Help your team maximise their performance.

Following on from my our last discussion of self-responsibility – the more control people think they have in any situation, the more engaged and positive they will be. This has been shown to lead to a greater mind-set for high performance. Because let’s face it, there is at least a little control freak in most of us.

It will also have the win-win impact of freeing up your time. If you don’t give your team control to make decisions they will constantly feel the need to run everything by you, which can take up more of your time than really necessary.

So here are some tips to give more control to your team to increase everyone’s productivity……..

1) Let the team work as close to their natural pace as possible

We’ve discussed this in previous blogs and I can’t stress how much this impacts productivity and performance. By allowing fast paced people to jump around between tasks, and by keeping interruptions to a minimum for slower paced people, everyone will get through their to-do list more quickly. It will also feel easier which allows them to leave the office in the afternoon feeling ready for life rather than exhausted.

2) Teach people to manage their energy rather than their time

When people manage their energy rather than their time, things also feel easier. This also keeps “bad stress” down and gives a feeling of control back to people. And if you as the leader aren’t managing your energy instead of your time, your weaknesses in productivity will be compounded to your team.

So help your team to categorise their tasks as “heavy, medium and light” and move between tasks depending on how their energy is at the time. And of course if you manage fast paced people, encourage them to break down their heavy tasks into smaller bite-size chunks. They are more likely to procrastinate if they see the task as one big energy-draining task instead of a few smaller ones that can be done at different times.

You will find that deadlines become a thing of the past as tasks will get done way before they are due.

3) Give your team “enough rope to hang themselves”

Your role as a leader is to back your team. So let them make decisions and give them the tools to make good decisions. Sometimes they won’t make the decision you think is right but they may get a good learning experience from of the situation which will help everyone for next time.

Often it’s good to think about how bad is the potential downside of making the wrong decision versus what is the potential upside of the learning experience. If a lesson is learned by making the small mistake then let them make the mistake and figure it out for themselves.

4) Give them control of internal meetings

Many advisers find that internal meetings can be time consuming especially when there is preparation involved. Often it’s a great opportunity to empower staff to co-ordinate much of the preparation including setting the agenda and also chairing the meeting. They will increase their productivity in other areas by feeling more in control and you will have less on your to-do list.

5) Give them control of performance appraisals

Often people take a back seat in performance appraisal discussions leaving the leaders to feel as though they need to be coming up with the ideas for the career progression of others. Try taking the approach that the career progression is the responsibility of every individual in the business and not just the leader.

So staff should never be giving any “energy credits’ to not being happy about their career development if they haven’t been pro-active about coming forward with ways they can “step up” to help the leader and the business, and obviously utilize their strengths in the process.

6) Leaders should ask questions instead of provide answers to give the team more control

And another follow on from the last blog on self-responsibility is to make sure that people have been given the control to come up with the solutions to any issues, rather than just the problems themselves.

One of the best ways to do this is to ask questions rather than jump in and answer every question that is asked. Even a question from the leader like “What do you think we should do?” will start to break their habit of coming to you for solutions. When they know they will probably have a question thrown back at them they are more likely to think through options for solutions before they come to you.

An interesting exercise is to try to go for a week with only asking questions and not providing any answers. It will certainly feel clunky and quite frankly a little frustrating, but it will bring awareness to how often you provide answers instead of helping other people to think of their own solutions.

A closing note:

Trust is needed when you consider the concept of handing over control. Even if you find that difficult to do, you may just need to jump in and behave as though you trust everyone in your business to be able to “step up”. You will generally find that people will surprise you to the positive.

And remember, people may not do it exactly the way you do it or anywhere near as well as what you do it but consider the long-term benefits of additional productivity and engagement that will be gained for you and your business.

So go ahead and harness your inner control freak and capitalize on the inner control freak of others who work with you.

Vanessa Bennett is the CEO of Inside 80 Performance in Australia. She helps leaders and teams achieve sustainable high performance.

