Flexible, high performance plays a key role in a global economy whose ups and downs come and go as they please. In companies, the pressure to perform is particularly high on sales instruments: Marketing, service and sales. Whether their managers go down in company history as heroes or tragic losers depends largely on how well they manage to lead their teams to high performance time and again. However, the standards of general management theory are usually only good for standard results, as the name suggests. Neither the permanent increase in pressure on the managers and employees involved, nor the increase in salaries and wages are suitable for producing functioning and justifiable solutions. Those who strive for exceptional performance also need exceptional leadership.
Of goals and obstructors
“Obstacles are those dreadful things we see when we take our eyes off our goal.” With this thought from Henry Ford, it becomes clear: only with worthwhile and challenging goals can even the rockiest paths be overcome and the greatest difficulties mastered. They are the light at the end of the tunnel towards which everyone is striving.
Goals have the same effect on a team as a lighthouse for a ship in a storm, especially when faced with extraordinary demands and pressures. People are able to surpass themselves if they really and absolutely want to achieve their goals. Leadership for better performance here means Defining goals, communicating clearly and constantly visualizing the achievement of sub-goals throughout the entire performance phase. High performers and good managers alike see challenges and strive to find solutions, while those who prevent them tend to think in terms of obstacles and problems. It is entirely up to you which path you choose and which example you set yourself as a benchmark.
Initial situation
Many employees, both as individuals and as a team, work with great commitment and yet do not reach their actual performance potential. There are numerous reasons for this. These include, above all, disruptions, distractions, lack of concentration, too much or too little pressure, but also poor cooperation within the group, bumpy work processes and an untrained general condition.
As a result, many people are exhausted at the end of their working day and have still only been able to achieve 80% or less of their potential productive output, even on hard-working days. This is often a good place to start if we want to significantly improve individual performance. Below you will find some valuable suggestions for yourself, your employees and your goals.
Team spirit often helps immediately
Sport provides us with the best role models: When the common spirit inspires a team, the game is on. Even an average team can outperform a group of egotists who set themselves apart. However, when top performers and motivated individuals come together to achieve something, almost anything is possible. For team leaders, this means consistently implementing the relatively simple laws of team building. From the appropriate initial communication, to the competition of ideas and positions, to the rules of the game that are binding for everyone and the swearing-in so that the team presents itself collectively in a high-performance structure. (Bruce W. Tuckman: Team watch, team development in four phases)
“Faith moves mountains.” It is not the knowledge of the crisis that motivates us to perform, but the belief in success, strong self-confidence and unconditional team cohesion. This is what managers have to convey in this situation.
Success seeks success
Ever since Herzberg (Frederick Herzberg, 1923-2000: Work and the Nature of Man), we have known that nothing inspires success more than success itself. It is therefore of little use if we refer exclusively to long-term goals when managing people. It is much better to break these down into sub-goals and tackle them step by step. These sub-goals are cleverly dimensioned in such a way that they can be achieved with great effort in order to turn sub-goals into partial successes!
If these are celebrated together, each individual as well as the team or organization as a whole feels their own performance, gains self-confidence and uses this important positive experience for all subsequent tasks. Anyone who proves in practice what they are capable of will have the confidence to tackle higher, more demanding tasks with even more motivation and conviction. Clearly, success needs success.
Discipline: leading by example
“People believe their eyes more than their ears. Teachings are a boring path, examples a short one that quickly leads to the goal.” (Seneca)
The more difficult the general conditions, the more fears or doubts spread in the psyche, the more people find each other when they are looking for a strong point of reference. And this point of reference in a work team is the team manager. Everything you ask of your employees in times of crisis should be consciously and visibly exemplified.
Does a role model have to be better than the members of the group in every sub-competence? Not at all! What is required is exemplary behavior in terms of personal commitment, the willingness to put other interests aside during the performance phase, to concentrate fully on the task, to bring courage and motivation and to show self-confidence visibly for everyone – within the scope of one’s own possibilities, no more and no less.
Methodological aids and craftsmanship
Motivation, self-confidence and willingness to perform are the emotional components for top performance. The right strategy and the technical skills of all those involved contribute the technical competence. The following applies to strategy: Don’t get bogged down! Concentrate on a few important goals, not on all of them at the same time. Whether this is the selection of customer target groups in sales, for example, or the focus on topics and products – all energy should be directed towards one or a few goals.
This allows you to combine forces and achieve significantly more impact for your measures. We can also learn from other areas of work here. Let’s think of the “special task force” working method used by the police. When time is of the essence, the specialists very quickly come together to form a team with the following characteristics: everyone contributes important sub-competencies, the usual communication channels are extremely shortened, formal boundaries are removed, all other work and tasks are put on hold and everyone concentrates fully on achieving the specified goal. And in a special commission, suggestions and approaches can be realized that are not conceivable in everyday life, which is usually restricted by formal rules. Creativity is stimulated and the path to unusual solutions is cleared.
FLOW: Becoming one with the action
“Being able to engage in flow is the highest form of emotional intelligence.” (Daniel Golemann)
Many (occupational) psychologists agree that people only reach their peak performance when they are in a state of flow. Some characteristics of how we can consciously promote and achieve FLOW (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2004: Flow at work) at work:
- We are up to the activity. We sense a challenge, we need appropriate skills, the challenge and the skill go together.
- We are able to concentrate on what we are doing. We concentrate fully, are not distracted, do not allow ourselves to be distracted. We do not question the activity. At the same time (or perhaps because of this), the worries of everyday life are pushed out of our consciousness.
- The activity has clear objectives. We know what we need to do to achieve the goal.
- The activity has immediate feedback. We know or experience when we have done something right or wrong.
- We have a feeling of control over our activity. It is not important whether we are actually in control – our sense of control is crucial. Our worries about ourselves disappear.
For managers, this means above all keeping disruptions and trivialities away from the team as much as possible during the performance phase. Even good managers often react to crisis situations and pressure with anxiety and the desire for security and control grows disproportionately. As a result, additional reports are ordered and employees’ valuable energy is burned up in evaluation excesses. Be courageous! Reduce bureaucratic activities in favor of productive activities.
For example, give your sales teams more time for customer acquisition and sales talks instead of more time for evaluations. More productive time brings everyone closer to achieving their goals. It is much more fun to produce successes than to calculate failures down to the last detail.
Follow-up: Receive performance
After the performance phase, it is important to briefly process the experiences in order to be able to use them for future, comparable requirements. Just as an individual stores experiences, a group also has something like a collective memory. The team has just experienced how efficient it can be when it concentrates fully on one thing and works hand in hand. This positive borderline experience almost always leads to not falling back to the previous performance level, but rather to a slightly higher level. Once you have experienced what is really possible, you are reluctant to settle for anything less. Achievement and success are “legal drugs” that we can produce ourselves at any time.
Are you ready for top performance? Do you want to lead your team to peak performance? Let’s go, now!
Some immediate tips for your management work:
- Short-term, temporary increase in performance
- Forming temporary performance teams
- Using the working form of the special commission
- Away from everyday life and standards
- Calling on individual, personal strengths
- Swearing in at the start
- Always visualize progress
- Using unusual media for visualization
- Celebrate partial successes in a team-oriented manner
- Omit unloved, non-essential hard work for the performance period
- Visibly “rolling up your sleeves” as a manager
- Plan, incorporate and celebrate success stories
- Developing a good corporate policy
- Represent the company policy credibly and positively
- Assigning the right people to the right tasks
- Promote open, constructive communication
- Not only develop guidelines and offer high standards
- Challenging and encouraging with a good personnel development concept
- Building complementary teams