Your alarm clock rings as another workweek begins. Coffee in hand, you make the commute to your office laptop. Maybe you sigh as you settle down for your daily morning meeting, realizing today won’t be any different.

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You know what awaits you—team members duplicating tasks, maybe they’re approaching you unsure who’s responsible for which decision and how to solve problems without you, miscommunication between the IT and marketing team again, unengaged meetings, and the weekly complaints from Karen about Bob and from Bob about Karen.

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Sound familiar? This scenario reflects a team lacking a key element of high-performance culture: empowerment.

To help you elevate your team’s culture from mediocre to outstanding, let's break down what empowerment is and how you can create it within your startup team.

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Keep reading to punch your team’s ticket to success.👇

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What is High Performance Culture?

First, let’s answer the question, “What is company culture?”

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Company culture is a collection of self-sustaining patterns of behaviour that energize employees and generate positive effects on business performance. It's the set of behaviors that controls how things are done within a company.

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So, what does this definition look like at the next level?

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At a high-performing level, company culture acts as a competitive advantage.

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High-performance culture relates to behavioral patterns and norms that lead an organization to achieve superior results, both financial and non-financial, such as employee satisfaction, retention, and talent recruitment, over a long period.

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To create a high-performance team, you must first establish a high-performance culture. The foundation of any high-performance culture begins with the empowerment of a company’s employees.

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Three Steps to Create a High Performance Culture

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Now that you understand what a high-performance culture is, let’s explore how to create one. Here are three steps to foster a high-performance culture in your startup:

1. Structure
2. Role Clarity
3. Decision-Making

1. Structure

Structure refers to how tasks are assigned, team coordination, and supervision to achieve organizational objectives. An effective structure ensures every team member understands their role and how it contributes to the startup's goals.

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The structure of a company determines how it operates and performs, so it’s essential that the structure be efficient, adaptable, and innovative so that it may create a sustainable competitive advantage.

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Most companies rely on their company's vertical and horizontal connection to create an organizational structure. Within these types of connections, four structures can be formed: simple, functional, multidivisional, and matrix.

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For the purpose of this article, we will focus on a simple structure, since in a startup‍, a simple structure is often most effective. 

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Simple structures don’t rely on formal systems and divisions of labor. Instead, they are flat, removing feelings of inferiority and promoting a sense of connection among employees. This clarity helps employees feel empowered as they see the direct impact of their actions on the organization's success.

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2. Role Clarity

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Team members must thoroughly understand their roles within the organization. 

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When roles are clear, employees know what tasks they must complete and how their work contributes to the organization’s objectives. 

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This clarity fosters confidence and trust among team members, enabling them to rely on each other and collaborate effectively.

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Adopting a RACI Matrix can help define roles and responsibilities. A RACI Matrix empowers teams to own decisions and tasks, moving beyond regular day-to-day work structures.

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3. Decision Making  

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With established structure and role clarity, effective decision-making can thrive. 

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The ideal decision-making format for startups is consensus decision-making, which aligns with a flat organizational structure. Employees and managers work together to agree on a course of action, fostering collaboration and reducing politics.

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One of a manager's biggest mindset shift to undergo is that as a leader you need to be more essential, but less involved. 

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Let that sink in.

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As a leader, you need to be more essential, but less involved.

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When you justify holding on to your work, you're confusing being essential with being involved. And so the two are not the same. You don't need to be involved to be essential. 

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How ancillary or essential you are to the success of a specific portfolio or specific project depends on how decisive and wisely you've activated those around you. It depends on how empower those people around you through support and structured delegation and decision-making. 

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Otherwise, too many of us are stuck in this state of overextension. The number one pain of managers is that I have too much to do. But here’s the thing, and this is often fueled by your protectiveness over your work, the survival instinct that you have that my work impact will be diluted  if I give it to others. 

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And you know you're guilty of holding on too much work if you can answer this simple question. If you had to take an unexpected week off work, would your projects, initiatives and priorities advance in your absence? 

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To raise the ceiling of your leadership, you need to extend your presence through others. You need to help facilitate your team’s ability to make decisions. 

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To implement consensus decision-making, use techniques like:

1. First Principle Decision Making: Define the situation with unchangeable facts based on the company's foundation, guiding the team’s decisions.

1. Rule of Two Decision Making: Get the two people most involved in a decision to gather information and work on the best solution together, usually reporting back with a decision after a week or two.

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This empowered decision-making stems from employees' confidence and understanding of their roles within the team. 

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Managers should also encourage a culture of feedback, where employees engage with each other’s ideas and provide constructive input.

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The Bottom Line

Creating a high-performing team is a multiple step process that continuously builds on the previous stage to create a solid foundation. 

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Once psychological safety is established, team members trust each other. However, trust alone isn't enough; team members must act on this trust. When employees act on mutual trust, they empower each other, which is crucial for forming a high-performance startup culture. This will propel empowerment where team members will not be constantly bogged down with seeking approval on every small decision, but instead, feel empowered to make smart decisions given their advantage of being closest to the information.

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A clear understanding of team structure and roles empowers team members to make decisions, giving them a sense of ownership and accountability. 

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Empowered teams aren't afraid to put their skin in the game. They have the confidence to seek and create better work, speak up, and make their mark. This fosters a culture of feedback that enhances discussion, idea generation, and innovation in your startup.