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Understanding the “change, accept, remove” principle can lead to better performance.

It makes sense conceptually that a business will be far more productive if staff are taking responsibility for as much as possible, and going above and beyond the call of duty, rather than pointing the finger with an attitude of “that’s not my job” or “it wasn’t my fault……”.

And obviously there are many points in between these two extremes, so if you are not at a full self-responsibility culture – here is some food for thought to improve your team’s performance and therefore bottom line for your business.

Where are your staff spending their energy credits?

In previous blogs we have discussed the concept of energy credits. Remember that energy credits are maximized when every part of “Brain, Body and Belief” are working together well. As a business leader you want to make sure your staff are coming to work with as close to their maximum 100 energy credits as possible.

Once they come to work with their energy credits, it’s important that you are helping people to spend them wisely. Spending 30 energy credits on something that should only take 10 isn’t the smartest way to improve your bottom line.

Complaining, negativity and blame all take energy credits and stop you from actually fixing the situation. If you are giving energy to feeling annoyed you aren’t giving energy to constructively fixing the situation. As a business leader you want your staff to be directing their energy credits constructively – not complaining around the water cooler.

And people’s brains are wired for defense so it’s important to make your staff feel safe. If anyone in the business is being negative or complaining – this can perpetuate through other staff members and lead to defensive behavior rather than constructive behaviour.

3 simple decisions to give your staff for any situation

Let’s face it – in any business there are always going to be things which don’t go according to plan and therefore have the potential to derail people and result in frustration and negativity – potentially a big drain on energy credits.

In his book “The Power of Now” Eckhart Tolle explains that in every situation, regardless of whether it’s work-related or not, you really only have three choices around how to deal with it:

1) Change the situation

This is where you empower staff to think constructively about what changes they can make to ensure the same unwanted result is not repeated next time. This is not about laying blame on anyone. It’s more about looking at the processes involved and where changes need to be made.

It’s about people owning the situation and firstly considering what they could have done to prevent the situation. For example rather than pointing the finger and saying that another person didn’t get the information to them on time, it’s realizing that they could have gone to the other person a few days before due date to see how that person was going with the information and if they needed any help to ensure the deadline was reached.

2) Accept the situation

This means full acceptance of the situation and that everyone involved has accepted that it is ok for this situation to occur again. Full acceptance means that there will be no negative chatter or commenting in the kitchen behind people’s backs.

3) Remove yourself from the situation

This one is easy – If someone refuses to either constructively change the situation, or accept the situation, then they are very welcome to remove themselves from the situation – ie leave the business. This may sound harsh but everyone has choices and the more control you give someone in a situation the more that everyone wins.

Where people are working with you because they feel they do not have any other choices – there is an argument to suggest that you may not want them working with you in the first place.

It’s important to set the culture that you want to have people working with you who really want to be there. This is a far more positive and productive situation for your bottom line.

Are you rewarding self-responsibility behaviours to make them more likely to occur again?

Explaining the “change, accept, remove” model to staff and rewarding them for showing examples of using this model to resolve situations and change mindset is a big step to encouraging a culture of self-responsibility and high performance mind-set.

When staff know that they are going to be rewarded and not reprimanded for putting up their hand and suggesting something they could have done to help a situation everyone is far more likely to come up with constructive ways to consistently enhance your business.

Rewarding constructive behaviour is far more beneficial than reprimanding sub-optimal results!

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Body, Brain and Belief

In 2014 we explored the foundations of high performance. We highlighted that in order to maximise your performance you need to maximise your energy. And your energy comes from three broad categories – Body, Brain and Belief.

This year we are going to focus on the “belief” aspect. We will look at practical tips to help you and your teams to improve your mindset for high performance.

Know why you do what you do (your “why”)

One of the foundation steps in creating a high performance mindset is to know why you do what you do. It’s important to know this at the business level, at the leadership level and at the individual level.

