The Power Performance in Your People

The business and professional climates in which we work remain increasingly competitive. Each day competitive markets grow as technology spans the vast array of global industries. These rapidly changing environments are causing ambiguities and confusion about the roles and responsibilities of leaders. In this increasingly competitive environment how do we guide the performance of our teams – specifically productivity, innovation, initiative, teamwork, problem solving, and adapting to constant change? What is your strategy to combat the threats to your individual performance and the performance of your teams? As you continually assess your market threats and you continually receive pressure from your leaders and your boards to excel, where will you find the solutions needed to assure you attain the outcomes you desire?

With our associates — The Frisina Group and The Center for Influential Leadership — we are constantly researching and advocating for these solutions, and we have identified the key element to building success in your organization beyond your profound impact as an influential leader – it is the power in your people.

The Performance Power of Your Presence
Never doubt the impact on performance marked by your presence as a leader. You are without a doubt ridiculously in charge of the destiny of your organization. Without question there is immense pressure on you as a leader today, and we recognize the personal impact this pressure has on your own behaviour capacity. We have mentioned the impact of market changes, but we also need to address the issue of shifting time periods. Twenty to fifteen years ago the workday had a finite amount of time. Today because of “technology connectivity” your connection to your job rarely ceases. The only time you cannot be reached to manage workplace issues are when you are inhibited from using your phone.

Consequently you are always available for work and work is always available to you. To achieve peak performance in an economically and time constrained environment requires hiring knowledge based workers. This term, traditionally reserved for information technology personnel, architects, coders, and researchers has now come to mean all employees, including front-line staff. Every employee must become an Influential Leader. Influential leaders do not identify with a particular title, nor do they have a designated rank in an organization. Influential leaders are people who take every opportunity – every connection with a coworker, every connection with a client, every connection with the community—to make a positive and meaningful difference. Some people are naturals, but for most of us, leading thru influence – making a positive and meaningful difference — is a learned skill. Three identifiable attributes of an Influential Leader, are:

1. Creativity. These people can come up with new ideas and know how to harness new platforms of technology in your industry. Your market is changing constantly. Rigid, inflexible, and an unimaginative workforce will not be able to bring forth innovation and new collaborative efforts to propel you and your organization in the hyper speed transitions
required to cope with constant change.

2. Adaptability. These people can adapt to change. Being rigid and inflexible to new ideas that will transform your organization is not going to propel you to the levels of performance you desire. You want people who can adapt to rapid change that is happening all around us. People that are not only comfortable with change but thrive in it.

3. Flexibility. These people exhibit this behaviour strength and know how to work well with others, they are team players who thrive on high performance teams and are effective collaborators. Change is comfortable for these people because they can flex from personal desires and interests to new organizational objectives to achieve the desired end state.

The Performance Power of Your People
In today’s workforce the talent pool of technically competent people fluctuates. While everyone competes to hire people with strong technical skills, performance is a function of both technical skill and behaviour capacity. The increasing stress of the pace of change has a direct effect on behaviour capacity that impacts the effectiveness of technical skill to drive performance. Behaviour capacity is the leverage that drives technical skill performance because behaviour capacity is directly linked to how the brains of people actually function. If peak performance is your end state and transformational change is essential to achieve it, then you need to recruit and develop people with both technical and behaviour capacity skill sets.

Harnessing people power, both individually and at a corporate level, begins with the skill of Positive Presence™.  Positive Presence is a new and deliberate way of thinking and behaving that makes the connection between human energy and behaviour and is easily practiced and developed right on the job. For many, it is just a lot of common sense, but for others it is a slow and gentle process that requires the help of both team mates and leaders.