Catch people doing something right!

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Posted on 21st January 2010 by Andy Britnell in Effective feedback

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Catching people doing something right is the single most important key to developing high performance in others. But, as often happens, our attention is diverted as we typically pay more attention to noticing and determining why people are not behaving as we want them. Leaders in this situation get ground down by the day to day business of getting things done, instead of realising their vision. This is time consuming and emotionally draining.

The people who just get on and do a good job without a fuss are left to get on with it and you are thankful that they do.

Simply by switching focus and paying more attention to the good performers can significantly alter the balance and make things easier. By ‘catching people doing something right’ you are reinforcing positive behaviour and sending a message to everyone that this is what you want … and the upshot is you will get more of it.

And people always do things for a reason. By making the reason compelling enough through your vision as leader is also what counts. More about each of these statements to come!

As always, your comments would be most welcome.

The art of driving high performance

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Posted on 20th January 2010 by Andy Britnell in High Performance |Performance management

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Driving high performance - the process of leading a productive teamWould you agree that the prime purpose of leaders is to develop their people to produce world class results, whatever market sector they are in? And leaders need to pay attention to developing themselves and their people to consistently thrive and grow during change, no matter what is thrown at them. This takes robustness and resilience, especially in times of crisis.

Knowing how to do this helps, and having a process to follow makes things much easier. As with any good engineering system if you do things in the right order, everything will fit, holding together in the strongest possible way.

Compare the process of leading and developing people with driving a car – and what we are talking here is a manual car with 4 gears. As with the car, the idea is to move your people into 4th gear as quickly and smoothly as possible, for optimum performance. You get off to the best possible start by starting in first gear. If you start in 2nd things are a bit sluggish and slow. Trying to start in 3rd is extremely difficult and could actually cause damage.

Of course some ‘models’ allow you to move more quickly and smoothly through the gears than others. Your skill as a leader is knowing how to drive each ‘model’ for first class performance, beautifully and well and getting your whole team into 4th gear as quickly as you can. Beware, if you never move into 4th gear you are certainly mishandling things and will never know what your ‘car’ is capable of.

But what happens when you come to an obstacle or T junction? You need to change down through the gears and sometimes even stop. In such circumstances remaining resolutely in 4th gear will be extremely unhelpful. So it is vital that you move down and up through the gears as each situation demands, paying attention well and anticipating each gear change.

I’m sure you can think of many examples of when this process has worked well to produce a fantastic result and possibly even more examples of when it hasn’t. We would be delighted to hear your comments.

The Tag Cloud says it all!

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Posted on 12th January 2010 by Andy Britnell in Chitchat

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I have just noticed that the tag cloud for this blog – check out right hand sidebar – has developed a life of its own. It captures what we are about – creating high performance leaders and managers.

So if that looks like it fits in with what you have in mind for developing your business we would love to hear from you.

“Turning mere managers into leaders & developers of high performance”

Next accreditation date for Leading & Developing High Performance

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Posted on 11th January 2010 by Andy Britnell in Events

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Would you like to have a powerful model of effective management to take your clients into the new decade with a competitive advantage?

Ali Stewart’s next 2-day accreditation takes place in London, at a destination to be advised, on Friday 5th & Sunday 7th February. The cost for the two days will be £600 plus VAT, which includes materials, venue costs and catering. It does not include any overnight accommodation.

Ali Stewart worked with Dr Derek S Biddle for many years and has lived and breathed his theories and ideas about how managers inspire high performance. She brings this excellent material to life and models the behaviour of an effective leader and developer beautifully.

You will be challenged and supported, given explicit instructions and effective feedback, be treated with genuineness and positive regard and come away with a tool that will change the way you think about management.

But don’t take our word for it – read what others are saying about this great new programme which gives you an excellent model to develop the leaders and developers of tomorrow

The case for a high challenge and high support mindset in managers

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Posted on 7th January 2010 by Andy Britnell in New Managers

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At a conference I attended a while ago, one of the main speakers quoted a survey which showed that 65% of employees say that the most stressful thing about their job is their boss, and 50% of people looking for another job are doing so because they don’t like their boss.

So what is the cause of this situation? In my experience people are placed in a management position with no training or support usually because they were good at doing the job that the people they will manage are doing. However, they never get a manual on how to manage or exposed to the mindset you need to lead and manage high performance.

There are often three responses to being a new manager:

1. Be tough and drive the team = ‘High Challenge’
2. Try and be friendly with everyone = ‘High Support’
3. Be tough on those you don’t like and friendly with your mates = ‘High Challenge’ or ‘High Support’

So how do these approaches cause stress?

1. If the manager gives no quarter and drives the team too hard without support they ‘burn out’. The manager uses up his ‘emotional overdraft’ and loses respect and cooperation.

2. Being too friendly means that people will not develop and grow. Anyone with talent will look elsewhere to be fulfilled.

3. The manager will be seen to be incongruent and have favourites. The inconsistency of approach will be unsettling for both those who are favourites and those who are not.

The key to successfully leading and developing high performance is to use High Challenge and also High Support. Further posts will talk about the appropriate mindset and process to follow in order to ensure this is a consistent approach used by managers. The book ‘Leading & Developing High Performance’ acts as a manual and a useful resource. And if you want to integrate this approach with your managers we offer specialist training.