Leadership (7)
Ohne die Leistung der Mitarbeiter gelingt es auch der besten Führungspersönlichkeit nicht, Erfolge zu verzeichnen. Im siebten Teil unserer Serie zum Thema „Führung“führt BOB DIGNEN aus, wie mit dem richtigen Einsatz der Leistungskraft einzelner Mitglieder
Improving team performance
If you ask people to define what makes a great leader, they are likely to list attributes such as being a good listener, being charismatic and decisive, being able to delegate and having good people management skills. Yet ultimately, the hallmark of good leadership is success — getting results, delivering performance. Those who consistently deliver effective performance do not necessarily share a special set of personality traits. What they have in common is technical expertise — they are good at what they do. And they focus on a number of key leadership principles that, when effectively executed, can ensure that results are delivered reliably. In this article, we investigate seven leadership performance principles. We examine the logic of these principles and look at how you can activate them in your own role to achieve greater success.
These seven principles of performance management can serve as anchors in an often stormy and foggy work environment, in which there is not only too much to do but it is also unclear exactly what should be done as a result of competing expectations and priorities. These anchors ensure that the important things do get done — and get done well.
1. Focus on the potential of others
The first principle — and a core assumption behind the seven-principles framework — is that a leader’s own performance matters far less than the performance of their team. At a certain level, it’s simple maths. If you have a leader of a team consisting of 12 people, the leader shouldn’t focus only on their own performance, but should aim to secure the best total performance from the team’s 12 members. This is not to say that leaders should not perform. But the primary focus of a leader should be the performance of others.
Another key point is that performance management begins long before performance begins. In fact, it starts with recruitment. Talented and motivated people tend to perform well. Those who are less talented and less motivated tend to perform less well. If leaders pay insufficient attention to building powerful teams, and fail to surround themselves with those who have the potential to perform highly, they will quickly find themselves in the frustrating position of trying to improve performance from a deficit position. One international leader told me that the projects he had to lead were 50 per cent compromised if the team he was given lacked the necessary skills and commitment.
Leaders therefore need to dedicate time to networking and to finding the next talented performer. And they need to be ready, if necessary, to poach talent either from an internal colleague or an external competitor. And they need to remember that differences and diversity matter. Leaders need people who will challenge them. And research confirms that higher performance is delivered by teams with a blend of talents rather than by groups whose members have similar skills.
A LEADER’S OWN PERFORMANCE MATTERS FAR LESS THAN THAT OF THE TEAM