Sustainable High Performance Formula

Here’s a logic stream for you to consider…

1. Sustainable high performance is 50% dependent on the team (the other half is sound strategy/Structure/process…which by the way are developed best through a healthy team)
2. Team performance is dependent on culture
3. Culture is leadership behaviour
4. Leadership behaviour is determined by values lived out

So, question: Can we really change anyone else…or if we focused on personal mastery, aligning our personal behaviours with positive values…would the rest follow?

The Value of Brevity

I received the following comment from Alan Weiss (Summit Consulting) in my email inbox this morning, and found it to be well worthy of a re-post. It’s crazy how zeal and insecurity can mix to have us overwhelm the people we work with…betraying the mission in the pursuit of the mission…

“This week’s focus point: Brevity isn’t merely the soul of wit (Hamlet). We seem obsessed with telling people everything we know rather than what they need to know (hence, all those boring undergraduate lectures). Keep two factors in mind in business: speed and brevity. The more quickly you help others, the more valuable you are. Of course, that entails the suppression of ego and a true focus on helping, and a strong self-esteem that doesn’t require that you continually prove how smart you are. Enough said.” (Alan Weiss)

Truth

Ahh…the age old question: “what is truth?”

I think we have messed with the definition so much that we don’t know the anser anymore. For instance…here is one version found as a definition within Merriam-Webster:

“a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true”

Crazy stuff. North is what north is. If we all stood in one room, spun around with eyes closed, and then pointed to north…we may decide to go with the marjority and vote that north was that direction. BUT our vote holds no dictate.

If we are all at different points on the planet, it would feel like we were maybe pointing in different directions, even though from our specific locations we are all pointing north.

Still…doesn’t affect TRUE north.

Truth (is what it is)…understanding / translation leads us to a belief…we form our values based on our conviction / belief…derived from our understanding…

Beliefs can hold us back…agreed. But truth sets us free. Truth gives us a common ground – beliefs based in truth therefore must also give us a common ground. Beliefs based in an improper translation of truth divide.

Values call us forward – to be sure…but values based in beliefs that are based in beliefs which are based in improper translation of truth….well…they can lead us to sincerely and passionately destroy whatever opposes…for values are beliefs that pack a wallop!

True north truth is essential – What’s Yours?

Honor-able?

“Do what is right, and deal with the consequences.”

I wonder if too often we look into the future to decide whether or not things will be favorable to us…enroute to making our decisions. Seeming sound and logical, this may not be right in all cases.

You have an opportunity to gain financially, and all you have to do is fudge the truth a bit. If you don’t fudge, you don’t know what will happen. Maybe you win, maybe you lose. The future looks uncertain, and who’s to know?

Or, someone you know is in a desperate situation. You have the ability to help. You can see where this will be a large challenge, you see that this may drag on for some time, and have no idea as to what a real exit looks like for you. There is no one else close by to help, and you see the veritable writing on the wall; they are going down. Do you leave them to “fate”, or do you engage?

There are hundreds, even thousands of scenarios that could be written here. The point is not so much in the detail of the situation as the principle of the decision. Do we look for what is right, or do we look for what benefits us in the end…the end being as far as we can see?

What truly benefits in the “final” end…further than we can presently “see”?

What do we respect most in others…(would we want someone to take advantage of or walk out on us?)…isn’t this what we would mostly likely desire to be as well?

Why not embrace the journey (along with the unkown detail of how it will all turn out) by simply determining to do what is right, and then dealing with whatever is to follow.

Who are you for?

If we were to ask the people you work with whether they felt you were for them, against them, or for themselves…what would they say? The answer to this question provides strong indication as to the health of your team’s partnership.

Partnership can be simply defined as “standing for each others success”.

Watching the world series right now and have been reminded as to how important it is to support, reinforce and cover each other within a winning team. Check it out…as soon as the ball is hit or thrown, people are in action covering for others, especially if a batter bunts! The whole infield is on the move!

No one stands alone. No one wins or loses alone. The best teams are strong partnerships…where we are FOR each other. If we are against each other the team will fail. If we are for our self, the team will fail…for we are unaware of the needs of another…and unavailable to support or cover. The batter bunts, and no one moves. The right fielder misses his throw to third base, and the catcher yawns.

Do people serve you…or are you working together toward a common cause? If you lead them, do they know you are FOR them?