In his book “Start with Why” Simon Sinek discusses that while it’s important to know “what” you do and “how” you do it, the most successful companies perform by having a strong connection to “why” they do it. And when your staff and clients know and engage in your “why”, keeping clients and staff becomes much easier and therefore more profitable.

How to determine your “why”

Whether it be from the point of view of the leaders who started the business or why the employee joined the business in the first place, it is important to make sure people have the tools to determine their deeper “why”.

From the standpoint of the leaders who started the business it’s important to ask “why did they start the business” And when they get that first answer, the next step is to ask “and why is that important” and then continue to ask that question of each answer until you get to a deeper reason. One financial planner I spoke with about started her practice s to help all females have access to financial security and when probed more about why that was important to her, it was to carry on her mother’s legacy and actively make a contribution to the financial well-being of as many women as possible so that they don’t have to suffer financially like her mother did.

That’s far more powerful than just “I provide financial advice”.

From the employee’s standpoint if the mentality of an employee is “because I needed a job”, that won’t be a very effective “why” to connect with and he or she probably won’t be a very engaged employee which will lead to sub-optimal productivity and therefore will adversely affect the bottom line of the business.

It is then important to help them think further about this by asking “Why did they need the job?” and once you get another response then repeat the process by asking “Why is that response important to them?”.

Once you start getting to responses which are more around deeper values rather than things like technical skills, you are tapping into the passion of what gets them out of bed in the morning. Once you have that it is important that it becomes a habit to remember this.

Connect employee’s “why” to the business “Why”

Once the employees are connected to their “why” they will generally start to show an improvement in their productivity quite quickly. When you can take it a step further and connect this to the “why” for the practice, the results will really start to improve.

When employees feel they are part of a bigger picture and are connecting to why you are all in business together engagement will then start to go to another level. Think about a company you know where you really love the product or service and therefore you feel significant brand loyalty to that company. Maybe it’s to a particular car, or an airline? Chances are it’s because the staff exhibit a high level of engagement. A large part of that engagement generally comes from the passion associated with the product or service they are providing.

Use the interview process to probe deeper as to your future staff member’s “why”

Many times in interviews we hear the standard question – “why do you want to work for us”. But if we can take this line of questioning a few layers deeper about the real “why behind doing what they do” you may even save yourself the pain of hiring someone who isn’t connected to you and the “why” of your business in the first place.

Relate the “why” to service to others

Of course given that financial planners are in a service profession, a “why” connected to a deep desire to serve others in a specific way will obviously be beneficial.

Relate even simple tasks to the “why”

All tasks, even administrative tasks such as addressing letters and envelopes without spelling mistakes, are more likely to be done well when you know your “why”. In many cases something as simple as spelling and grammar creates that first impression with a potential client. Many a client has decided to go elsewhere when their name has been incorrectly spelled.

If you explain the dollar value of potential lost revenue to the business and the effect it has on the ability of the business to live up to its “why”, it’s easier for people to see the bigger picture therefore be more engaged in doing a great job for themselves and for the business.

So try to start this year by focusing more on your why rather than the how and the what and notice the great results you will have in terms of employee and client engagement – and that can only mean good things for your bottom line.

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Understanding the foundations of high performance.

• What’s really holding you back from maximum productivity?

• How to plan your days and weeks for maximum output with less effort

• Have you planned for productivity (output) or hard work (input)?

So before we go onto some of the deeper issues concerning high performance, it seems like a good time to do a recap of some of those concepts, along with a few extra ideas, to cement the foundations.

So let’s recap…….

The key to improving performance and decreasing effort is to operate as closely as possible to your natural pace.

So many people focus on one-size-fits all ways to improve performance and productivity without focusing on ways to reduce the effort involved in doing so. Remember there is an inverse relationship between unnecessary effort and sustained performance. Think of it like this…..

Sustained performance = productivity – unnecessary effort

Now we are not saying that performance is effortless – definitely not!   It’s the unnecessary effort that brings down your results and this is where personal pace plays a big role.

