Recognize and Remove 10 Blockers affecting Organizational Performance

As the manager of an IT Engineering team and a leadership coach, it is my responsibility to unlock the potential in people to maximize their performance.? Over the past five years, my focus has been on performance coaching and the career growth of my team. While not exhaustive, I feel confident that I have identified at least 10 major performance blockers that, if left in place, will limit a team's performance.??

My strategy for increasing organizational performance is “Don’t push on the reinforcing (growth) process, instead remove (or weaken) the source of the limitation.” ?This is better known in Systems Thinking as the Limits to Growth archetype in Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline.

Stop constructing new productivity and engagement processes, and start figuring out how to remove the behaviors holding your team back from growth and development (Performance Blockers!)

The description for each of the 10 performance blockers in this article uses observable behaviors.? These are things that people can spot and describe using everyday language.

Description of Blockers:

1. Lack of - Active Listening
2. Lack of - Psychological Safety
3. Lack of - Conflict Management
4. Lack of - Acknowledgement of Confirmation Bias
5. Lack of - Shared Vision
6. Lack of - Positive Reinforcement
7. Lack of - True Authenticity
8. Lack of - Support Network
9. Lack of - Ability to Practice What We Learn
10. Lack of - Feedback Rich Environment

People always watch the leader. Start by observing which of your behaviors are present in the blockers.? Address Active Listening, Psychological Safety, and Conflict Management behaviors first.? Weaken these three blockers before moving on to the rest of the list.

Observe team behavior using the criteria in each of the blockers.? Which blockers are present?? Are some blockers more prevalent than others?? Use small doses of feedback and coaching to address behaviors.

Lack of - Active Listening

Active Listening occurs when people are engaged in a conversation, and their all-encompassing focus is on the other person and what they have to say. People are listening with the intent to make the other person feel heard.

Observable Behaviors when Active Listening is not present:

• People interrupt each other to turn the conversation back to themselves.
• People exhibit unwelcoming body language and don't ask questions.
• People hurry the speaker along and can't wait for their turn to speak.
• People are thinking about something else entirely.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Make it your only priority to be present in the moment and not distracted by formulating a response.? You need to want to hear what the other person is saying.

• When you authentically listen, your body language conveys that you want to hear the other person's perspective. Body language is a significant indicator of interest or disinterest. Ask curious questions about what they are communicating to you, and do not stop until you make them feel heard. Validate their emotions and create a safe space for honest dialogue to begin.

Lack of - Psychological Safety

In 1999, Amy Edmondson from Harvard University published a groundbreaking paper called “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams''.? Dr. Edmondson introduced team psychological safety and the reason it is essential in a VUCA environment of today’s business.

She defines psychological safety as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”

Every day, people face the potential to share information. They might share project information, discuss project errors, or ask for help. But people will not engage in sharing information if they feel threatened or insecure. Growth and development do not occur in a silo - a person must feel safe and unjudged in their environment to give/receive feedback and ask questions.

Observable Behaviors when Psychological Safety is not present:

• People do not feel safe disagreeing and challenging one another. There are few disagreements or differing points of view.
• Team members and leaders do not tolerate mistakes. People don’t feel comfortable owning up to errors, or they place blame on others.
• Only one person or small group contributes to the conversation, and people don’t ask many questions during meetings.
• People don’t ask one another for help when they need it.
• Feedback is not given or requested.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Demonstrate daily that the team environment is indeed safe to experiment and grow.? If the leader's behavior is supportive, coaching-oriented, and includes non-defensive responses to questions and challenges, people will likely conclude that their team constitutes a safe environment.?

• Give everyone an equal turn when speaking during meetings.? Giving selected people more positive responses or more leeway to interrupt others can discourage others in the room from participating.? Lorne Michaels, the Saturday Night Live Creator and Producer, is famous for creating a psychologically safe space for his writers to talk and engage in healthy conflict.
• Stop the blame game. We teach people to fear failure, so many people naturally lean on excuses or deny ownership of a mistake. Instead, provide a safe forum to talk about what went wrong. Promote a culture of “we all make mistakes” and that mistakes are positive learning opportunities.