Freedom

Whether it be in relation to raising children, walking with friends, or leading employees, the fact that we are free people plays heavily into how we must manage our influence. We cannot become controlling or dictating with mature individuals.

When our children are young, we must be directive, but as their ability to reason grows we move into and through coaching, and supporting roles. Ultimately they end up caring for us!

With employees, we must start with directive, but then also move through coaching, support and delegative roles as their confidence and ability grows.

As an adviser or friend, we can convey perspective, but we cannot control others with expectations or directives.

Whenever someone is not allowed to own their behavior and the accompanying consequences, boundaries are being crossed…and they can develop no confidence in their ability to understand cause and effect.

Congruence

Congruence: “The quality or state of agreeing, coinciding, or being congruent”
Congruent: “Superposable so as to be coincident throughout”
Superposable: “To place or lay over or above whether in or not in contact”

Maybe another shot at this would be “coincidental integrity at every level of a leader’s life, whether seen or unseen”…it just “is”…

I don’t feel like I have integrity at every level of my life each and every day…I am not perfect…just ask my wife and children.

Yet, I desire to be this way. That my words and my actions would all align, all the time.

This will require heart change…deep heart transformation, and as I was telling my son this morning, maturity (the pathway to transformation) is not automatic. It is achieved through each and every choice we make.

P.R.O.C.E.S.S.

We’ve finally come to the place of thinking that a healthy work culture would be a good idea. Maybe it took a while to warm up to the fact, but as we ponder the benefits of teams working with trust and respect, producing significant and sustainable impacts on the bottom line, we lean in.

We start by creating a clear vision. Good stuff.
We communicate it…or better yet, you used  a collaborative process to develop and then articulate it. Excellent!
But…now the hard work sets in. Is this a “program”, or is this the new “way we do things around here”?

 

Great culture is birthed in philosophy, but matured in practice…and there are a few kill zones along the way:
1. The leader stops consistently speaking, modeling and holding them self accountable. (eminent death to cultural transformation)
2. Employees are not support and equipped for change. Death.
3. Progress is not measured and celebrated…death.

Given that relationships are an integral / unavoidable component of team…the work is personal and vulnerable. We end up being forced through minefields of our own personal baggage to conquer the new ground.

We can pull back and determine that the “new way” is too much work. In reality, the new way is the only way…we must come to see this so that we have the conviction that there is no other way to sustainable impact than to continue on through the uncertain valley of Process.

Steel Yourself

I recently asked a mentor what he did to keep himself believing that change would come…that his convictions were right…that truth would prevail. His answer was immediate and straight forward: “choice”.

He chuckled and continued on with, “I steel myself”.

There’s a passage in the Bible that says, ““ For the Lord GOD will help Me; Therefore I will not be disgraced; Therefore I have set My face like a flint, And I know that I will not be ashamed.”

External opposition is difficult, but sometimes the more intensely critical and despairing opposition comes from within.

Truth: it is what it is…no matter how you feel.

Stormy People

Approximately a year ago, a client (now friend) suggested that I must, “have to be very emotionally stable to do my job”. I replied that the job was making me emotionally stable…forcing / stretching me to be so.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time puzzling over my interaction with a specific individual this past week. His body language suggested that I was wasting his time. His words were more direct than comfortable. And he aggressively asserted that the idea I was presenting was “asinine” (utterly foolish). Ironically, he picked up a marker, drew a circle around a word on my whiteboard, and with exasperation insisted that, “this is the only thing that matters in the end”…which moved him from staunch opposition to unwitting advocate in seconds.

Sooner or later, all of us will meet with opposition to ideas. Sometimes the opposition will be assertive yet gracious, other times direct and condescending. Sometimes it will be that people are just pressed, insecure or otherwise off balance…not acting in the grace that they normally may have.

In any event, we must remember that people are not the enemy…they are the reason we exist to do what we do. We must continue to hold ourselves accountable (100%) to our mission and values, living them out in authentic congruency. This is the way to our mission’s sustainability and impact. It is also the route to our personal stability and maturity.

Success in this case is not simply tolerance, but rather living beyond tolerance to embrace the brokenness of the human condition we are experiencing in another. We grow in patience, humility, love and peace as we hold steady, and facilitate an opportunity for our “opposition” to do the same.