Building and Leading High-Performing Teams

How can project managers build and maintain high-performing teams? By focusing on culture, empowerment, engagement and resilience.

Organizations today see a need to adapt. According to the 2023 PMI Annual Global Survey on Project Management, two-thirds of companies are engaged in digital transformation efforts. They’re also prioritizing shifts in organizational strategy (36%), adoption of new technology (34%) and expansion into new markets (32%).

Companies need future-focused project teams to drive these changes. It’s a tall order, however, when project teams are, by nature, cross functional and temporary. Further, they’re composed of members who have other responsibilities, report to functional managers outside the project, often work on multiple different project teams, and may never meet face-to-face over the course of the project.

In the face of these challenges, how can project managers build high-performing teams? By employing strategies to develop and manage talent that can nimbly switch gears while staying on mission. Project leaders who prioritize and nurture soft skills — capabilities so important that we at PMI call them power skills — can help build and reinvent teams in ways that deliver and sustain a competitive edge.

In this report, we discuss four guideposts for building high-performing and forward-thinking project teams.

1. Culture - Cultivating an ethos for change
2. Empowerment - Understanding what inspires strong performance
3. Engagement - Forging real connections — and a sense of purpose — in a virtual world
4. Resilience - Bouncing back — again (and again)

Having a future-focused vision for building and leading high-performing project teams gives companies a strategic advantage. By super-charging engagement, reinforcing resilience, developing an in-depth understanding of employee motivations and cultivating a positive culture, project leaders can empower teams to deliver value that’s both immediate and lasting.