The closer you work to your natural pace – the easier things will feel and the less time things take to get done. For example if your natural pace gives you a focus time of around 45 minutes, working on 90 minute task will probably take you more like 105 minutes if you don’t take a break with a lighter task in the middle. That is an extra 15 minutes of lost overall productivity and you’ll probably feel more mentally drained than if you broke the task up into two intervals.

If you make this change four times a day – that is an extra hour of productive time with less effort per day and less stress! In accountant and lawyer speak – that’s an extra hour of chargeable time per day!!

Remember if you (or your staff) haven’t already done so go to www.inside80performance.com to calculate your pace.

Different paces need to be accommodated to maximise team productivity

Knowing your own pace is certainly useful to improve your own personal performance and reduce your effort levels, but what about when people of different paces need to work together?

Often it’s beneficial to have people with different paces working together, but if the concept of pace is not understood, it can lead to tension in the team which ultimately decreases the team performance and increases everyone’s effort levels – clearly the opposite of the desired result.

The more you know about the natural pace of those around you, the more you are able to understand how others like to work.

So for example if you are fast paced and distractions and interruptions are not a cause for stress, spare a thought for those slow paced people who might prefer to meet with you at a dedicated time instead of being interrupted every time you have your next “brainwave” that you would like to share with them.

Remember, in business it’s not “treat others how YOU want to be treated” – it’s “treat others how THEY want to be treated”.

Recovery is crucial for optimal performance

This is one of the hardest concepts to come to terms with – recovery will actually help your performance rather than hinder it. It is difficult to get our heads around this concept given we are mostly all brought up to work really hard and that recovery time is therefore considered lazy. Therefore many of us feel guilty for taking recovery time as we feel there is always something else we should be doing.

Remember the inverse relationship between unnecessary effort and productivity. Just like athletes – a small recovery enables you to “repair” so that you can take your performance to new heights after the recovery time.

If it helps, think of recovery as an important part of your productivity plan and schedule it.

Prioritising your most urgent task first is so old school.

Most people prioritise in a way where they focus on the most urgent task first and then focus on the next urgent task. This approach is inherently flawed and will actually decrease your productivity and increase your effort.

Managing your energy by mixing up your day between Heavy, Medium and Light energy tasks can help with your prioritization.

Hear me out on this one……What happens if the most urgent task is going to take three hours and you consider it a really heavy energy drain especially if you are a fast paced person? Well the task will probably end up taking you five hours and you will be too mentally exhausted to want to do anything after that. What an unproductive way to operate!

Let’s face it, we are all managing a number of different tasks which all need to get done by a certain time. Try categorizing your tasks into Heavy, Medium and Light and then work on each one for a length of time that is right for your natural pace.

By moving around between tasks according to your natural pace you will get more done way before the deadlines and it will also feel much easier for you. You have more control over this than you think you do. Go on give it a go!

Body, Brain and Belief – all three are necessary to maximise your energy and productivity

So many times when people think of high performance they are only focused on what happens inside the workplace rather than outside the workplace (often referred to as wellbeing). This can be a risky trap to fall into. It’s very difficult to improve your performance if you are tired – physically or mentally.

So the question of how to improve performance actually becomes a question of how to improve your energy.

Think of it in terms of maximizing your “Energy Credits” (ECs). Say the maximum ECs we can all wake up with is 100, think about where those credits come from. Broadly speaking…….

Max 100 ECs = ECs from “Body” + ECs from “Brain” + ECs from “Belief”

Quick reminder that “Body” is factors like fitness, nutrition and sleep. “Brain” is all about how you structure your days, weeks, months, meetings, inboxes etc and how you work to your personal pace. And “Belief” is mindset. A positive mindset has been proven to be associated with greater productivity, profitability and creativity. More about that in coming blogs!

