Personally, I love listening to performance and development podcasts to better understand what got people to achieve their level of high performance and what it means for them. In this article, I will briefly touch up a few of interesting take-aways that I got from listening & reading to plenty of them.
In order to achieve high performance, it is important to understand what high performance is. High performance is not a destination but a continual journey that leads you to new levels of understanding and achievement. It is a process of striving to be your best and reaching new levels of excellence. High performance can be achieved in any area of your life that you are passionate about and committed to. When you are operating at a high level of performance, you are fully engaged and focused on what you are doing. You are using your skills and abilities to the fullest and are constantly learning and growing. So what are typical things that get us there? Here are a two factors (amongst many others) that play a key role:
Failing upwards - the art of turning your failures into successes
How to fail upward: the art of turning your failures into successes. We all know the saying, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." But what about when you've tried again and again, and you're just not getting anywhere? It might be time to try something new: "failing upward." Failing upward is the art of taking your failures and using them as a springboard to success. It's about learning from your mistakes and using that knowledge to make better choices in the future. One of the best ways to fail upward is to embrace your failures. Instead of hiding from them or trying to forget them, take a close look at what went wrong and what you can do differently next time. Failing upward is not about being perfect; it's about being resilient and persistent.
Being resilient and persistent and learning how to overcome these and learning from them is a skill a lot of senior managers and executive have to learn later in their career. A lot of organisations haven't developed the culture that creates the safe environment to enable it. The concept known as double-loop learning (Argyris, 1991), requires people to reflect of how they think, it is a critical evaluation of the rules of reason applied by design and their implementations. Successful managers & executives have generally been quite successful and limitedly exposed to failure. As a result, they have not developed the skills and confidence to do and likely have also not create an organisational culture that makes their team feel safe to do so. Some example: most business have feedback loop, project and performance feedback or analysis, but how honest are these reflections? Are people worried the implications of identifying flaws about own behaviour, decisions, actions? What is done with the outcome? Are repercussions linked to findings of these analysis?
Do not get me wrong there is a big need for single-loop learning, problem solving and optimisation. In fact, this is essential.... But how do you are manager, leader or executive ensure there is a sufficiently safe space within your team/company culture to enable effective double-learning?
Shift Your Focus from Outcome to Purpose/Intent
As business leaders, it's easy to get caught up in the outcomes we want to achieve. We set quarterly and annual goals, and we strive to hit those targets. But what happens when we don't reach our goals? We often beat ourselves up, lose confidence, and get stuck in a negative mindset. One of the best ways to avoid this is to shift your focus from outcome to purpose-focused. A purpose-focused culture can bring many benefits. It can help you to set goals and achieve them. Having a clear purpose can give you a sense of direction and motivation. It can also help you to stay focused and on track. A purpose-focused helps overcome failures easier (and fail upward) it can also help you to feel more fulfilled. When you are working towards something that is important to you, it can give you a sense of satisfaction and meaning. Lastly, a purpose-focused cultural that everyone buys into will create a more engaged and happier team. Studies have shown that people who have a sense of purpose in their lives/work are more likely to be happy and satisfied with their lives.
We all need deliver desirable outcomes, and being focused on the intent does not mean ignoring or disregarding the outcome. Sensible business decisions and cases are still required, not everything is right because it serves our purpose. However, the opposite is true: if it does not serve our purpose it should not be pursuit.
So in conclusion, high performance will mean something slightly different for everyone, as will their personal interpretation of a business' purpose and how that aligns with their personal intent. An inspiring purpose, the trust and bravery of leaders to focus on it, to create an enabling environment (safe, open, reflective, etc) will create engaged & focused employees striving to learn and use their skills and abilities to their fullest potential.
Easier said than done, but very inspiring when realising it. I am looking forward to hearing about your journey towards high performance.
Reference: - Argyris, C. (1991, May/June). Teaching Smart People How to Learn. Harvard Business Review, 99-109.
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