‘Mobilising’ the troops – the second step

0 comments

Posted on 16th August 2010 by Andy Britnell in 4 step process |Leading and Developing

, , , , ,

The second step of the 4-step process in Leading & Developing High Performance is the ‘Mobilising’ stage. We outlined the first stage of ‘Visioning’ in a previous post. Here we explore the next crucial step to guide your team to optimum performance.

So your team know where they are going through you sharing the vision and you have done your homework in observing and analysing your team and how it performs – now what do you do?

Before moving into the third step of ‘Developing’ there is a need to reinforce your vision and set the standards by which the team are going to play the game, You need to get them clear on the direction and expected behaviour time and time again to prevent misunderstanding and difficulty at a future date.

You need to prepare the ground so your troops land ready to take action and move forward. The approach is not heavy handed but more of a light touch using the principle of high challenge and high support and expecting the best from the individuals in the team to enable them to contribute in the best way they can.

So in essence the mobilising stage is about confirming your destination. outlining the standards required, confirming operational procedures and aligning and connecting people to the vision.

This results in the people being on your side, willing to develop and improve performance and actively seeking to take on ownership and personal responsibility for what they do and doing what is right to achieve the goal you have set.

Appreciative Leadership – lighting the fire within

0 comments

Posted on 8th August 2010 by Ali Stewart in Leading & Developing High Performance Book |Leading and Developing |Performance management

, , , ,

Appreciative leadership - light the fire withinI’ve just come across Appreciative Leadership, thanks to Leading & Developing High Performance practitioner Trudi Dewey, and was so excited when I read Dr Gervase Bushe’s article.  Appreciating the gifts people have and what they are good at, rather than constantly moaning about what they’re not doing, is also one of the central themes of Leading & Developing High Performance – ‘Catch someone doing something right!’

If you are the leader of a team struggling with a particular performance issue which keeps you awake at night, seeing beyond the behaviour and focusing on what is good about the person and what they can do, will have a phenomenal impact. It will be the start of you turning things around, and rather than being the sort of leader who has to constantly light the fire beneath to get anything done, you will begin to the light the fire within the other person. The difference is amazing.

Sometimes the performance issue is such that it makes it really hard to even think nice things about the person!  Developing your positive regard then is key,  and recognising that people always do things for a reason. The easiest way to finding this reason is to learn how to appreciate their qualities and catch them doing something right. There have been various studies done about how your belief in a person affects their results. It is useful to cultivate positive beliefs which enable you to practise this approach:

  • The only information is a person’s behaviour – calibrate on behaviour not personality, gender or race.
  • People are not their behaviour – which means that you challenge the behaviour not the person.
  • People are doing the best they can with the resources they have – poor performance is often caused by lack of competence or lack of motivation and there are positive steps you can take to tackle this and improve performance.

You can find out more about this in Chapter 7 of the Leading & Developing High Performance book, ‘Maximising people’s potential through feedback’ and by downloading the Diagnosing Poor Performance flowchart. Positive recognition, coaching and feedback is crucial to developing high performance.