The High Performance Leadership Summit
Last weekend I spent three days speaking and facilitating at Australia's first High Performance Leadership Summit. Tucked away in the conference room of the beautiful O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat, our team of facilitators was joined by 16 senior executives and business owners (with some flying in from overseas!) who were passionate about enhancing their performance as leaders and lifting the performance of their teams and businesses.??
?Pulling together the expertise and experience of elite sport and performance psychology, as well as corporate and military leadership under pressure, it was a weekend of learning, equipping and inspiring. Presenting alongside me were:?
SHARING THE EXPERIENCE?
I'm still buzzing from the experience, so I thought I'd share with you a selection of the key takeaways from the summit.??
The Power of Process?
John Buchanan describes himself as a process coach. His focus, both as the coach of the Queensland and Australian cricket teams and now working with business leaders in the corporate world, is less on the results to be achieved but on the process to keep achieving.??
John outlined the difference between performing vs performance. Performing is winning a game. It can be sporadic and occurs across a short time-frame. Performance however, is something that occurs over the long-termed. It is sustained success.??
John's coaching philosophy centres around three key elements: an engaging vision, the coach's move towards redundancy, and the necessity of systems. In order to build and sustain high performance, you need systems. A series of processes that are repeatable and reliably produce progress towards results. As the saying goes, under pressure you don't rise to the level of your goals, you sink to the level of your systems.??
One of the mantras John used with the Australian cricket team was, If we play with patience, play in partnership and create pressure, we win games.??
If we approach our work with patience, operate in partnership and enhance alignment (both within our teams and between departments across our organisations), as well as focus on trusting the process we put in place, we position our businesses to not only be high performing and win this quarter, but to sustain high performance and keep winning for years to come.??
Emphasise Engagement?
Wayne shared a powerful story from his time in the pharmaceutical industry. His company introduced a new drug to the market at the same time as their competitor, who was four times the size with greater resources, scale and market share. The drugs the two companies were selling were exactly the same. Their clients knew they were exactly the same. And yet Wayne's team were able to outsell their competitor several times over to become the top performing company in the category.??
How did he achieve this? Through establishing and engaged workforce. His strategy was to firstly remove the actively disengaged members of his workforce. He then simplified and clarified the communication of his strategy, vision and focus. He consolidated these into a single poster that was displayed in every meeting room and office across the Asia-Pacific region. He made sure every single time he spoke to people, he referenced this poster.??
And he made sure his team were having fun.??
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Mentality, Mindset and Mental Skills?
Grace Hamilton shared her experience of just how powerful mentality and mindset are and how crucial mental skills are for high performance. Whether controlling emotions, making decisions under pressure or maintaining focus amidst the increased pace of international competition, the mental skills required for high performance were something she wished she learned much earlier in her career.??
She also shared the following words of wisdom from the coach of New Zealand's Black Ferns, Wayne Smith:?
Women need to feel good to play good.?? Men need to play good to feel good.??
While there are obvious applications for those of us who have daughters, I couldn't help considering the implications for us as leaders. While on one level we need to treat everyone equally and provide the same opportunities and support regardless of gender, great leaders always tailor their leadership to get the most out of the individuals they lead.??
Whether it's a bit more encouragement, a timely challenge or even some hard-to-swallow feedback, are you taking the time to work out what brings out the best performance from each of your people? If you're not differentiating your approach to different individuals, chances are you're not inspiring the highest levels of performance and engagement they are capable of.??
WHAT DIFFERENCE WOULD IT MAKE??
My question to you is what difference would a 5% increase in performance from each of your team make???
To the business? To your team? To you???
As you read through each of the above, which of these points stand out to you???
Which of these three might you focus on???
What's the one thing you could focus on developing to get that 5% increase??
Here's what I know, if you do the work and get the 5%, it won't just be 5%. It will end up being 6 or 7% and it will grow over time. And you'll choose something else and get another 5%. And another.??
Before you know it, you'll be leading in the pack in your world, business and industry.?