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Transcript

Average to Great: the Team Performance Strategy Every Manager Should Use · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The highest performing managers know that doubling team performance or better is more a marathon than a sprint.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Great managers apply a different approach to each performance group or quarter of their team to meet each group's different needs.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Top managers also know that every people strategy they use has to be repeatable over months and years to increase trust, motivation and ownership while also increasing individual and team performance.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Team performance will only increase when you have increasing trust, motivation and ownership levels across the team.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest mistakes managers make is trying to improve performance through pressure.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: This sometimes works in the very short term before it becomes back to bite you hard.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Long term, a pressure strategy just doesn't work.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've transformed the performance of the worst team in a business into one of the best in 6 to 12 months in multiple different businesses, while keeping most of the original team members and I've also won best team prizes at national and company level with different teams.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I nearly always start with the bottom quarter of the team.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't help these team members improve, then your work with the rest of the team will not be nearly as effective.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you help the bottom quarter improve, you also improve team standards, team morale, team trust, work quality, your own credibility, and you keep your top performers for longer.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The result is often a much bigger team performance improvement than just the contribution from the group at the bottom of the team.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: This happens because the better performers no longer need to carry the weaker employees, fewer mistakes get passed between team members, frustration and negative behaviors within their team decrease, everyone's accountability improves, and everyone unconsciously tries to keep their place in the team hierarchy.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: The performance gain usually affects the whole team.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So why too many managers fail to get improvement in their teams?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Having corrective conversations with team members who might be slow, make more mistakes, create disruption, are overly negative, or just those that are behind everyone else is difficult.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: No one likes confrontation or to take actions which might make the situation worse.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you don't have an effective strategy that maintains trust, getting meaningful improvement is many times harder.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Having the first conversations feels too risky and too painful, particularly if the problems are minor.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Managers wait too long.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: They wait until the problems get bigger and more obvious.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Bigger problems create bigger reasons to take action.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Too many managers tolerate missed deadlines, or unclear or poor communication, or low levels of ownership and responsibility, or unhelpful or negative attitudes, or small performance gaps.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And hope these small issues improve naturally without the manager having to do much.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Problems rarely improve on their own.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Performance problems behave like compound interest.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Small issues today become major problems six months later.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: The best managers have a clear strategy that helps them intervene as early as possible while the problem is still small and much easier and quicker to resolve.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new to this podcast, Enhanced.training provides resources, courses, and coaching for you to build management expertise and confidence to lead any team to their best performance.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources and help to transform the performance of your team anchors, those holding your team back, please type in enhance.training backslash 2F2 into your browser.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Most managers use the wrong strategy with a bottom quarter of their team.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Very few managers are taught how to approach the bottom quarter of their team.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Most managers use one of these three ineffective approaches.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, ignore the problem until it gets much bigger and visible.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is painful, costly and damaging for everyone.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, personally rescue the situation.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: This leaves the manager frustrated, angry and exhausted and sends completely the wrong message to the rest of the team.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, punish any problem people with threats, pressure, criticism or loss of their job.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: All these approaches damage team trust, damage motivation and damage psychological safety.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: When these drop, so does team performance.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Any action you take needs to maintain trust and safety as a minimum.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most important elements of your strategy should be fairness.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: A fair strategy is a repeatable strategy.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: To double, triple or more team performance, you need to keep using a repeatable strategy over months and years.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Every team member will be watching your every move, particularly as you try to improve those who might be struggling a bit more or those that cause more friction or disruption in the team.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you give team members a chance, when you give them help to improve, when your actions are fair and reasonable and in the best interests of the team overall, you will build trust, motivation, psychological safety, and loyalty with your team.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you ignore, rescue or punish, you will lose the trust, motivation, loyalty, and confidence of your team.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do too little and you lose credibility and authority.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Be heavy-handed or unfair and you create a fear factor which damages team performance.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your actions have to be a careful balancing act.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So here are the main components of my TAPS strategy that I have always used with the bottom quarter of a team and why they are so important.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, clear expectations.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is impossible to be fair if you don't set clear expectations.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first thing to do in any team.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, always take the earliest action you can.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Problems grow in size over time and spread.