Of course once you wake up with 100 ECs, it’s just as important to make sure you only spend 100 ECs. And if you are waking up with less than 100 ECs, then you have less to spend which means you can’t possibly be as productive as someone waking up with 100 ECs. You don’t need a PhD in Mathematics to figure that one out.

So if you and your team are looking to improve performance, you need to focus on all three components.

Remember – you can have wellbeing without high performance but it’s virtually impossible to have high performance without wellbeing.

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Don’t be held back from being your best.

When people think of trying to maximise their productivity, the conversation generally tends towards things you can do differently in the workplace.  And admittedly, most of my recent articles have focused on the work aspect.

There is actually a lot more to your productivity than focusing just on what happens during the day at work.

Essentially your output will be maximised when your energy is maximised.  Don’t even think about trying to pretend to be at your productive best if you are lacking in energy.

Now we are not talking about anything “new age” here.  We are just talking about the strength and vitality required for sustained mental or physical activity.

In order to understand how to maximise your energy you need to look outside the workplace, not just inside the workplace.  At Inside 80 Performance we talk about three broad categories – Body, Brain and Belief.  

If you were to think of every possible aspect as to what gives you energy or what takes it away from you, most things would fit into at least one of the below categories.

Let’s look at each of these:

Body

Your energy from your body depends on the physical aspects of how you look after your body.  For example are you exercising? Do you eat enough nutritious foods to give you energy? Are you getting enough sleep?

Brain

This is the part which is incorporates most of the things which happen in the workplace.  For example, are you working closely to your natural pace?  Are you factoring in recoveries and lighter tasks as part of your broader productivity plan?  Are you managing your diary to help you to get the most amount done in the least amount of time or do you spend more time “looking busy”?  How do you manage email and meetings?

Belief

This features in all aspects of your life.  For example do you have any limiting beliefs that are preventing you from reaching your full potential in work and in life?  Do you have a high ratio of positive thoughts to negative thoughts or is your lack of positivity holding you back?  Do other people’s actions affect your feelings and ultimately your productivity?

Everything is related

The interesting thing about all of these is that they are all inextricably linked.  Think of all of these aspects like a windshield.  If a crack starts to appear in one part, you need to address it or it will start to spread to other areas of your life.

For example – some people may find cracks occurring in the “body” component – if you aren’t eating good fuel to sustain your day at work your energy will decrease.  And if your energy decreases – ironically you will crave more bad food that is high in sugar.

To take that further, if you are not eating right then chances are you won’t be able to do much physical exercise.  Lack of exercise is also a big factor in depleting your energy.  Once you are lacking in energy from not looking after your body properly it may extend to other areas – for example your belief.

Generally speaking your positivity goes up when you feel good physically so if you don’t feel like you’re in peak performance mode physically, chances are you will start to feel a little more negative.  Once you feel negative this can permeate through to your behaviour at work that can affect you and those around you.  It can reduce not just your productivity but the productivity of those around you.

Others may find their cracks appear in the brain component – lack of time management for their pace leaves them feeling exhausted, this then flows through to their mind-set and of course if they have bad time management then chances are they are not exercising as let’s face it, no one has time for exercise – you need to create it.

It is important to look at all components – Body, Brain and Belief

Every person is different.   People can be energised and conversely stressed by completely different things.  In other words the windshield cracks will be different for everyone.  Some people need to focus on their fitness and nutrition to increase their productivity and decrease their effort in the work place.

Others need to focus on their positivity while others need to focus on how they manage their work in relation to their natural pace, just to name a few more examples.

Once you have determined the source of what is actually draining your energy you can then focus on these areas to give you the biggest results.

There is no “one-size fits all” approach

It’s quite easy for anyone to come up with at least 100 ways to improve energy.  The better solution is to identify just two to three things that you can do to improve your energy.

Making changes takes energy and given that we want to increase energy we don’t want to spend any unnecessary effort trying to make changes that don’t yield big results for you personally.  Therefore it’s important to make sure that the few changes you identify will give you the biggest results for the least amount of effort.