Lack of - Conflict Management Skills

Conflict Management is a commitment to dialogue, not discussion. Discussion is about presenting and defending different points of view until a winner emerges. The purpose of a dialogue is to go beyond one individual’s understanding.? Peter Senge says, “We are not trying to win in a dialogue, we all win if we are doing it right.”? In dialogue, people explore complex, challenging issues from many points of view.

Observable Behaviors when Conflict Management is not present:

• Fight or flight behavior becomes prominent. Behavior often becomes authoritarian or defensive.? Negative conversations trigger the release of stress hormones: cortisol, norepinephrine, and testosterone, resulting in the need for people to protect themselves.
• People have difficulty self-managing their emotions.
• People will avoid directly confronting the issue at hand.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Start having conversations that add value through appreciative questions and dialogue. Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres present a framework for practice and provide excellent examples in their book Conversations Worth Having.

Two simple practices will let you turn any discussion into a conversation worth having (aka Dialogue).

• Use positive framing to create a mindset shift to a problem-free future state. Set an outcomes-focused intention for your conversation with an appreciative tone and positive direction.
• Adopt an attitude of curiosity about the conversation and ask generative questions. When we are genuinely curious, we naturally ask generative questions. Stimulate creativity and innovation by asking, “What might be possible if we . . . ....” A generative question can shift everyone’s mindset and potential.

Lack of - Acknowledgement of Confirmation Bias

Wikipedia defines Confirmation Bias as the “tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that affirms one's prior beliefs or hypotheses.”? Confirmation bias can become engaged when a reason to change behavior presents itself. People need to process information quickly to protect themselves from harm, and as a result, they can become even more entrenched in their current viewpoint.? It challenges our relative view of how our world is supposed to operate.

Observable Behaviors when Acknowledgement of Confirmation Bias is not present:

• People are not open to receiving feedback

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Acknowledge that confirmation bias exists. Once people know why it happens, we can look at coaching conversations to address it.

• Avoid authoritarianism. Discuss what people learn about themselves when they create awareness through feedback and self-discovery.

Lack of - Shared Vision

At its most superficial level, a shared vision is an answer to the question, “Why does our organization exist?”? All team members will have a shared vision when they have a similar picture of the team's purpose, not just each of them individually.? Simon Sinek might refer to the shared vision as your team's “just cause.”

Observable Behaviors when Shared Vision is not present:

• People might work hard, but their efforts do not translate to team performance.??
• People do not understand the direction of the organization.? Management will intervene and make decisions for the organization.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Get your team talking!? They need to define the shared vision in their minds. Shared visions spread through a reinforcing process of increasing clarity, enthusiasm, communication, and commitment.? As people talk, the shared vision gets more transparent. Facilitate a team workshop to define a shared vision. The idea is to create a dialogue among team members - leverage psychological safety and ensure all voices are active and heard.? The value here is the conversation between team members.

• Define your Purpose
• Why does this service/team exist in the organization (What is the just cause)?
• What does this service/team do?
• How does the service/team perform the work?

Lack of - Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement focuses less on what people are doing wrong and more on what they are doing right.? It is the process of rewarding or incentivizing the desired behavior to increase the likelihood that the behavior will occur again.

And people like positive reinforcement. It feels good!? Positive reinforcement affirms with the person that their behavior is something we want to see again.

Observable Behaviors when Positive Reinforcement is not present:

• People indicate that their efforts are not being recognized or acknowledged.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Accentuate the positive using Ken Blanchard’s approach from his book Whale Done!

• The Whale Done Response
• Praise people immediately and in a way they would like to receive it (i.e., public or private)
• Be specific about what they did right or almost right.
• Share your positive feelings about what they did.
• Encourage them to keep up the excellent work.

