What is the one thing you need to turn a trusting team to a high performing team?
What is the one thing you need to turn a trusting team into a high performing team?
Most people want to be part of something big!
But how do you get there?
The most amazing experiences in my life were when the work we were doing was hard and challenging. Like carrying a sledgehammer for weeks, working so hard the inside of my eyelids were sweating or flinging myself off of a cliff.
People want and need to be challenged. Just think of the camping when it was perfect weather and the equipment all worked perfectly: now remember the coldest, wettest, most miserable camping trip you were ever on. I bet the most vivid memories come from the hard & challenging experience.
Work experiences are the same. Remember:
- When you should have failed and still succeeded;
- When there was a critical deadline at work, and you pulled the rabbit out of your hat and met the deadline;
I bet these memories likely feel like they happened yesterday.
When a third of a town was lost to a wildfire, I lead a team that rose to unbelievable challenges and supported 15,000 evacuees. It was an experience that no one will ever forget. But none of those people will remember the 100’s of times when the days work just got done.
The challenge to you as a leader is how to create those opportunities. You don’t have to create a natural disaster to do it, try to:
- Create the chance to work on projects that stretch abilities
- Set the highest standards for yourself and watch the people who trust you to strive to live up to them
- Build a sense of healthy competition within your teams.
- Create an environment where people show up to work every day and do the best possible work as the minimum standard that is acceptable
- Allow people to take courageous risks