High-Performing Individuals on a Poor-Performing Team

As with the poor performer on the high-performing team, don’t leap to any immediate conclusions about who the high performer on the poor-performing team is. That one developer who’s constantly early on their stories? They could be sandbagging their estimates to make themselves look good. The developer who’s constantly talking about all the new things they’re learning? They may not actually be quite as comfortable with that new technology as they claim, or they may be learning the new stuff mostly so they can stand on the sidelines and nitpick decisions by claiming that “If only we’d adopt X, we’d be so much better off…”

Instead, your high performers are often the ones who not only display high degrees of skill in the skills relevant to the team’s current task set, but also have a high degree of “will.” ...