Don't make this high performance mistake in your company!

Organisations globally have spent multiple decades and billions of dollars in search of excellence. Sadly their efforts have inadvertently promoted mediocrity. How so I hear you ask?

From hire to fire companies are basing their decisions on the notion that high performers are well rounded. At best this is unfalsifiable. At worst this is scientifically and categorically not true and costing your company a fortune.

Consulting firms and HR teams every where have developed incredibly impressive but mostly useless competency frameworks with scores of behaviours, 100s of behavioural anchors and 1000s of different interpretations… all in an effort to make sure we know what great looks like. 

However, according to Marcus Buckingham and Adam Goodall

“you will find no academic papers in any peer reviewed journal proving the necessity of possessing certain competencies. And no proof that acquiring the ones you lack nets you any increase in performance.”

Rather the best performers in any field of human endeavour are what Buckingham and Goodall in their book Nine Lies About Work refer to as spikey. They say

“the well rounded high performer is the creature of theory world. In the real world each high performer is unique and distinct and excels precisely because that person has understood his or her uniqueness and has cultivated it intelligently.”

I first came across the concepts of ‘spikes’ back in 1999 when partnering with one of the world's leading corporate psychologist firms YSC in London. In their work developing, coaching and selecting executive talent they don’t look for well rounded leaders. They are looking for ones with spikes.

I caught up with co-founder of YSC Gurnek Bains (pictured above) about five years ago. He defines a spike as a single "brilliant ability" that a person has that sets him or her apart from others. According to Gurnek

"Often people at the top of a company are not well-rounded people. They have a powerful signature strength. It could be as a deal-maker, or as a motivator of people, or perhaps tremendous strategic capabilities. That is what we are looking for."

At the time I sat thru YSC’s battery of psychometrics and interviews to determine where I was spikey. Clearly ‘knowledge retention’ wasn’t one of them as I have forgotten now what my spikes were but the concept has stuck with me.

Over the last two decades I’ve worked with more than 1000 CEOs as well as Prime Ministers, Premiers, presidents of industry and global thought leaders. I have been on a quest to find what unites these people in climbing to the top of their respective ladders. 

There are certainly some consistent themes that differentiate the best from the rest such as curiosity, drive and mental agility. However what unites them is actually how they differ.

I too have found that the best of the best don’t get there by being well rounded. It is their spikey-ness that makes them stand out and succeed.

If you look up spikes in the dictionary you may find a picture of Steve Jobs as he was one of the spikey-est ever!

Reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve reveals his extreme brilliance as a visionary innovator and designer was coupled with extreme brutality inter-personally. Far from well rounded. The short video above with Isaacson beautifully summarizes this.

Elon Musk is another spikey high performer.

The picture above reveals the extraordinary breadth of companies he has founded that are changing paradigms across multiple industries. The picture below reveals that the guy has some issues too.

Katharine Graham (pictured below) is another great example of a spikey leader. She was the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company and is one of the most successful CEOs of all time. She lead the Washington Post for over three decades and grew the company to the conglomerate it is today. 

From the time of IPO in 1971 till when she retired as Chair in 1993 the compound annual return to shareholders was a phenomenal 22.3%. One dollar invested at the time of IPO was worth $89 by the time she retired versus $5 for the S&P and $14 for her peer group.

Katharine reportedly struggled with self confidence. Not surprising in a male dominated industry that didn’t take her seriously. Her misogynist peers frowned on the fact that until she took the helm she hadn’t been regularly employed for 20 years whilst raising her four children.

Katharine was well aware of her limitations and inadequacies. Her journalism experience was slim and business acumen even slimmer. However she knew when to ask for help and got it from some of the best. Warren Buffet was a key investor and her mentor (pictured below in 1980). She turned her lack of experience into curiosity.

She also played to her strengths such as her willingness to make tough decisions. The most famous of these was the decision to publish contents of the Pentagon Papers, despite significant pressure from the US Government to not do so. The Watergate conspiracy ensued finally resulting in Richard Nixon’s resignation.

So how can you work out what are your spikes so you can understand your uniqueness and cultivate them like Katherine Graham?

In my work with leaders I have found it helpful to identify and share your spikes, which you can easily remember by the acronym SPIKE, i.e. Strengths, Passions, Idiosyncrasies, Kryptonite and Energizers.

S – Strengths are something you are good at AND very importantly enjoy doing.

Buckingham & Goodall point out in Nine Lies... that study after study shows the single most powerful predictor of productivity is that each team member has a chance to use their strengths every day at work. ‘Every day’ is key to this statement.

Most of us know this but we can get confused when identifying what our strengths are. Too often we confuse strengths with abilities. Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean it is a strength. 

For example I am great at washing my car. I take great care when doing so and it looks fabulous when I’m finished, despite my car being 11 years old and my four kids plus two dogs doing their best to trash it. But to be honest I find the whole process rather draining and not a good use of my time.

As Buckingham has said for many years a strength is an activity that makes you feel strong. Car washing certainly does not do this for me. 

On the other hand 1:1 executive coaching, facilitating workshops with leadership teams, and interviewing high performers does. I look forward to it, love doing it and am on a high afterwards. Using these strengths gives me joy, they strengthen me.

P- Passions reflect what is truly important to you, i.e. what you most value in life

Joy is also a clue as to your passions. 

If strengths are the activities you use that make you feel strong, passions reflect the context. Coaching someone 1:1 on how to play tennis would not give me joy. Coaching someone about how to bring out the best in themselves and in others does.

One of the things I value most in life are loyal, open, trusting and reciprocal relationships. I have long felt that my calling on this planet is ‘to build and restore relationships’. Every job I’ve had involves this. Beyond work my wife and I have run marriage enrichment courses for over a decade.

