaking large projects into manageable chunks ensures quick adjustments to feedback and separation by team energy levels, crucial to a higher performing team. 

Design for autonomy

C-suite leaders are realising that success demands a deeper cultural shift. When employees feel safe to speak up without fear of judgement, teams function more openly. Psychological safety requires a fundamental shift away from surveillance and toward systems that prioritise flexibility and performance. 

Industry insiders have begun referring to this shift as ‘human-centric office design’. It is reimagining the conditions that allow people to do their best work; optimising physical spaces for collaboration, schedules for employee wellbeing, and team policies for autonomy. In this new model, the most engaged teams are not over-managed, they are trusted. Empowerment whilst maintaining clear accountability is becoming the new currency of workplace engagement.

What leaders can do 

There are plenty of changes leaders can make to shift their company culture in a more energy-conscious direction. For starters, leaders can give employees the flexibility to shape when/ how they take breaks. In a recent HotTopics’ Editor’s Letter, by Peter Stojanovic, he stresses the key to vitality in a high-performing team is knowing when to pause. With more frequent, intentional breaks, you can feel assured that the work done during productive hours is both focused and efficient. In a more relaxed, trusted-based environment, individuals feel a stronger personal connection to their decisions and contributions. They may feel motivated to do their best work out of genuine motivation, not just compliance. Choice breeds ownership, and ownership drives performance.

Running regular ‘energy audits’ will encourage employees to reflect one when they feel most focused, creative, or drained. Individuals can look deeper into how their exercise, diet, and sleep practices influence mind, body, emotions, and spirit. This data can then guide how teams schedule and assign tasks, encouraging deeper focus during the peak cognitive times and allowing the lower effort tasks to fill in during the troughs. Further, reducing meeting loads and ineffective, recurring virtual calls can alleviate digital fatigue. A decrease in this strain can free up more time for meaningful, high-impact work. 

Make every employee feel a sense of purpose. Recognising progress and showing how each team member's work drives the organisation’s mission forward can do tenfold for company culture. When people see the value in what they do and how it serves others, they are more invested in doing their best. Gallup reports that employees who find their work meaningful are more engaged, and less likely to experience burnout. Cultivating that sense of meaning requires intentional leadership through set expectations and feedback as well as a culture that connects the individual to the bigger picture. 

To support energy-driven productivity, prospective leaders are shifting from managing hours to measuring impact. This means replacing traditional time-tracking with value-tracking. Moving beyond just hours logged but evaluating success based on the quality and impact of outcomes. 

Closing thoughts

Leading by example is one of the most powerful things a leader can do. Set the tone by modelling energy-conscious behaviour, and your team will follow suit. This can look like taking real breaks during the day, logging off at reasonable hours, avoiding late-night emails, and respecting personal time. When leaders do it, others feel permission to as well. 

But setting the tone is not enough on its own. Flexibility only works when coupled with clear, established team norms set by leaders and consistent check-ins. This structure turns autonomy into alignment—ensuring trust and sustained momentum in any hybrid or asynchronous environment. 

Today, employees are increasingly seeking roles where they can engage with their responsibilities on their own terms, within the clearly communicated parameters of their employer. Hybrid work should not mean being “always on,” but being on when it matters most. By designing teams and systems around energy (not exclusively time), leaders can foster a culture of trust. The result? A more resilient, engaged, and high-performing workforce built not on control, but on clarity, choice, and connection.