A High Performance You

A High Performance You

Matthew Akins
Contributing Writer
Success Academy Trainer

Do you want a high-performance team that delivers results? The fact that you are reading this article tells me you want to make a difference in the world, your industry, or where you work.

It doesn’t matter the role you play. If you want to make a difference, you’ve picked up on the value of having teams that are passionate. The most overwhelming factor in teams achieving high levels of accomplishment is passion within the group.

When teams are driven on passion, it opens the door to you. As the manager, you are able to motivate without manipulating, turn mistakes into quality, and empower groups to adapt to change. This results in environments in which employees strive for excellence. Members of this team will act responsible. They believe they can do any assignment set before them.

Think about this; gardeners do not make plants mature- the genetics of each plant does that. A gardener designs conditions that are favorable for the growth of the plants. If those conditions are preserved, then growth will take place.

A diligent gardener assesses the requirements for the garden. Is fertilizer needed? Is water required? Are there any unwanted insects or contamination? Gardeners ask themselves these types of questions and adjust as needed. They know what kind of results they’ll get if they give plants an aggressive look and yell out an order to “grow!”

For the best results, managers and team leaders should be interested in the state of their teams and the desires of the team members. Unfortunately, many managers bark out “grow” orders to their teams and then blame the employees when no growth takes place. We may accept such conduct in managers, but we’d fall out laughing if gardeners acted that way.

Here are a few steps to help you create the high passion team you’ve always wanted.

First, help your team to see your value as a leader. Leadership is an art. Leadership is about communication, inspiration, teamwork, and the ability to motivate and encourage others. It is about keeping your eyes open and your hands off, rather than your eyes down and your hands off. It is about soliciting the right questions, rather than hunting for the precise answers.

Second, Enhance your circle of organizational influence. People prefer to do business with people they like and trust. The same holds true when it comes to referring people. They refer people they know, like and trust. The more people in your business organization who know and trust you, there more referrals you’ll get.

Third, Delegate your responsibilities and energy for maximum results by empowering team members. The chances are that you have substantial amounts of untapped resources at your fingertips. Your employees know that you cannot create new energy, but you can positively redirect the energy you have. Refocusing your responsibilities and energy is the first step in the art of delegation.

Fourth, A manager needs to deal with poor performance. When you address poor performance, it is essential to recognize the difference between temporary performance issues and long-term performance issues. The current performance issues need to be fixed quickly. Dealing with long-term performance issues in the workplace is paramount. You need to understand the causes of poor performance and work with the person to reverse the trend.

Finally, as a manager, you need to react with a real sense of urgency. Do not confuse the sense of urgency with frantic activity. Exercising urgency is about focusing on a few crucial things. Then allow yourself to make time to find the energy to see those things through to the end.

You cannot shortcut around the process of producing passion-driven teams. Shortcuts in such efforts will not have long last effects.

At times, alternatives may yield short-term outcomes, but the constant long-term endeavors will give you much better results than short spurts of energy that must always be re-started. Commit to yourself and your people, and you’ll have the basis for founding passion-driven teams.