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Leadership
Added by Craig Steel
High performance leadership

I am convinced organisational success is largely a consequence of leadership.

Woman smiling

Having specialised in performance for over 20 years, I am convinced organisational success is largely a consequence of leadership. However, despite a growing body of evidence to support this premise, too few managers are choosing to see the commercial outcomes their company achieves as a result of them but instead, put it down to market conditions.

While there is no doubt the market has been tough, it is important managers take the time to examine their performance in order to identify what they need to do to engineer a change rather than waiting for things to come right to see them through.

If you believe it is time to make a shift, the approach I have mapped out below might be a useful way to position a legitimate conversation to not only explore how the company can advance but remind your managers of the fact that one of their key responsibilities as a leader is to help the business deliver better outcomes.

To facilitate this discussion, I recommend you ask your leadership team the following questions;

 

1. What is performance?

The purpose of this question is to help you clarify what high-level performance in your organisation would look like and once understood, agree on how you can get from where you are to where you want to be. While we are well aware of the need to strategise, it is infinitely easier for people to commit to a performance improvement programme when they know what an optimal outcome in their industry might be like.

 

2. What are the characteristics of a high performing leadership team?

Although every organisation worth its salt has a degree of talent on its books, knowing what a high-performing leadership team looks like isn’t necessarily clear. For this reason, I believe it is imperative leadership teams take the time to consider what the company needs from them in order to formulate a blueprint as to how they need to operate to honour their stated purpose (as the principal leaders of the business). Although this sounds easy, it requires managers to think very carefully about how they would need to act and behave in order to deliver the outcomes they are after, not assume they can remain the same but operate at a different level. In other words, clarifying the specific attributes or characteristics you believe your leadership team needs to demonstrate and/or embody to execute your strategy is vital, even though it is an exercise most would prefer to ignore.

 

3. What do high-performing leadership teams do differently?

High-performing companies are typically led by high-performing leaders. However, what they do and how they do it isn’t necessarily something we examine; what we tend to do is look at the strategies they deploy and/or the outcomes they produce and assume we could do something similar. However, in my opinion, high-performing leadership teams do very different things than their peers and it is precisely because of this that their organisations deliver superior outcomes and value to their stakeholders.

 

By taking the time to consider what the leadership teams in the very best performing organisations in your industry do, you will be able to zero in on a different set of activities that might enable you to realise the step-change in performance you are looking for.

 

 

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