What performance really looks like at the top

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This week is the fourth instalment of our five-part series on strategic leadership, based on the modules in You Don't Need An MBA: Leadership Lessons that Cut Through the Crap.

Do you find yourself guiltily logging in, checking emails and chasing things up when you’re supposed to be off the clock?

Do you feel like you’re the only one who can’t get on top of this stuff? What is everyone else doing that makes it look so easy??

Here’s the truth: everyone is overwhelmed. Everyone is managing details they feel should be out of their remit. Everyone is struggling to know where to start.?

Like most invisible issues, we’re making the problem worse by not acknowledging it. When we feel like everyone else has their act together, and we’re the only ones who can’t keep up, we don’t talk about it – forgoing the opportunity to do better.?

Most of us learn what it means to be a high performer fairly early in our career. We know that if we work the hardest, have the best ideas, produce the best quality and care the most, we will succeed.

And for the first decade or so, this is entirely correct. When we're new, or first stepping into more senior roles, an insistence on quality, accuracy and pace will be a huge factor in our success.

Unfortunately, nobody ever tells us when it's time to shift gears - which, for most professionals, is as they mature into a management role and start to look further up the chain.

Not everyone will get here. Some people are perfectly happy with their job, a few direct reports and a clear area of responsibility. That's cool.

But for many, after some time in the middle, the itching begins. Now that you have more exposure to the big picture and you can see how things are being done around here... you want to change them. You start seeing how things fit together and can spot an inefficiency or broken relationship a mile away. You watch strategic change and restructures with mild frustration, as you think about all the stuff you would have done differently.

This is a murky space between middle and senior leadership that's a bit like leadership adolescence. You're not totally there yet, but many parts of you are. You might have the motivation, but not the mandate. The bandwidth, but not the budget. The innovation, but not the relationships. The responsibilities, but not the job title.

Welcome to the rip.

The rip is the not-quite-there dotted line between management and senior leadership. The point at which you've matured, but your job title and your skillset haven't caught up. The point at which you're still hanging on to operational excellence and hard work, while moving into a space that asks you to be more comfortable with ambiguity, and more focused on strategy, space and relationships.

Traversing the rip is not for the faint-hearted. Only those who are willing to let go of the skills they so carefully cultivated in the early days make it through. The rest are left perpetually annoyed, heading for burnout and totally baffled as to why they're finding it so hard.

Getting through the rip

Leadership transition is not dissimilar to fighting a rip in the ocean: you have to let go. The harder you fight, the more energy you will exert, and the more likely you are to be sucked under. Instead, you get your way through by calming down your panic, slowing down your pace, and channeling your energy carefully.

It's at this stage in our journey when performance no longer comes from pushing?uphill, and instead we start looking for ways to make things roll?downhill. We let go of all the old stories we accumulated in the early days, get comfortable with letting others do things we do well, and create the breathing space to step into a new kind of value and potential.

This is where you look at where to delegate, what to delete and what tasks only require you to do the minimum. Where you get clear on your priorities so that you put the most important work first, and let the rest go. Where you recognise the limitations of your technical and operational expertise and seek to surround yourself with experts smarter than you, so you can get on with changing the world - or at least, your team or organisation.

Warning: you might get sick

You might have heard of the ketogenic diet. The basic idea is to remove most carbohydrates from your diet, forcing your body to switch it's main fuel source to fat. Many people who try the keto diet for the first time get 'keto flu' as their body goes into shock and makes the transition.

Leadership transition is the same. As you make the switch from a steady diet of stress, adrenaline, cortisol and long hours and start to fuel yourself from space, creativity and connection, you might lose motivation, battle depression or even get physically sick. It's a bit like when you go on holiday after a stressful year and immediately come down with a cold - your body and mind need the chance to adjust, and you've just removed all your usual coping mechanisms.

This isn't a reason to stop though. The truth is: the most successful senior leaders and CEOs aren't busy... they're focused. They’re scrupulous about how they allocate their time, attention, and investment. They intimately understand their value and what drives performance in their teams. Connected to results that matter, they strike the right balance between support and accountability for those responsible for making things happen.?

