Leadership Learnings #1 - Performance

Leadership Learnings #1 - Performance.

How can you and I become a better leader??

How do we improve the performance of our organisations and what are the key leadership insights we can learn from some of Ireland’s incredibly talented leaders??

I’m on a journey of exploring and unpacking a series of leadership topics, filming the conversations, with the aim of learning some new top leadership insights that can hopefully help equip and encourage you and I to become better leaders this year.

Up first I had the privilege of meeting with Mark Tumilty, Hockey Ireland’s Men’s Head Coach.?We chatted around the area of High Performance, and here are my Top 3 leadership leanings and insights from the interview:-?

Create the right Environment

Mark was straight out the blocks to share how important it is to create the right environment for people to perform at the highest level.?He explained how this was a process and combination of having the right people, planning out what happens each time you meet, putting the right structures in place to develop and support your team.?Make the environment appealing and convenient to nurture and support the team, with Mark explaining how important it is to have good people relationships within the team (or business).

This strikes me as such as positive, uplifting approach to consider for any organisation.?Yes, there is an expectation of high performance, but to get the very highest level Mark is indicating that we need to really back our staff and put as many of these key things in place; create the right environment.?Definitely food for thought.

High performance takes time

Mark made it clear that overnight success in performance often doesn’t last or can’t be sustained.?Instead, to see meaningful high performance it can take 1, 2 or even 3-4 years to really build the team; then it moves onto converting the team to achieving the big wins.

I found this highly interesting and to be fair I can see how this works within a sports environment that may see waves or cycles of players developing for a team.?Does this stack up for a business that wants quick wins, growing sales, increased market share??I guess there’s some sharp challenge to work through on this as it’s the long-term growth and sustained performance we really want to see in our organisations, right??

Continue to learn, study and develop to see increased performance

As I chatted to Mark it became obvious that he wants to continue to learn and improve on a personal and professional basis.?He listens to podcasts, read books, watches other sports to learn and glean from a wide field of experts and organisations.?He takes time to speak to other leaders and learn from them.?I find this approach so refreshing.?How many times over the years have I overlooked the performance of other organisations, or people because they aren’t in my field of industry??How many times have I stopped short of reaching out to someone for advice because I maybe don’t know them too well (or not at all), or don’t want to appear like I haven’t got everything figured out!!?Taking time to learn and improve appears to be such a key.

A final thought…

As we closed the interview Mark shared very openly and honestly about how he tries to get the right balance with his family time, job, exercise and other commitments.?He was very clear that he’s still wanting to improve at this but his honesty around this was massive.?He said how he’s had to recognise that the balance has to be right, it can’t all be work, work, work.?I really admire Mark’s openness on this topic as it’s something I feel the tension of many times myself, but I too am seeing how important it is to protect family time, exercise and have some healthy boundaries around workload and other commitments.

I want to extend a huge thanks to Mark for sharing his wisdom and leadership insights.?You can watch the express edit interview clip (2 minutes) here:-?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo-GbTpiS-s or the full 20 minutes conversation here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCL41xN5xw0&t=849s .

Friends, I really hope this is helpful.?As someone who is passionate about seeing a healthy and thriving marketplace, where business leaders can connect, encourage, and learn from one another, my heart for this leadership mini-series is that it will help you and I become a better leader.

Take care, keep going and have a fantastic day. Best wishes, Neil.