Career NorthStar News - Issue 9: High-Performing Teams Share Goals, Not Annual Surprises
- Jan 19
- 4 min read
Shared ownership is the real performance evaluation
Career NorthStar Newsletter • January 19, 2026 • Issue 9
What Builds a High‑Performing Team? (Hint: Not Annual Performance Reviews)
Annual performance evaluations have been a staple of corporate life for decades, but they rarely build high‑performing teams. Why? Because success isn’t created once a year. It’s created every day through clarity, communication, and shared ownership.
Our recent roundtable explored a better way forward: ditch the annual review mindset and replace it with continuous alignment to individual and team and company goals.
Mastering the Mindset: Alignment Is a Daily Practice
You cannot build a high‑performing team on unclear goals, sporadic feedback, or once‑a‑year conversations. People cannot rally around what they don’t understand. Goal establishment and attainment isn’t a once-a-year event. It is a habit to success.
Success begins with clarity:
What are we trying to achieve
Why it matters
How we measure progress
How each person contributes
When goals are concrete, measurable, and understood, people can move with purpose. When they’re vague or disconnected, teams drift, individuals go on their own, doing what they hope is right, and individual, team, and company performance suffers.
The Goal Framework: Company Goal / Team Goal / Individual Goal
High‑performing teams share one thing in common: overlapping and interwoven goals.
When company goals cascade into team goals, and team goals overlap with individual goals, something powerful begins to happen:
Everyone is accountable to everyone else
Success becomes shared
No one can “win” alone
If one person falls short, the whole team feels it
If one person succeeds, the whole team rises
This overlap creates a team that is vested in each other’s success. It transforms individuals from isolated contributors into a connected, interdependent unit. And once goals are aligned, the leader’s job becomes clear: Delegate ownership, empower the team, and remove obstacles. That’s how trust forms between leader and team and among the team members. That’s how performance accelerates. That’s how teams become unstoppable.
In Practice: Constant Communication, Not Annual Evaluation
A once-yearly review cannot build trust. But weekly or bi‑weekly check‑ins can, at the team, and absolutely at the individual levels.
Frequent, meaningful communication:
Shows investment
Builds connection
Surfaces obstacles early
Reinforces clarity
Keeps goals visible and alive
These “micro‑check‑ins” reduce pressure, strengthen relationships, and keep everyone rowing in the same direction. This is the real performance evaluation; the ongoing one.
Growing Through Goal Alignment: What This Means for You
For Leaders
Your role is to be the connector:
Translate company goals into team goals (you can do this exercise with the team)
Ensure every individual understands how their work ties to the bigger picture
Delegate goal ownership so people feel empowered, not powerless
Remove obstacles so the team can move fast and confidently
Coach, guide, and manage to the goal metrics
When you do this consistently, trust grows and trust is the final connector that turns a good team into a high‑performing one.
Anyone who cannot or will not align to the goal is coached and supported and perhaps even paired with already-aligned and bought-in team members. If alignment still doesn’t happen, they will naturally exit or choose to leave, or you have to exit them, because the team’s expectations are clear and consistent. There is no room for outliers.
For Aspiring Leaders
Leadership begins long before the title.
If you want to lead:
Raise your hand for everything
Say yes to new challenges
Take ownership of a goal that drives team success
Show you can align your work with the team and company mission
When you take the reins of a meaningful project, you demonstrate readiness. Leaders don’t need to micromanage you. They simply guide you and remove obstacles. That’s how rockstars are made. Your individual goal of leadership now inherently aligns to the team and company goal!
For Individual Contributors
You own your career.
That means:
Initiate check‑ins with your leader if you have to (if they don’t, which they should)
Ask for and get clarity
Connect your daily tasks to the bigger picture
Understand how your work contributes to team and company success
When you proactively align yourself, you reduce stress, build trust, and accelerate your growth because you are working on what matters to the team and the company.
The Trust Loop: How High‑Performing Teams Are Built
When goals overlap, communication is constant, and leaders remove obstacles, something remarkable happens:
People’s trust in each other grows
People depend on each other
People don’t want to let each other down
People move as one toward the goal
This is the foundation of a high‑performing team.
Misalignment of individual to team to company goals leads to confusion, conflict, and turnover. But alignment and overlap of goals leads to clarity, confidence, and uncommon success.
The Playbook for Uncommon Success
As summarized in our roundtable:
Ditch the annual performance evaluation
Align company, team, and individual goals and measure progress
Ensure goals overlap so success is shared
Delegate ownership of goals and empower your people
Remove obstacles and coach along the way
Communicate constantly
Celebrate success
Do this, and you create a team that is locked‑in, invested, and built to win together.
We’re cheering for you!
– AL (Bridget, Jessica)
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Career NorthStar is dedicated to helping early career professionals and leaders build the skills, confidence, and connections they need to thrive. We believe in purposeful leadership, proactive ownership, and creating opportunities for all professionals to succeed. https://www.careernorthstar.net/
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