Lack of - True Authenticity

Genuine authenticity means that you live according to the values and beliefs you hold dear and that the personal goals you pursue emerge from these.

Key Observable Behaviors when True Authenticity is not present:

• People pretend to be something they are not to have someone else view them in a more positive light.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker:

Live your life according to your values and goals, rather than those of other people or a perception of what they should be.

• If you are a leader seeking to help people grow and develop to maximize their organizational potential, then actually help people. Listen to what their development needs are and offer to help.

Lack of - Support Network

A good network can provide professional growth.? Exchanging information, advice, and support is a crucial benefit of networking because it allows you to gain new insights. Discussing common challenges and opportunities opens the door to valuable suggestions and guidance.

A good support network will function as an innovation enabler. ? In his book Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg states, “Most original ideas grow out of old concepts, and the building blocks of new ideas are often embodied in existing knowledge.”? People connected across a support network are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving and can see something new when looking at an idea from someone else's point of view.

Key Observable Behaviors when a Support Network is not present:

• People do not know whom to turn to for access to information when solving a challenging problem.
• People cannot test problem theories.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker

Networking is an essential skill for career development and success.

• Help people build a support network that includes anyone who can help them grow professionally by exchanging information and advice.? The network should be a sounding board for support on challenges, experiences, and career goals.

Lack of - Ability to Practice What We Learn

A feedback-rich environment will provide people with opportunities to experience situations in which they can try out (practice) new behaviors and receive the feedback/support they need to continue to learn and develop.

When we learn something new, it means being clumsy at it initially, making mistakes, course-correcting, and trying again. It’s uncomfortable. And even when we know the skill is valuable, it often makes our work more difficult at first, causing many people to stop trying new things and stay with safer, more familiar skills.

For someone to grow beyond their expectations, they must go through a period of being uncomfortable.? Those life lessons stick with you forever.

Key Observable Behaviors when Ability to Practice is not present:

• People stop trying new things and revert to old habits.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker

Committing to practice is essential to maximize the impact of feedback and training. After all, practice is the only way to become proficient in a new skill or behavior.

• Leveraging the skills of a coach is very beneficial.? A good coach will help you create a practice plan, offer feedback, and help you stay accountable to your goals.

Lack of - Feedback Rich Environment

Feedback and Self-Awareness are the cornerstones of a learning culture.

Key Observable Behaviors when a Feedback Rich Environment is not present:

• People feel judged when provided with transparent and regular feedback.?
• People assume that everything they do is okay because no one has said anything.
• People who get very little and improper feedback from their leaders are likely to have low engagement, resulting in low productivity.
• People have to guess what matters in their organization.? If leaders do not regularly give and receive feedback, people are left to ‘figure it out’ on their own.

How to Remove or Weaken the Blocker

A very effective technique to develop and maintain performance is to build awareness through frequent practice of soliciting and providing feedback.? People can only respond to things they are aware of…if someone is unaware of something, they can not respond.

When soliciting and providing feedback

• Focus the feedback on a specific behavior, not the person. Never the person.
• Utilize one or more of the 4 question feedback formats:
• What’s working well that I need to keep doing?
• What’s working okay, but I may need to do something differently?
• What do I need to start doing that would be beneficial?
• What do I need to stop doing because it isn’t adding value?
• Never send or request feedback over email or a text-based system.? Feedback should be in person, or virtual with both parties' cameras turned on. Text-based responses are time and content inefficient for providers and result in low-value feedback.
• Soliciting feedback is a behavior that has to be modeled from the top down. Leaders should be an example by asking their team members for feedback regularly.

Conclusion

Remove the performance blockers holding your team back from natural growth and development.? Build the capacity of your direct reports to solve more problems and improve performance on their own.

Stop viewing employee growth and development as a “cause and effect” relationship and look at it from systems thinking perspective.? Incorporate growth and development into the daily process, not as a separate item in the system.