Inside the Tent: The Real Art of Building High-Performing Project Teams

If you’ve ever led a major project or program, you know the team is rarely just “your people.” High-stakes, high-impact projects nearly always require a diverse mix of internal staff, subject matter experts, vendor partners, contractors, and cross-functional contributors who have never worked together before. The result? A tent pitched at the intersection of skills, experiences, priorities, and, yes, ways of working.

Yet, the difference between a team that just coexists and one that truly performs isn’t just about the technical expertise you assemble or the methodologies you deploy. It’s about what happens once people are “inside the tent.” In this article, I’ll share what it takes to build high-performing project teams, especially the blended, cross-functional, and multi-organisation teams that define today’s transformation programs.

Inside the Tent: Everyone Belongs

Let’s start with the most overlooked truth: Once someone joins the project team, they’re in. The tent walls come down.

It doesn’t matter whether someone is an internal stakeholder, a vendor specialist, a consultant, or an external contractor. Once they are accepted onto the project, they are part of the team, they are “inside the tent”. This mindset is critical, but not always automatic. In many organisations, invisible lines persist, separating “the business” from “the vendor,” “the contractors” from “the core team,” or “us” from “them.”

High-performing teams reject this thinking. Successful leaders and project managers make it clear from the outset: If you’re on this project, you’re on the team. Not as an observer, or a third-party, as an owner.

Why is this so important? Because when the tent is open and everyone is inside, two powerful things happen:

1. Shared accountability: When all team members feel genuine ownership, they’re far more likely to raise risks, challenge assumptions, and push for the best outcomes, regardless of their employer or contract status.
2. Psychological safety: People contribute more when they aren’t preoccupied with status, politics, or being seen as outsiders. If the team is genuinely inclusive, creativity and problem-solving soar.

In practical terms, this means treating everyone’s input as valid, closing the loop on decisions transparently, and giving equal access to information. If you’re still inviting some people to “catch-up” meetings separately, or gatekeeping key discussions, you’re sabotaging your own project.

The Diversity Dividend: Specialist Skills, Different Worlds

The hallmark of most high-performing complex project teams is diversity of capability. You’ll often have business analysts sitting next to UX designers, data architects collaborating with process engineers, and vendor delivery leads engaging with internal governance teams.

This diversity is non-negotiable, without it, you won’t solve complex problems or deliver integrated outcomes. But there’s a catch: specialist skillsets usually come with specialist methodologies, languages, and sometimes entire philosophies of work. Agile, waterfall, Prince2, human-centred design, DevOps, Lean, each brings its own best practices and assumptions.

It’s tempting, sometimes, to try to force everyone into a single way of working. Resist that urge.

Don’t Tell Experts How to Suck Their Eggs

If there’s one cardinal rule in high-performing teams, it’s this: Respect the expertise you’ve brought in. If you hire a cyber security lead or an organisational change manager, don’t micromanage how they do their job. Let engineers engineer, designers design, and analysts analyse.

This doesn’t mean accepting silos or disconnects. It means acknowledging that your role as a leader isn’t to dictate how experts deliver their piece, it’s to blend their contributions into a coherent whole, synergise.

The Art of Blending: Focus on Outputs, Outcomes, and Communication

So how do you blend these different methodologies and ways of working into a team that delivers, rather than one that just cohabits?

It starts, and ends, with clarity and communication.

Clarity on Outputs and Outcomes

• Define what success looks like at every level: for the project, for each workstream, and for each member.
• Be crystal clear on what is required from each person or discipline. Not just the “what” (deliverables), but the “why” (outcomes) and the “when” (timing/interdependencies).
• Share context, not just tasks. People perform better when they understand not just their role, but how it connects to the bigger picture.

Communicate Early, Often, and Openly

• Translate across domains. Not everyone will speak the same technical or process language. Encourage (and model) the habit of explaining key decisions or approaches in plain language.
• Create shared rituals. Whether it’s stand-ups, retros, or weekly reviews, shared ceremonies help align expectations, uncover misunderstandings early, and build trust.
• Foster direct, constructive feedback. If people feel they can challenge, clarify, or even push back on decisions, regardless of hierarchy or employer, they’ll be more invested and you’ll surface problems before they derail delivery.

Integrating Work: The Leader’s Real Job

It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to “own” the technical solution, or of being overly prescriptive with methods. But the real job of the project manager or team leader is to integrate the different streams of work, connecting dots, surfacing dependencies, and delivering on the project’s promise of synergy.

This is where high-performing teams are made, not born:

• Spot and close the gaps. Your role is to see where outputs don’t align, where handovers are rough, or where misunderstandings could cause friction.
• Celebrate integration. Make heroes not just of the technical experts, but of the connectors, the people who bridge disciplines, smooth handoffs, and help the whole exceed the sum of its parts.

It’s not glamorous work, but it’s where value is created. As a leader, you don’t need to be the expert in every domain. You need to integrate the work of experts and deliver a cohesive result.

Practical Tips for Building a Tent That Delivers

1. Set the tent rules early. State explicitly: “Once you’re on the project, you’re in. There are no outsiders.” Revisit this regularly, especially as new members join.
2. Map the mix of skills, methods, and expectations. Take time upfront to understand how each discipline likes to work. Use this to design your ways of working, don’t just default to a single methodology.
3. Agree on communications and cadence. Create rituals and channels that work for everyone, and ensure information flows across boundaries.
4. Be clear on outputs, outcomes, and integration points. Document, share, and regularly review what’s needed from whom and how it fits together.
5. Encourage respect for expertise, but expectation of collaboration. Make it clear that specialists own their methods, but delivery is a team sport.

Final Thoughts: The High-Performing Tent

Projects are no longer neat, siloed efforts. The real world is messy, fast-moving, and demands collaboration across professional, organisational, and even geographic boundaries. The secret isn’t just in who you bring into the tent, but in what you do once they’re inside.

Build a tent where everyone belongs, respect the craft each expert brings, focus on outcomes and outputs, and lead with clarity and open communication. That’s where high-performing project teams are forged, and how extraordinary results are delivered.