Two Ways to Build Stronger Teams and Transform Performance

“Often you know organizations talk about putting the customer at the heart of the business and wanting to do right by the customer.

And a big ask is to get to a place where advisors feel able to make the right decision for a customer, even if that means stepping slightly outside of process. And essentially the call is to empower teams to be able to do the right thing. You often hear people talking about the need therefore for autonomy, and we draw a bit of a distinction between autonomy and we call it accountable freedom.”

“And really the difference is that there needs to be a real understanding of the impact of the decision I might make.

So, whilst if I’m going to make a decision I believe is the right thing for the customer, I need to understand when it’s the right decision to step outside of process and when it isn’t.

And actually if I make the wrong decision, what are the implications both for the customer, for myself and for the organization?

And so it requires a greater investment. It isn’t about simply letting everybody make whatever decision they feel like making, and you can imagine that could be fraught with risk, but how we develop people so they have the ability to make the more rounded decisions and make the best decision in the moment for customer and business. And it’s a difficult one because every customer scenario will be different.

So, it isn’t as black and white, and it isn’t always saying right, so in every case you would make this decision. But it’s how you develop your people to be able to make those decisions in the moment based on what is presented to them at the time.”

“Often when we do work with organizations and we’re talking to advisors, often the general sense we get is it can feel quite deficit focused. There’s a lot of conversations about what’s not quite where it needs to be.

And in fact, we were working with an organization where the stats were if they had somebody go on to a performance improvement plan, 90% plus were never able to get off of that plan, so ultimately ended up exiting the business.

And it points to there being a real focus on just lasering in on the things that aren’t right, and that obviously can really affect an individual who’s trying to do things differently.

When we talk about illuminate awesome, essentially it’s about shining a light on the things you want to see more of. So, it’s that positive reinforcement.”

“And if you talk to people and ask about the conversations they maybe have with their team leader or their line manager, more often than not, it’s about the improvements they need to make and the things that have fallen short of expectation.

And what we’re encouraging people to do is invest as much time and effort in congratulating people on a job well done. And often people might do 90% of what’s asked, but we’ll focus on the 10% that wasn’t right.

We’re trying to address that balance. So, let’s really focus on shining a light on the stuff like that and amplifying the things that we want to see more of.”

“I think from a mindset perspective, it’s very difficult as an individual if it feels like whatever I do, you’re going to find the one thing that wasn’t right. It doesn’t take long before I’m going to lose a level of motivation and ultimately engagement.

But also, if we think about, you know, more strategically, we look at businesses now really focused on innovation. I’ve got to innovate. I’ve got to be prepared to do stuff that hasn’t been done before and take some risks.

And with risk comes a higher chance of failure, and so I’ve got to feel safe that if I do something and it doesn’t work out, we will see that as a teachable moment and an opportunity for development, rather than just focusing on the outcome and not everything that led to it, you know, my intent and my aim to bring about a great outcome.

I think making sure that also we balance if I work with you and I spend as much time telling you what a great job you’re doing, on a day where I do need to have a conversation about something that falls short, you will be much more receptive, because I’m then seen as someone who brings balance in terms of that sort of interactions that we have.

So you know I’ve got your back because I call out the great stuff, so when I come to you with an area of development, you’ll be much more receptive to that at that time.”

“So really significantly, things like discretionary effort. So you know, everybody’s time poor, everybody’s under-resourced.

And when you’ve got people that say, look, you know, I can put in the extra mile. One, it will be appreciated. So that often feels like that’s missing, so that acknowledgement and appreciation.

But also it’s part of my development, so I’m more likely to offer to go that extra mile to stay for an extra 30 minutes to help out where we’ve got a shortfall and so on. So as a team lead or a manager, I’m going to benefit from having a team that’s going to contribute more.”

“I think in terms of the personal growth within the team as well, where people are prepared to take on things that they perhaps haven’t done before.”

“So from a succession planning, but also just from a connection within the team, and that real sense of it’s us against the world and we’re in this together. That definitely comes where people feel that their hard work is really noticed and acknowledged.”