How to be a successful leader

High performing individuals and teams should be the goal of any organisation.

We are all now aware of the potential results of high performance in terms of organisational success and competitiveness. The perennial debate is around how to create that high performance and, more importantly, how to sustain efforts to enable your organisation to continue to outperform others in your market.

Most organisations find the organisational issues much easier to handle than the individual ones – so that’s what gets the attention. Unfortunately this is only part of the job that needs to be done to create a successful high performance culture. Addressing high performance among individuals in an organisation is essential; this article looks at how to do just that.

1. Know what it looks like

You’ll find it impossible to know when you’re achieving high performance if you don’t know what it looks like, both from an individual and an organisational perspective. Many organisations get the overtly visible part of the equation right. The struggle is often at the more intangible human asset level.

For the organisation, high performance not only means running a financially sound business, adhering to all essential policies, ensuring regulatory demands are observed, working conditions are monitored, the latest technology is implemented etc. It also means knowing your workforce and their capability to deliver high performance.

Typical knowledge of your staff would include:

What are his/her hard skills and knowledge?
How much experience does he/she have?
Is he she aware of what puts them under pressure and what doesn’t?
What motivates him/her?
Do his/her values link to the organisation’s values?
How does he/she approach situations, which type of behaviours does he/she use?

Often worried about what they might find and about the time it may take, many organisations adopt the ‘three wise monkey strategy’ – don’t see, don’t hear, don’t speak. With the effect that low performance goes unchecked for years until it is too late and competitors have overtaken you.

Too often individual high performance is defined as simply getting the job done in the short term, rather than looking to build long-term high performance which is achieved by focussing on high performance behaviours.

2. Commit to getting what you want

Strong and active commitment from leaders and managers and the pursuit of continuous learning throughout the organisation is a crucial part of building a well-defined high performance culture. It means not leaving it to fate, but truly understanding what high performance looks like, trusting different approaches and working with all stakeholders, including HR.

3. Define your starting point

Knowing where your organisation currently stands will make it much easier to create a vision for high performance and to secure buy-in from all internal stakeholders at all levels.

One of the most effective strategies is to explicitly define what creates high performance in behavioural terms in your organisation. Selecting, developing, promoting people and building talent pools should then take place against this high performance model.

High performance models should cover how people:

Collect and make sense of information and create different options;
Build a developmental workforce in which underlying issues are understood and common concepts are formed;
Influence and build confidence in stakeholders;
Cut down on red tape and continuously improve performance.

4. Include all stakeholders

Strive to make people aware of what you want to achieve and what their role in the process is. High performance helps people to be effective and efficient. It cuts down on the big time and money wasters such as unnecessary politics and unsuccessful initiatives. It will also help reduce the smaller time and money wasters such as double briefings, misunderstandings and unsatisfying meetings.

The secret to creating a high performance culture is openness. This means accepting feedback and really checking how you are currently defining high performance and what it may look like in the future from an internal and external perspective. You should be speaking to all stakeholders, including employees at all levels, regulatory, city, work councils and other industry representatives.

5. Put a stake in the ground

Once you have agreed what the behavioural high performance indicators look like, it is essential to establish the status quo of high performance in your organisation.

Key to measurement is to have definitions that are objective, measurable, comprehensive, linked to performance and bought into by everyone.

Behaviours need to be distinct and clear, so be careful not to mix related or unrelated behaviours or confuse the workforce with management jargon.

The best way to capture current performance is by observation. This should be done at different and clearly defined levels to distinguish between behaviour that:

Impedes performance or is not developed
Helps to do the task in hand
Has a sustainable and long-term positive effect on individual high performance
Promotes beneficial sustainable and long-term behaviour change in teams and organisations

Behavioural high performance is measured through objective observation in simulated environments, through work shadowing, behavioural event interviews and through subjective feedback via online and facilitated 360s.

6. Act upon feedback

It is critical to learn from insights gained through the measuring of current behavioural high performance levels, both on an individual and an organisational level. This will:

help people to know where they currently are and where they need get to
allow organisations to put together development initiatives based on factual, measurable and reliable data

You will find that this approach commands credibility quite apart from the intuitive skills of any individual and will help you to secure the commitment you need to develop your workforce.

7. Beware of dirty ponds

When embarking on a high performance development route, make sure that there is even exposure throughout the organisation. It will be vital to train up internal staff to embed the changes, which will allow staff who have embarked on their journey to practice what they’ve learnt by measuring their current high performance levels.

8. Maintain a watching brief

As your workforce grows and develops, the need to check high performance is constant. This should go hand in hand with such disciplines as checking safety and environmental compliance, achieving sales targets, and so on.

Behavioural high performance is, as we outlined at the beginning, one of part of the vital ingredients of an organisation’s success and competitiveness.

Key points:

Decide that it is time to move forward and shake off ‘reasonable reasons’ which have prevented behavioural development in the past
Understand the holistic picture of high performance from an organisational and individual angle
Define what high performance looks like and create a common language reflecting the culture of your organisation
Hear the opinions of all stakeholders and select representatives who will not be shy in giving their view of today’s and tomorrow’s high performance
Find out how you are currently performing. Where your gaps are and where your strengths are at both an organisational and an individual level
Create individual and organisational development actions that will push the organisation on the route to high performance
Involve all levels of the organisation in at least creating a vision of high performance
Make the checking of behavioural high performance part of your annual processes

Permission is required to reproduce this article. Please contact our media representative for further information.