Signs you need to tune into performance:

• You’re not getting shit done.?
• Your team makes stupid mistakes.?
• You feel unfocused and hurried.?
• You’re busier than ever, but not making meaningful progress.?

How to survive the shift

As we track up the ladder, our time horizon shifts, our distance from others can grow, and our tolerance for bullsh*t starts to drop off. We think longer term, play a longer game and often can't be bothered by the minutiae that used to chew up our days and time. It won't always win you friends, as people cling to their old ideas of you and themselves - but it's not your responsibility to stay stuck so that other people feel better.

It's not all bad news, though! Our potential for impact starts to skyrocket once we get over the line. As soon as we make peace with the idea that our value no longer lies in how much we get done, or how fast we do it, and feel confident that we're not going to find ourselves out of a job anymore, we can change the way we think and ask questions.

As you work your way through the rip-tide, the question isn't "Will I be able to achieve what I want?" but "How would I like to achieve what I want?" Now that you know you can get there, you can start thinking about whether you want to, and what you want it to look like?

Many of the questions we ask need to flip on their heads. A good way to demonstrate this is the old SWOT model.

SWOT Paralysis

You're probably quite familiar with the idea of a SWOT analysis - identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The idea with the basic model is to...

• Maximise our strengths
• Minimise our weaknesses
• Cultivate opportunities
• Banish threats.

When it comes to your personal leadership journey, this model becomes fraught with difficulty. As you enter the rip tide of transition, you become vulnerable to SWOT?paralysis.?When that happens, your strengths have the potential to become your weaknesses, and your opportunities can become your biggest threats.

When you're facing an environment that has a proliferation of possibility, it's time to stop pushing, stop pulling... and pause. This is your opportunity to develop the skills that will sustainably carry you toward your goals, without getting sucked into a vortex of obligation, FOMO and burnout.

The key is to build two key things:?flexibility?and?focus. With those two attributes, we get something we've been wanting the whole time...?freedom.

Flexibility

Flexibility asks us to be aware of what our strengths overused will look like, and be prepared to move on and let go.?It also asks us to consider whether our perceived weaknesses might actually be where our value lies and explore our unique perspective and contribution to the world.

Flexibility asks us to take our 'response-ability' and shift and change with our context, accepting that the person who came into this journey is not the same person who's moving forward. When we have a flexible understanding of our own identity and how the world works, we don't get stuck trying to apply old habits to new situations.

Focus

Once we make the switch above the line, it's time for us to start defaulting to no. Rather than taking every opportunity and exploring every avenue, it's time for us to get clear on what our zone of genius looks like, and become ruthless about filtering out activities and possibilities that don't fit the mould.

Every 'yes' leads to an inevitable 'no' - opportunity cost 101 - and if we don't practice setting boundaries around our lives and work, we'll fall short of our highest point of contribution. This is the time to get extremely clear about what the best use of your energy is - what lights you up, where you can make the most impact and what you most want to spend your time doing.

You need to raise the bar, for what will make the cut when it comes to your precious and limited time, energy and bandwidth.

Freedom

When we wield those two tools well, we, somewhat paradoxically, open the door for more freedom in our lives. After a career, (and for some of us, a life!) of pushing hard to be seen, do more, get more and prove a point, it's time to swap productivity for presence and speed for space.

The freedom that comes from doing what we most enjoy, in the way we most enjoy it, is a product of our ability to be flexible and focused in all the right places.

Do that, and performance will take care of itself.

A few important notes:

1. You do not need to 'earn' a rest. Rest is your responsibility as a leader, so that you can bring your best.
2. Thinking is work. At your level, it's literally what you're paid for. When you cram your schedule too full, you're constraining the space available to do your actual job. Stop operating below your paygrade.
3. You need better stories now. The stories that made this step possible have served their purpose. It's time for new ones.

For more on the five key skills of a strategic leader, check out the rest of the series. Even better, check out the?Alicia McKay Academy , where you can take a FREE?mini-naMBA ?and boost your skills right away!