These 4 myths about high performance are totally wrong

High-performance is a product of many factors. Building a high-performing team is even more so. It’s not enough to hire talented and collaborative individuals. As an organization, you need to cultivate an environment that allows them to be at their best while working together to achieve a common objective.

Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions around what leads to high performance. Elaine Pulakos, an organizational psychologist and the CEO of workforce assessment provider PDRI by Pearson, has spent her career researching what it takes to build high performing organizations. She’s also helped many companies implement systems and processes that provide the best chance of success.

Here are her thoughts on some of the most common misconceptions around high performance, as well as research-backed findings on what actually creates a high-performing organization.

Myth one: Fear-based leadership can lead to high performance

Fear-based leadership tends to take place in organization with a hierarchical, top-down structure. Managers with limited people skills might also have the tendency to resort to this strategy, because it can potentially yield short-term results.

In recent years, this type of leadership has become less and less prevalent. But many managers still subscribe to this way of thinking. A 2023 global study that surveyed 2,500 corporate leaders across the U.S., U.K., and Australia found that a third of managers “subconsciously create an environment of fear.” The study found that while applying some pressure can create motivation, leading by fear ultimately leads to decreased productivity in the long term.

“I’ve never seen fear-based leadership work as well as supportive leadership,” Pulakos says. “There’s a lot of stress out there,” she explains, and the idea that adding more stress can lead to higher performance is “unhelpful.” She goes on to say, “When you use management by fear tactics, you actually end up scaring people, undermining their confidence, and pitting people against each other.”

She stresses that being a supportive leader doesn’t mean being “soft.” Supportive leaders aren’t afraid to set hard goals, but they empower people to try and achieve them, she says. “That’s the part that’s not soft. You can stretch people, you can put challenging work demands on them. But at the same time, you have to create a context that enables them to achieve those goals by working together, supporting each other and building trust. All of these things are important to achieve high performance.”

Myth two: More teamwork and collaboration leads to better results

One of the surprising findings that Pulakos came across during her 2019 study is that more teamwork and collaboration doesn’t always yield better results. In fact, too much teamwork can collaboration can actually undermine performance. The best organizations “use teamwork judiciously in getting the work done,” she says.

That means that when a company puts a team together to start a project, they should consider who actually needs to be involved. And rather than getting everyone together immediately, it’s best to introduce people as their inputs and contributions are needed. If you bring too many people too quickly, Pulakos explains, “you end up with too many cooks in the kitchen and things can get confusing for people. And teamwork actually becomes burdensome and unproductive.”

Myth three: It’s necessary for everyone to be in the same location

In a world where employees are becoming accustomed to remote and hybrid work, more and more companies are pushing for workers to return to the office. The rationale that behind many of these mandates is that having workers physically present will increase their productivity and efficiency.

Pulakos says that the reality is organization-dependent. The organization she heads up, for example, is 100% remote. While the company does have offices that workers can go to if they so choose, she doesn’t believe it’s a prerequisite for high performance. In saying that, she does admit that a fully-remote setup isn’t suitable for every organization.

What can be valuable for high performance, is for the employees to get together periodically to do some team building. And if a team is new, “more facetime and getting to know each other is time is important. I think once you have established relationships between team members, it’s much easier once you know each other and have worked together.”

Pulakos believes that managers who hold the view that physical presence leads to better performance are trying to control (or monitor) things they cannot. “I think the work world is too complex today, you cannot observe or know everything that’s going in a team. The highest performers have managers to help them solve problems, not managers who micromanage.”

Myth four: Culture always has a big impact on performance

When a company is successful, a deep dive into their culture often follows. And while culture has a big impact on the success of some organizations, this isn’t always true for every organization.

In fact, Pulakos’ research found that company culture didn’t have a big impact on team or organizational performance. She does caveat her statement, saying that “culture fit is idiosyncratic to the organization.” She explains, “In an organization with a strong culture with very strong values that employees are expected to bring to the table, to do well in that organization, culture fit is really important. In other organizations where there is a specific culture, it’s less important.”

What does ultimately leads high performance is creating a sense of stability, empowering teams to be ‘self-correcting’ so they can solve problems and get to resolutions quickly, and having the just the right level of teamwork and collaborative activities. That means providing the right resources, as well as building methods and procedures that allows their employees to bounce back from adversity, capitalize on change and spot opportunities related to that change.

Focusing on those things, Pulakos says, will “get you more bang for your buck” when it comes to building a high-performing organization.