Aligning our decisions in favour of our passions is a great way to create more joy and success in your lives, assuming you have spent the time to work out what your passions are. 

If you’d like to delve deeper into this topic The Passion Test is a good read. Not terribly scientific and a little ‘woo woo’ but it definitely helped me in defining what I most value in life.

The opposite of joy also provides a clue. When you have felt most hurt it is often a result of the thing you most value being taken away. Many of my most painful life experiences relate to loss of relationships. Looking at your pain points in life can also reveal what you value most, i.e. your passions.

I – Idiosyncrasies are those aspects of your character that may be misunderstood by others

Katharine Graham experienced this in droves saying...

"If one is rich and one's a woman, one can be quite misunderstood."

An idiosyncrasy is when your behaviour is interpreted consistently and contrary to your intent. 

For executives, particularly men, an idiosyncrasy I see too often is anger. Anger triggers all kinds of unhelpful responses in others. It shuts down creativity, empathy and relatedness, making people distance themselves and feel afraid. None of which is helpful to resolving the issue the executive got angry about in the first place.

If anger is so unhelpful in most work contexts why do we do it? Anger is often a symptom of something we care about being taken away from us. By focusing on what we care about instead of expressing the emotion we can change the situation from one that divides people to one that unites them.

The problem with anger is that people can’t see our intentions. As one of my mentors taught me long ago that

“we judge ourselves by our intent and others by their impact.”

Not only can’t people see our intentions they also can’t see our behaviour objectively. Rather they interpret our behaviour thru a myriad of filters based on their own previous experiences and general biases, their preconceived ideas about us which are likely based on inaccurate memories of previous interactions have had, and how they are feeling at the time. No wonder we read each other wrong so often.

Finally people also can’t see our context. Even if they could see our intent and view our behaviours objectively, which they can’t, they don’t have the benefit of seeing what environmental variables we have been exposed to that influenced our ultimate behaviour. A bad nights sleep may be interpreted as you being in a bad mood when you are just simply tired. In psychology we call this a ‘fundamental attribution error’ and it is remarkably common.

So given people can’t see our intent or our context AND they are lousy judges of our behaviour we owe it to them and ourselves to be more transparent about the thinking and context that is behind our actions.

K – Kryptonite are thoughts, experiences and situations that drain you and make you feel weak

Like Superman all of us have our own version of kryptonite. And like the dark green crystal from the movies it may be something that does little harm to others but renders you useless.

For me my kryptonite is conflict. As the third and youngest child in my family my mum and dad always stepped in to protect me from my older brothers when I was little. While my ‘big bros’ rumbled on the living room floor I was safe and sound doing colouring at the kitchen table. Beyond home I had a caring group of friends, went to a great school and lived in a very safe part of Sydney.

As a result however I have never liked conflict and have spent much of my life avoiding it. This has resulted in all kinds of issues related to needing approval, not speaking my mind, being deeply hurt by others, and not being able to get over relationship breakdowns. The link between my kryptonite and my passions has not escaped me.

Sharing your kryptonite with others can be an incredibly powerful way to build relationship on two fronts. 

Firstly, it requires you to be vulnerable. As Brene Brown has made well known

“vulnerability is not weakness, it’s our greatest measure of courage.” 

It is also one of the fastest ways to build trust in a team, which as Patrick Lencioni points out is bedrock of any functional team.

Secondly, sharing your kryptonite decreases the likelihood that one of your colleagues will inadvertently expose you to it. Relationships often falter as a result of accidental contact with kryptonite, which could have been so easily avoided or sensitively handled if understood.

E – Energizers are thoughts, experiences and situations that bring out your best

The last aspect of your SPIKEs I call energizers. These are things that pump you up and result in you being your best self. 

I’ve had a number of great bosses in my career and a few shockers. If I think about the difference between the two it comes down to one of my top energizers, i.e. that I am believed in. My best bosses made me feel like I could do almost anything. Most of us are energized by such leadership.

But some situations are energizing to you but not to others. I love a deadline. I rise to the challenge. My wife, on the other hand, when at university started her assignments the day she got them and finished with weeks to spare. She was energized by getting things off her to do list as soon as possible. I needed the external pressure whereas she was driven more intrinsically.

Try this activity to sharpen up on your SPIKEs.

Below you will find five questions to reflect on regarding your SPIKEs.

1. What activity or skill do you do well AND love doing? STRENGTHS
2. What do you most value in life? What would make you most upset if taken away? What do you go out of your way to defend? PASSIONS
3. Which of your actions or behaviours are often misinterpreted or misunderstood by others? IDIOSYNCRASIES
4. What thoughts, experiences or situations most drain you and make you feel weak? KRYPTONITE
5. What thoughts, experiences and situations pump you up and bring out your best? ENERGIZERS

Write down just one or two examples of each attribute of SPIKE and pin your responses up somewhere you can see regularly.

After a week or so refine your answers having slept on your first draft a handful of times.

Finally share your answers with people you trust that know you well and will be honest.

Listen to and watch how they respond and refine your responses again.

When ready share your SPIKEs with your team at work and invite them to do the same. I consistently find this process significantly fast tracks team formation, trust and performance.

I wish you a SPIKEy life like Katharine Graham's who said...

To love what you do and feel that it matters how could anything be more fun?

Sounds like a great plan to me!

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Rich Hirst is a leadership, change and high performance psychologist. His insights are based on real world experiences from his work with 10,000+ leaders and over 1,000 CEOs, underpinned by his knowledge as an organisational psychologist and expertise as a change agent supporting organisations for more than 20 years going through major transformation.

For more information please go to www.richhirst.com or contact me via email on [email protected]. Please find below links to my previous monthly posts.

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