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Obtaining Peak Performance

Guest post by: Douglas Long

Article Overview: First Generation Leaders and Second Generation Leaders have a strong need to be in control. They see their role as that of making and implementing decisions. These men and women show conditional respect – in other words, obtain the results I need in the way that specify, and I will respect you – and they tend to have a low level of belief in the ability of people to manage themselves and to obtain desired results unless they are closely supervised. The result is that, far too often, managers interfere and actually hinder peak performance because of this need to control.

Obtaining Peak Performance

We hear a lot about athletes and the effort they put in so that they can constantly improve their ‘personal best”. We watch them as they put everything they have into providing a winning performance for themselves and for their team. And for many years sport in its various forms has been used as a metaphor for what is required in organisations. Yet while sports people and sports teams regularly obtain peak performance, the situation in the non sporting world tends to be quite different.

Why?

I suggest the reasons are really quite simple – even if they’re not necessarily what managers and leaders want to hear.

First, high performing athletes are there because they want to be there.

It takes a high level of commitment to be a high performing athlete. Obviously you need the appropriate knowledge and skills in order to perform, but top athletes and teams have something extra. They have total commitment. You need commitment to your chosen sport. You need commitment to your personal ambition and goals. You need commitment to your coach and team. And everyone involved does his or her best to help the athlete maintain this level of total commitment because everyone else around that athlete or team is also fully committed.

Mediocrity breeds mediocrity. Athletes and teams that lack this high level of commitment remain second rate players.

In the non sporting arena we talk about commitment. We advocate commitment. We punish those we accuse of ‘not being committed’. Yet so often those who are loudest advocates of commitment are themselves mediocre time servers who have ‘lost the plot’.

Recently I encountered this situation in the service department of a car dealership. This dealership has a wide range of brands from ‘prestige’ (read ‘very expensive’) through to more reasonably priced brands such as Toyota, General Motors, or Ford. While I was waiting for attention to my definitely ‘non prestige’ vehicle (the service departments adjoin) the Service Manager of one of the prestige brands could be heard telling his technicians that the particular brand he was working for was “crap”. I later discovered that this particular Service Manager was relatively new to this post and that he had come from a technical position with a more mundane brand.

You cannot expect or get commitment unless management at all levels are also totally committed. I won’t be going back to that service centre – I want the people who work on my car to be committed to their work and their brand.

Second, high performing athletes operate in an environment that is conducive to high performance. High performing athletes and teams operate in an environment in which there is a balance between all areas of life. Sporting coaches and managers know that unless there is an appropriate balance in the life of the sportspeople, then they will ‘burn out’ and crash from the heights they either have achieved or could achieve. The emphasis is on achieving goals within a normal ‘working’ timeframe – it’s ‘what you put into the hours’ that is important: not what hours you put in.

Recently the Australian Institute released results of a survey looking at working hours in Australia. What they found was that, although our normal working week is nominally about 37½ hours, the more normal working week is closer to 50 or 60 hours and many employees feel pressured to be available by phone or internet on an almost 24/7 basis. The survey also found that most of these additional hours are worked without any compensating remuneration or time in lieu. Understandably employees were saying they wanted a shorter working week – they want to get back to around 40 hours per week so that they can get some balance in their lives.

When people are required to work long hours for little or no reward, over a protracted period, then, no matter how much that person might want to provide peak performance, the simple fact is that performance drops off. Tired people produce errors. When a person feels under any form of threat or external pressure, he or she works to avoid punishment rather than to give their best. It’s not that they don’t want to perform – it’s simply that their mental state gradually and inevitably moves to a point where they are unable to perform.

There can be a fine line between reward and punishment. In fact, reward and punishment are needs related. Initially it may be rewarding to be singled out for special work or to be the “go to” person, but when that becomes a habit and others get far less work to do or are under far less pressure, then the same tasks become seen as punitive.

Unless people are fully engaged with their work, they cannot remain committed and they cannot provide peak performance.

Third, at the critical stage, athletes are left to get on and to do what they are supposed to do.

In the sporting arena, once people are on the field and the game or race has started, it’s up to them. In basketball you can call ‘time out’ and do some coaching if necessary. In Australian Rules football you can send ‘runners’ on to the field to give instructions during the game. But in most sports and certainly in virtually all track and field events, the coach can do very little if anything until the race is over or there is a scheduled break. High performing sports people know that, in the end, its up to them. They are personally responsible for the quality and quantity of their performance.

First Generation Leaders and Second Generation Leaders have a strong need to be in control. They see their role as that of making and implementing decisions. These men and women show conditional respect – in other words, obtain the results I need in the way that specify, and I will respect you – and they tend to have a low level of belief in the ability of people to manage themselves and to obtain desired results unless they are closely supervised. The result is that, far too often, managers interfere and actually hinder peak performance because of this need to control.

If we are serious about obtaining peak performance, we need to be serious about a new approach to leadership – Third Generation Leadership.

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Article Tags: commitment, employee engagagement, peak performance, performance, third generation leadership



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