January Blog - Creating a High Performance Culture.

Management of a sales team or a company means that the responsibility to develop and nurture a culture which can produce without impeding personality or individual nuances lies with you.

The worst thing about managing a team is that you can never take the credit for success - this is purely down to the team effort and the work generated by your team. Yes, your influence and direction has allowed that performance to be realised and the culture you have created means that your team has the freedom to express their natural ability but the work has been carried out by your team.

On the flip side to this, if your team fails to succeed - you must absolutely take responsibility - its not down to individual failures, its not down to a lack of effort or intent - its absolutely down to the culture, ethics and performance that you have allowed your team to have - the buck definitely stops at the top.

The ideal analogy for this is Jose Mourinho's tenure at Manchester United. Jose as a manager of a football team is someone I admire; he achieves results by whatever means necessary and often creates the perfect team mentality to achieve those results. He understands that the history books will never remember a 1-0 victory played out in the most ugly way possible but they will remember that he achieved great success by winning countless trophies.

What Jose failed to do though, in my opinion, is address the failures which originated from his management style, he failed to address the issues at the top - he didn't take responsibility when things went wrong and he didn't praise his players when they succeeded. This culture has a limited, short term impact as longevity and success over a prolonged period can only be achieved through the right type of management.

Here is my top 5 ways to create a high performance culture -

1. Accountability

Leaders need to be accountable to their teams and their teams need to be accountable to each other. Accountability from the top to the bottom and back again. Without a manager who takes responsibility, you can never expect your team to take responsibility of their results.

2. Communication

Complete and transparent communication offers open and clear boundaries. If you manage your team through limited information, expect them to question every single move you make. Poor communication can drag down any organization; and there can be no peer accountability without respectful, professional and fearless communication. How can you expect to hear whats going wrong when your team are scared to air their views?

3. Ownership

An ownership mentality trait is the essence of personal accountability, the commitment to be a 'man of your word'. This is the kind of mentality which means that your team have the ultimate faith and trust in you. Trust breeds trust in high performance cultures.

4. Clear Expectations

Everything needs to be clear and 'SMART' - targets, culture, strategy, goals and how everyone fits into that plan must be clear and every single objective must relate to the overall plan. Without a plan, can you expect your team to know what direction you are moving in? Can you expect your team to 'over perform' or be a high performing team if you have no metric to be the guide on what 'normal performance' is?

5. Opportunities

The last main point which I believe creates a high performance culture is that of creating opportunities - the only way to keep your team members passionate and engaged is by providing them with opportunities to learn and grow. No team member knows everything - it is absolutely your job to identify what they lack, give them opportunity to grow both personally and professionally and support them with that 100%.

At SAFi UK, we have been addressing our cultural values, looking at the direction we have been taking and adjusting our behaviours so that we can succeed and push forward into a fresh new and exciting chapter.

SAFi Valves have just launched their new website - www.safi-valves.com - here you can check out over 8000 'standard' products and interact with our bespoke technical team to discuss original and unique valve solutions. For the first time ever, you can also access our complete technical library - datasheets, compatibility charts and much more.

Please feel free to get in touch - [email protected] if you want to know more.