There is a concept of managing pressure for peak performance that won’t get out of my head. Every good manager knows his direct reports. And, he knows how to get peak performance from them. He prevents them from staying in panic mode or burn out by actively adjusting what is asked of them. He also prevents boredom from avoiding under-employing people.
How do you “hear” pressure?
People are whole people. They are not separate from work and personal lives. They are one thing, facing all of their things at once. Certainly, they can escape work and enjoy family, or vice versa… but, in the whole of their day, week, month, year they are dealing with heavy things in both areas. Managers need to be mindful of how much a person can handle before they crack. And, unfortunately, we usually perform at our best when we are right on the line between too much and too little. There is a sweet spot. And both the person and their manager can work together to keep the contributor functioning at their peak.
Most small business owners simply know their people. They do this by investing years with a person. Perhaps they are family. Maybe they socialize together outside of work? Maybe they have fun at work? They make small talk in between things and generally ask questions. This is all highly effective and natural. But what happens when you team grows and grows and grows? Beyond 25 people almost no manager can keep a tight relationship with everyone. What if your company is going to grow from 25 to 150?
The most common path is to hire great people and trust them. This rarely works. Why? Because the scope is far too broad so as to be ineffective. Yes, hire great people and trust them, but do specific things to make sure they know their people. They may or may not follow your lead or have or bring experience. If they do follow your lead or bring experience they are going to charge you for that. Their wage and talent is something you need to compete with. Pay up for someone that can maintain super strong relationships with 25 people at once at work and personal. That person is extremely rare and is going to be very expensive on your payroll. Pay up.
Or, if you want to budget your dollars a bit differently (and stop complaining about not being able to find good people) then prepare a system for understanding the pressure on individual people within your organization.
You do not need to know their personal stuff as the CEO. Albeit, I will say it’s a good sign of trust if you do hear about it from time to time. But, what you do need, is a system to make sure your managers are listening to and adjusting things based upon individuals’ pressure and performance.
You need weekly 1:1’s and you need written goals. Between these two base elements your managers can hear the stats and nuance and formulate a pulse on their people –your people– and roll up the pressure gauge to determine your overall team’s rate of change and/or ability to withstand change. If they’re in panic they’re going to crack, break and stop.
The weekly 1:1 provides data on work and personal life that a manager can use to form an opinion on present pressure. It’s an estimate. They’ll make judgement calls.
The quarterly goals and weekly check-in will reveal performance. Are they hitting their numbers and reaching their goals? All of them? Most of them? Or few of them? Are they crumbling or are they climbing? What if you increase the difficulty? What if personal life increasing in difficulty? How do things change? Watch performance and calibrate.
We install The Listening Way through Daily Huddles, Weekly 1:1’s and the core thing we’re after is an intimate knowledge of each teammate –such that a manager can adjust work and/or help teammate develop coping mechanisms. Some of these coping mechanisms are new technical skills in the workspace. Some are more interpersonal in nature. We don’t need to know people’s liver function but we need to know if they’re running at or near their peak performance… and then make adjustments to help them climb at their max rate. Then, a team that is functioning well will do this together –with each at their unique max rate of change, and together at a unified max rate of climb.
Then, the overall strategy can be clarified –max revenue climb, max profit? Value? Value per share? Personal development? What are you after? How will you get there? Are you doing it alone or with people? How are your people doing?