1. Miguel Premoli is the Human Resources Director for PepsiCo’s Concentrate operations
in the Americas Region overseen operations in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico,
Venezuela, Puerto Rico, USA and Canada
He has worked in the HR field for more than 12 years in companies like Colgate
Palmolive, Wal-Mart Stores and Neoris Consulting.
He served most of his career in Argentina, were he is from, and has published articles in
many HR and Business magazines.
He was a university professor in Buenos Aires’ CEMA University and is currently
located in Puerto Rico.

2. Tools to build high performance teams.
The Five C s for team efectiveness
Confidence (Trust), Consensus, Commitment, Collaboration and
Communication.
A high performance team is one that the value contributed by the sum of its
members is greater to the one than they would have contributed individually.
Effective interaction between the members of a team is what allows to harness
the talents of each one to obtain a superior group result.
Effective interaction.
When a team is working effectivelly the strengths of each team member are
developed and their weaknesess are complemented by the skills of tother
members.
In order to work effectivelly a team must build four basic attributes: Confidence
(The best word to use is Trust), Consensus, Commitment and Collaboration.
Each attribute is build on the previous attribute, that means that we cannot obtain
Commitment if there is no Consensus, and cannot obtain Consensus if there is
no Trust.
Ther is a fifth attribute: Open Communication, which flows during the process of
building Trust, Consensus, Commitment and Collaboration.
Trust
The first attribute is Trust, that for the pourpose of having 5 C is called
confidence.
The rest of the attributes are build on Trust, that is also the primary base for the
creation of a team.
Many times we expect to have Commitment of oll members of a team without
before building Trust among them; the result is a low level Commitment that
crumbles when confronted with adversity.

3. Now , how do you build Trust?. I believe that trust is an individual and group
phenomenon.
There are people who tend to trust others form the beginning, and people who
need more time to build trustfull relationships.
On the other hand there are environments that foster the creation of trustfull
relationships, and others that don’t.
The leader of a team has an important roll in creating an atmosphere where trust
among members can develop.
There are three key elements to build trust:
1- Leadership
2- Facts
3- Open Communication
To build Trust among members, an apropiate atmosphere is requierd.
The leader of a team is the main respoinsable for creating this atmosphere,
and he can do that by setting the example and guiding the other members of
the team to establish the trustfull relationships.
A team led by a person that does not inspire trust surely is an team where
trust will not flourish. Trust is build but with facts and not with words.
When team members relay on one another several times and the are not
defrauded, then a solid trustfull realtionship is built.
The communication within a team can be focused on two topics:
-The issues that the team is dealing with.
-The interaction of the team itself.
Most of the time conversations are focused on the issues that the team is
dealing with, and little time in engaging in a dialog on the interaction of the
team itself.
Within the atmosphere of trust that needs to be established it is important to
distinguish these two types of conversations, and to understand that to deal
and clarify aspects of the interaction, is going to create a more effective and
productive team.
Consensus.
We can agree or not, but once we reach consensus and we leave this room
the teams decision must be supported by everyone.

4. Perhaps this phrase exemplifies very well the meaning of consensus.
Consensus is not the decision of the majority nor the decision of those who have
more power.
Consensus is build by engageing in dialog and active listening.
If a team has already developed mutual trust, the road to consensus is much
shorter.
If members of the team have trustfull relationships, dialoge and discussion to
reach consensus is based on their diferent points of view and not in indiviual
positions, there are no winners and loosers, but an excahnge of ideas that
brigns the best solution from a teams perspective.
When trust exists reaching consensus is based on facts and not on personal
positions.
I belive, that like the trust, there are some elements that help to build consensus:
Active listening, understanding other points of view.
Eliminate subjectivities, and if this is not possible to specify them.
Have empathy.
Use of dialog as a mean to reach better solutions.
Another important aspect is to understand the rules by which the team will reach
consensus.
By rules I mean the process of decision making, how information is gathered
and shared, how input is received from each member of the team, how are new
options are explored, and when a decision is made.
Commitment
Team memebrs can be in a team and not to be aligned with the objective of the
team, they participate and do their job, but are not commited.
In this situation team members are not willing to give the best of each other.
When team mebers are commited they give their the best and make all efforts
necessary to reach the objectives of a team.
The lack of commitment can be the result of many factors, but perhaps the key
one is the lack of alignment with the team’s objectives.

5. Building commitment is a difficult task because it has to do with the interests and
values of the members of a team. Team members will be committed if they feel
part of something, but, what makes people feel part of something?
I belive this is answered by another question:
What’s in there for them?
An effective ways but to build Commitment is to identify the individual motivation
of the people who’scommitment we need in the team.
We all have different things that motivate us, and those motivations change with
the course of the time.
That’s why the leader of a team must understand and continouslly monitor the
things that motivate the team members; to make sure that these factors are
taken care of and thus to generate commitment.
Collaboration.
Collaboration is happens when commitment is achieved.
Collaboration means that each member of the team gives out his best and helps
others reach its individual objectives.
The members of the team lever on the strengths of each one and complement
the weaknesses that can have to obtain extraordinary results.
When each team member works effectivelly at is best, we have created a High
Performance team.