Growth Spurt November 2019: People performance

Dafferns Growth Academy round 4, 2019: People performance – how to do less but get more from your people in 2020

In our latest thought-provoking workshop, we looked at emerging trends in people performance and took time to problem solve a real-life challenge facing each of our attendees.

Achieving peak people performance is a never-ending balance for leaders, people and teams. Moderate stress levels help keep them in the highest physical and mental performance zone. It’s here where they’re interested and excited but push them into overload and they’ll be anxious or worse, panicked. But turn down the dial and people lose interest and get bored, it’s a fine line.

Our workshop looked at four ways to get more from your team, without tipping them into stress mode.

1. Evolve your structure and management style to adapt and compete in an agile world; leaner structures, professional leaders and autonomous teams connected by clear strategies, purpose and ways of working will be key.
2. Avoiding time-wasting, inefficient meetings. Rather have a meeting that’s ‘fit for purpose’:
   1. 5-minute casual ‘stand up’ meetings once a day to discuss admin
   2. Weekly hour-long tactical meetings to discuss priorities and approach
   3. Monthly strategic team meetings to tackle one big challenge or opportunity
   4. Quarterly off site ‘take a breath’ meetings to check on culture and overall direction
3. Understanding dealing with underperformance is not about determining if the person is up for the role, but rather what you should do about it:
   1. Sit them down and say ‘we have an issue’
   2. Talk through where the bar is set and how you will help them get there
   3. Set a timetable for reaching that level
   4. Explain what will happen if they continue not to perform
4. When it comes to communicating using technology, less is more
   1. Success of collaboration technology depends entirely on employees changing the way they think about work
   2. Reduce the number of tools being used – too much time will be wasted on training
   3. Embrace the evolving workplace – a nine-to-five office culture doesn’t suit everyone, and employees are putting flexibility higher on their job wish list
   4. Shared storage – having data constantly accessible allows dispersed teams to work more closely, meaning they can be more productive

Attendees then audited themselves and rated their own people and team performance across six areas to identify gaps to work on:

1. Communication
2. Leadership
3. Role clarity
4. Accountability
5. Vision / strategy
6. Viability

Finally, attendees brought with them their biggest team or people challenge, leveraging the brain power of their peers and the Mindshop tools to do some serious problem-solving, and walked away with clear strategies to make an immediate difference back at the office.

All our sessions are highly practical, we spend time discussing and developing strategies and transforming them into actions to take away and implement for an immediate impact on our attendees’ business.

Interested in joining our dynamic, high-value learning sessions?

Join us at the next Growth Academy on 11 February 2020

To book your place please contact Sophie Essex-Masmoudi.

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