As we start the new year, many of us are focused on ensuring our teams are high-performing. This week Fast Company looked at how organizations can achieve this by delving into real-life experiences of several thought leaders including our very own CEO Brea Starmer.

Read Brea’s perspective on how you can build a diverse, powerful, and productive team below. The full Fast Company article, 9 strategies to unlock high-performing teams, is linked here.

BUILD BLENDED TEAMS

Burned out and afraid, team members aren’t able to innovate, drive positive culture, or curry trust, but that’s the reality for many folks today. Instead, we’ve seen the incredible value of building blended teams of employees and non-employees, centering diverse ideas and fostering skills from anywhere, keeping critical folks in our workforce.

In my experience, one of the best teams we’ve seen built included 20 full-time employees, five of whom were on the leadership team, and 13 consultants. This blended team was all oriented toward the major business objectives at hand, with folks appropriately scoped to work in their “highest and best use.” We saw them achieve their 300% annual growth goal in three quarters with no attrition, which is incredibly rare in this industry.

– Brea Starmer, founder and CEO, Lions & Tigers