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Resolve as many problems as early as possible when they are relatively easy to resolve.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Third, show them the way.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Demonstrate to the team through your actions, decisions, behaviors, and results what you want from the team.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: You have to lead from the front.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, provide support with strings.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is super important to help team members learn how to behave, communicate, work together and deliver good quality work.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Guide and teach.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do their work for them.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Always hold them accountable to expectations and act if they don't work to improve.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hence support with strings.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth, escalating action plan.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Have a clear step-by-step system that increases the incentives and support to improve.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: The system creates predictability, consistency and safety for your team.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can communicate a fair approach in advance to the team, and doing so will build trust.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Use a system that creates improvement as a default.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then sixth, group authority.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Start informal and try to help them.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't work to improve, move into more formal, structured set of actions with the support of your boss.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Involving others increases the consequences and the seriousness of your requests to improve.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: There is a lot that goes into a successful strategy to get consistent improvement from team members without endangering trust or psychological safety.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Many managers underestimate how interdependent all these actions are.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do them all within a sensible framework and you will get improvement.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Try to do them piecemeal, missteps, or don't do them well, and you just get frustrated and have multiple conversations that don't create any meaningful improvement.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: To be able to consistently improve the performance of nearly any team and increase trust, safety and motivation in the process, a great starting point is understanding and using our TAPS strategy.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I go into a lot more detail about each of the core six areas, which will enable you to get better improvements a lot quicker and put less effort in to achieve great results.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Type in enhance.training backslash two F2 into your browser and take a look at our TAPS strategy.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Next, why an improvement strategy builds team trust.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Trust is the critical currency of management.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: With trust, team members willingly follow your lead, push back less, take more responsibility in ownership, work smarter and more.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Trust makes your job as a manager a lot easier and a lot more successful.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Without trust, work happens more slowly.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Team members avoid taking responsibility.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: More time and energy is spent protecting themselves rather than beating goals.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: The team is more resistant, etc.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: A lack of trust directly damages team performance and your ability to manage the team effectively.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, any action you take with anyone in the team must help build trust, not damage it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: For example, high performers lose trust when poor performance or behaviors are tolerated by their manager.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom quarter of the team lose trust if you are heavy-handed, unfair, or don't help them improve.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: People trust managers who are fair, consistent, supportive and honest.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: To build trust while increasing team performance, communicate clearly and consistently what is expected of your team and the reasonable steps that you will take if expectations are not achieved.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Give team members who miss expectations a lot of feedback and guidance so they know how to achieve expectations and where they are against expectations at any point.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: These actions make the process fair and reasonable.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to remove a person from the team, giving them a fair chance to improve first and the help and support to improve means the rest of the team maintains their trust in you despite a team member being removed.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Team members understand that you are giving them a choice.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: They are the ones making the choice.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is really powerful.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: In summary, it is very hard to improve overall team performance without improving the bottom quarter of the team.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: What you tolerate sets the levels of performance, standards, and behavior across the team.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is human nature to gravitate to the lowest acceptable standards in a team.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: To improve team performance, you have to raise the lowest acceptable standards.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: This means improving the bottom quarter of the team.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Without removing these team anchors, you can work very hard to try to improve team performance and not get very far.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: The top performing managers are always focused on the standards the bottom quarter of the team communicates to the rest of the team and act to maintain or improve these standards.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Raising the standards puts subtle pressure on the entire team to increase personal performance.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: No one likes to slip down a group's social or professional hierarchy.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Use this to your advantage to increase team performance and keep on increasing it year after year.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: To be able to consistently improve the performance of nearly any team and increase trust, safety and motivation in the process, a great starting point is understanding and using our taps strategy.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I go into a lot more detail about each of the six core areas, which will enable you to get much better improvements, a lot quicker, and put less effort in to achieve great results.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Type in enhance.training backslash 2F2 into your browser and take a look at our taps strategy.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions on average to great, the team performance strategy every manager should use, please email me at support at enhance.training and I will get back to you.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.