The best way to improve your team’s performance

In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise one leader’s performance than to raise the performance of a whole mass.

~ Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive

Leaders I talk to tend to rate their leadership highly but complain about the leadership of the team members reporting to them.

Therefore, leaders tend to ask me for solutions to improve their team’s performance.

As one client told me, “If I could only get these folks to take more responsibility, stop passing the buck, and pay attention to details, this place would be fire!”

Peter Drucker points to another option.

What if you, the leader, improve your performance? How would your direct reports respond if you increased your leadership mastery?

What would be possible if you learned to be more persuasive when working with your team members? If your communication was more clear and direct and you consistently asked for commitments and next steps?

How would things change if you took control of your time, refused to attend meetings that didn’t have clear agendas and outcomes, and focused your time on where you could make the biggest difference? (You do know where you make the most significant contribution to your firm’s success, right?)

The biggest contribution you can make to your team’s performance is to improve your own performance.

Invest in yourself

When was the last time you got a performance review? One of the services I provide clients is to gather feedback from their team and help them evaluate their performance to get a clear picture of where their strengths lie and where they have room to grow.

Then, we create a plan to put things they don’t enjoy or aren’t good at on someone else’s plate and focus their time and energy on increasing their contribution to the company’s momentum.

If this sounds interesting, hit reply, and let’s talk about what investing in yourself might create.