There are few things more complex (and potentially bewildering) than leadership.
Imperfect people, leading imperfect people, amidst an endless amount of variables that are constantly changing.
How can you reliably be a great leader with that as the pretext?
It almost seems impossible.
But it’s not. Here’s how.
My Colorado-ness may be showing, but I think hiking is very analogous to leading a team. Viewed through the lens of hiking, let’s break down the 9 core tenets of high performance leadership. And to do that, we’re gonna need a few things: the map, the compass, and the guide.
The Map
A map gives us a 30,000 foot view of our starting place and our destination. It answers the questions, broadly speaking, of where we are and where we’re going.
This is the starting place as a leader.
You cannot lead without first knowing the current state of things, both for you and the team, as well as where you’re collectively headed.
With my coaching clients, we break this into 3 distinct tenets:
Leading yourself. It is incredibly difficult to lead others if we don’t first lead ourselves well. It’s like the airline adage of putting your mask on first (but with much lower stakes). When we lead ourselves well - our time, our priorities, our energy, our focus - only then can we show up and lead others to the best of our best ability.
Leading your team. To lead a team well, you have to take an honest look at the good, bad, and ugly. You have to get clear on the gap between where your team is now and where you need to be. It requires transparent conversations. It requires candid feedback. It requires bringing them along for the ride by clearly articulating where everyone stands and where you need to get to.
Standards and modeling. I read a study recently that showed teams are 40% more productive when a high performer is in the room. 🤯 Think about that for a second. High performers raise the bar for everyone around them. They elevate the people around them simply by displaying a standard that is beyond their existing bar. That bar? That’s on the leader to set.
The Compass
When we have a better understanding of where we are and where we're headed, the compass is what tells us where to actually go.
The compass is a tool. It’s tactical. Practical. “Go this way.”
To set the compass for a team, a leader has to get their hands dirty and dive into tactics like defining what great looks like, implementing systems that center on great work, and making the most of your team's time together.
With my coaching clients, we break this into 3 distinct tenets:
Productivity. Without a productivity system in place, most people will naturally drift toward becoming busier and busier while feeling less and less effective in their work. This becomes a trap that is very hard to get out of, because the standard has been set that our time is not our own, and we’re left to do the “real work” at night and on weekends. A proper productivity system and a culture of respecting that system changes everything.
The Work. Inputs, not outputs. For every role on a team, it should be clearly defined which actions (inputs) are the most effective and reliably lead to the desired outcomes for that role. That’s The Work. And when you clearly define The Work for you and your team, you now have a productivity system that helps you protect the time and space for getting The Work done.
Meetings. At most companies, meetings have become a distraction at best and a cultural drain at worst. The meetings-for-meetings-sake culture runs rampant because it feels like work even if you know there’s no real work coming out of it. High performing teams take their meetings seriously, respecting their teammates time, and ensuring that the meetings are defined, useful, and structured with the intent of pushing the team or project forward. (And they’re not afraid to say no to meetings that don’t meet that standard.)
The Guide
A map and a compass are critical, but a guide can be the difference in a successful journey and an unsuccessful one.
This is the human element of leadership, and is oftentimes the difference between good management and great leadership.
It requires one thing and one thing only - caring about the individuals on the team.
Because when you care, you invest in your people. You have the courage to have candid conversations and receive candid feedback. You set the discomfort aside, knowing that on the other side of genuine, candid relationships is a high performing and happy team.
With my coaching clients, we break this into 3 distinct tenets:
Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a skill to be developed, not a subject to be learned. Nested within emotional intelligence is a number of other skills - listening well, controlling our own emotions, and using empathy to help understand someone else’s position.
Culture of feedback. Building a culture of feedback and developing emotional intelligence go hand in hand. Without emotional intelligence, creating a culture of feedback will just create a culture of as*holes. And without a culture of feedback, building emotional intelligence will just lead to a culture of ruinous empathy - giving people emotional safety while not giving them candid insights into how they can keep growing and evolving.
Coaching the team. Coaching isn’t telling someone what to do. It’s asking good questions and pressing into the right areas so that what someone should do next becomes obvious to them. It’s derived from them, not you. And this position as coach isn’t natural for most leaders. It’s a skill that is developed with a lot of reps and fine tuning. It’s a system as much as a skill. But when developed, it’s a system and skill that unlocks growth for your team at a rate most leaders can only dream of.
As a leader, you’re taking your team on a journey whether you know it or not. And on this journey, you’re responsible for giving them the map, setting the compass directionally toward your destination, and guiding them along the way.
It may not feel like hiking.
But the view from the top can feel just as rewarding when you do it right.
✌️ and ❤️,
Adam Griffin
Certified High Performance Coach™
👉 Forward Coaching