Where do you need to focus to improve your team’s performance?
Story
A leader silently stared at the screen during his remote coaching session with his Adaptive Leaders coach. He took a deep breath.
“I think I know what I need to do now,” he said.
“Great. What?” our coach asked.
“My biggest takeaway is: it’s about me. It’s not about my team. I need to focus on clarifying my Expectations for them and connecting those expectations to my team members’ Motivations.”
“Do you already know how you want to do that?”
“Yes. I know exactly what to do.”
And this was in just the first few minutes of introducing EMMA, without any in-depth discussion. Just having the Performance Leadership framework already helped.
Performance Leadership
One of the most common pain points for leaders we work with across all the industries we work in is: “How can I get my team more motivated to perform better?”
There are always complications (cross-cultural management, changing internal/external environment, personality issues, etc.) but the leader still feels: “This team needs to be doing better than it is.”
When a client really isn’t sure where to focus, they may be ready for our Performance Leadership model (also described in our new book): EMMA.
The 4 areas leaders should focus on when trying to improve their team’s performance are:
- Expectations
- Motivation
- Measurements
- Accountability
A Brief Overview
We’ll do a deeper dive into each of the 4 elements in upcoming articles, but for now we want to talk about what happens when we simply introduce the model. We’ve found the conversation already shifts just by looking at those 4 words.
At one brief EMMA overview workshop, a room of strangers was asked “Which one do you need to improve most?” and without any explanation, they were able to answer.
How would you answer that for your current team? Go ahead, pick the one that needs the most attention right now.
Different leaders are naturally strong in different areas, but different seasons also lead to one or more getting neglected.
Expectations
Think about a few common scenarios we encounter that weaken the Expectation piece:
- This person is new to their role, so the expectations haven’t been figured out yet.
- There has never been a clear job description, so the job’s scope is vague.
- There’s a new project, and which expectations to prioritize is undetermined.
- My expectations for this person are different from their previous supervisor’s.
- They are very good at meeting most of the expectations, but there’s this one they might not even know about.
- I’m not clear on my supervisor’s expectations for my job, so I’ve passed that lack of clarity on.
And the list goes on.
We can’t emphasize this enough, by not getting clear and staying clear on your Expectations for your team (you are the leader, after all), you cannot inspire them to improve their performance.
Improving performance always needs to start at Expectations. Once those are clear, don’t skip Motivations.
Motivations
Often the conversation starts with “How do I motivate my team?!” but the first question (back to Expectations) is actually:
- “Motivate them to do what?” (Expectations)
Once that has been made crystal clear, then it’s Motivation time.
We often give this little mantra to leaders:
- For Expectations, I tell you.
- For Motivations, you tell me.
That means that Expectations are primarily the responsibility of the leader to set. There should be a dialogue, and verifying they are crystal clear involves careful listening as well as telling. But the leader sets the Expectations (just as their supervisor sets the Expectations for them).
When it comes to Motivations, people are so diverse, they need to tell you how to best motivate them. Don’t make the mistake of guessing what their primary motivations are. Ask them:
- What is really motivating to you at work right now?
- How can we use those motivations more?
See how that takes all the pressure off you? In our experience, people are very happy to discuss motivations, especially if there’s a good foundation of trust (which can only be strengthened by, you guessed it: clear Expectations).
Measurements
When you and your team are clear on Expectations and Motivations, then collaborate to discover which specific Measurements will:
- Work towards meeting those Expectations
- Keep Motivation going strong
Often we’ve found that organizations have TOO MANY measurements. What are the key drivers that move the organization towards meeting the expectations? Focus on those. Maybe 2 total? Or 3. Not 25. (We’ll talk more about “Drivers” in the upcoming Measurements article.)
Accountability
Expectations, Motivations, and Measurements are set up, so now it’s time to execute. This can only be done with a rhythm of Accountability. The three basic questions supervisors can ask are:
- What are you going to do?
- What support do you need from me?
- When are we going to follow up on this?
This implies a mutual commitment to success and accountability. Putting an appointment right into the calendar (it can be for later the same day, by the way!) is really the final piece for EMMA to take shape in the real world.
Analogy
Here’s a little analogy from daily life to remind you how all these pieces work together.
As a fun exercise, cover up any one of those four elements and imagine how the system would function without that one element. Now cover up a different one. Maybe that’s how you’re feeling about your team’s performance? Maybe something important is missing or incomplete?
Did you notice anything?
Although it’s a “complete” EMMA system, did you notice any weakness? The Motivation piece is based on an assumption. But surely there are a whole list of people who will speed anyway and wouldn’t care about the fines. That’s a perfect reminder not to assume you know what motivates each person in your team. Surely most people don’t enjoy paying fines, but we’re not trying to simply enforce compliance with a performance system.
We’re trying to do more than get our teams compliant. We want to inspire our people to outdo themselves and take their performance to a new level that even they might not imagine.
That is totally doable, but requires all 4 parts of EMMA to receive attention from leaders and teams together in constructive dialogue. And that will require you to activate the 3Cs we always talk about (Courage, Curiosity, Care). If it didn’t require the 3Cs, you probably would have already fixed this.
What might your next step with EMMA be?
Next Steps?
Feel free to take the image from this article and print it, share it, save it, etc.
Also, if you’d like to talk about an Adaptive Leader Journey for your team where we do a deep dive into EMMA and the 3Cs to integrate them into daily practice, feel free to book a free 20-minute call with one of our coaches to discuss how we can support you at making your next big breakthrough.
Looking forward to talking to you soon!
