Building a foundation for high performance in your career
As you take up your first job, move to a new job or get elevated to a higher role in your organization, if you are feeling nervous about how well you will do in the role or if at any time you felt you were doing very well but your manager did not recognize your work, then, you are not alone. Everyone faces this situation at some point in their career.
The question is why do some people seem to do well and others struggle and what can you do to stay above the fold?
Over time, I have had the privilege of setting up and leading teams of highly competent individuals with a good mix of intelligence, experience, work ethics, etc. etc. As I built high performance teams, it did not come as a surprise that some members rose sharply, some floated and some just had to make way for others to step in.
Of course, we have to recognize that each team member’s performance is an end result of many factors — some within their direct control and others not. Their functional skills as well soft skills, immediate manager’s working styles and personalities — all of them play a big part in determining their performance. In my journey, the team members who managed these aspects well, became top performers and even role models in the organization.
What can you do to navigate these complexities and become a top performer? I will illustrate with a few examples.
I had a highly competent software developer who knew ins and outs of the technology stacks used in our development environment. He had all the functional skills to deliver specific technology tasks. However, this team member just stopped there. He would not discuss his design, his implementations or even account for project deadlines. Just imagine the difficult situation his manager was put in. With no insight into his own team member’s output, you could not fault the manager for streaks of sweat on his forehead during weekly progress reviews. No amount of dialog could resolve the situation and I had to let go of a top notch software brain.
In another case, I had a marketing executive who seemed to be cruising along well, measuring his performance in terms of dollars spent on digital marketing, number of meetings with potential channel partners, outbound communications sent and so on. When asked about the outcome of all these efforts for the business, there was a shocked silence. Then one indignant response after the other followed but no measure of outcome.
This is a repeated story — I have come across several people who could go on and on about how hard they work, how much they have to travel and how less sleep they get and hence they must be high performers. Well! bad news! Performance is not based on inputs but on achieving outcomes!
So here is the bottomline,
You may be the best talent there is but you must step into your manager’s shoes every day while performing your own job. Evaluate if your work, your ideas and your presence on the team is making it easier for the manager to do his job or making it tougher. No points for guessing that if you go that extra mile and lighten your manager’s work load, you will be a high performer.
To achieve this, as you get into a role, you must understand how your role adds value to your team or your organization. If it is not clear to you, talk to your manager. What do you need to deliver for him to succeed in his job? What skills do you already have, what skills do you need to develop further, what is the best way to communicate with your manager so that both of you are on the same page — always and last but not the least, what do you need from him for you to succeed?
If you can answer these questions, you will have a clear picture of the road ahead, the highways, the bottlenecks and the detours needed to overcome them and you will be all set to ace your next performance cycle.
What have been your mantras for high performance? Share your thoughts.
