"Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth."

- Doc Rivers

A guide to improve team performance through a lens of clarity, commitment, capability, consistency and capacity.

Five Stages Toward Building a High-Performance Team

1. Seek Clarity
High-performance begins with clarity. Teams need a shared understanding of their purpose, vision, and goals. This includes defining key responsibilities, aligning on values, and ensuring everyone knows how success is measured. Clarity isn’t a one-time activity—it’s a continuous habit that reduces assumptions, increases alignment, and enables effective action. Leaders foster this habit by making it safe to ask questions and addressing ambiguity head-on.

2. Full Commitment
Commitment isn’t about words—it’s about actions. High-performing teams demonstrate alignment to their purpose through observable behaviors, such as showing up prepared, honoring agreements, and focusing on essential activities. Lack of commitment, however skilled an individual may be, drags the team down. Leaders must ensure clarity first, but if commitment remains absent, it’s time to address the issue or let the individual move on.

3. Improve Capability
Clarity and commitment set the foundation, but capability drives execution. Teams must ensure every member has the skills needed to perform at a high standard. Leaders should focus on placing individuals in roles where they can thrive and invest in their growth. If an individual isn’t progressing despite support, it’s necessary to reevaluate their fit within the team. Excellence demands aligning skills with roles and roles with team needs.

4. Disciplined Consistency
Consistency is about controlling the controllables—your actions and effort. By aligning intentional actions with team goals and tracking progress, teams increase the likelihood of success. Tools like Alignd help teams maintain focus by sharing weekly intentions tied to goals, ensuring disciplined follow-through and avoiding distractions. Consistency transforms effort into progress and builds momentum toward desired outcomes.

5. Maximize Capacity
At the highest levels of performance, teams focus on improving outcomes, not just increasing effort. Maximizing capacity is about producing higher-quality work in less time. Top performers continuously refine their skills, leverage deliberate practice, and optimize their focus to achieve extraordinary results. High-performance teams embrace truth, humility, and perseverance to consistently improve their capabilities and elevate their results.

What It Means to Be an "A Team"

An “A team” is more than a collection of talented individuals. It’s a group of highly committed, interdependent people aligned to a greater mission. They act beyond self-interest, consistently exceeding the status quo by embracing clarity, commitment, capability, consistency, and capacity.

As Doc Rivers said:
"Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth."

Great teams embody this truth, using it as fuel to continuously grow and achieve remarkable outcomes.