After all, that is what productivity is all about.

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How to plan your week to maximise your productivity.

Following on from my last blog around, we are going to further explore some ways to structure your days during the week to maximise your output while decreasing your effort.

Again, let’s think about the way the athletes train over the week.  They typically mix up their training according to heavy, medium and light training principles.  Each of these categories leaves the athlete with varying levels of fatigue.

For example heavy training is designed to take the athlete to the next level, to improve their results.  If they were to train heavy again too soon this training effect will be counter-productive.  It will feel really hard and also increase their risk of injury.  Instead they are better to mix in some different training in terms of exercise or intensity.

Likewise, during the day you probably have some tasks that you find take a lot of your mental energy.  You might think of that as a heavy task.  Likewise there are probably aspects of your job you find really easy in terms of mental energy.  For example, as fast paced person would probably find a twenty minute meeting with another fast-paced person really light.  However a slower paced person may find this a really heavy mental energy drain.

The first step to improving your productivity is to be really clear about what are YOUR heavy, medium and light tasks.

You might find it interesting to complete the following table:

It’s also interesting to do this exercise as a team.  You will find it interesting that often people who have the same job description put the same task in completely different categories.  It often makes sense for people to realign tasks so that people are doing more of the tasks they find light and energising and less of the tasks they find heavy and draining where appropriate.

Once you have a clear understanding that tasks fall into each category, you can now think about planning your week.

When planning your week, start by thinking about how you like to operate in terms of when you are better at attacking heavy tasks and when you feel you may need some lighter tasks to help you to manage your recovery.

For example, you might prefer to ease into the start of the week.  Perhaps you need to come to terms with the week before you can get into your meaty tasks.  In this case you probably prefer to plan for a light Monday morning.

Or you might be someone who is a morning person and attacks Monday mornings with gusto.  In which case you might plan your Monday morning to start on your heavy tasks.

Try completing the table below by mixing up your heavy, medium and lights tasks according to how you would plan your perfect week:

You may find that all of your days follow the same format.   Or you may find that some days are slightly different to others.  Often this may be the result of things that are going on outside of work.

Some people may like Fridays to be light and happy to do more heavy lifting mid week.

Everyone is different and there is no right or wrong approach.  Again it can be interesting for all of your team members to share their results.

If you currently have a team meeting at 9am Monday mornings and you want people to be prepared, on the ball and energised you may want to make sure that the people in the meeting actually have a heavy or medium in their Monday morning 1 box.  If all of the attendees prefer a light Monday morning it’s unlikely you will find the meetings as productive as you would like them to be.

But I can’t always control when I have to do certain tasks…….

Now let’s face it, assuming you have clients and have to work with other human beings, it is highly likely that your perfect week will never actually happen.

The important thing is to think of this a map that you manage towards.  If you know that you need to do heavy tasks in the time that you would prefer to have as a light time, you will need to manage your recovery in some other part of your schedule.

Of course there will be weeks where every part of your day appears heavy.  It’s certainly possible to do this on a temporary basis but it’s important to know that if you don’t schedule some recovery time at some stage you will be well on your way to productivity decline and possible burnout effects.

Knowing your perfect week (even if it doesn’t happen according to plan) will at least give you an awareness of your recovery requirements for peak performance on a sustained basis.

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Relaxing for success.

In previous blogs  (How is your team’s productivity? and Is your output as high as it could be?) we discussed how important it is to decrease effort levels in order to maximise productivity and we discussed pace as a tool for individualising your approach.

Let’s take that a step further and talk about planning adequate recovery time as an important part of your productivity plan.

Let’s think about how many people work over the course of a year.  Many people work in a way that maximises their effort most of the year – regardless of what is going on at work.  They may find that they get sick or burn out or need a holiday (many people get sick on the first few days of their holidays) so their effort drops off quickly and then they pick it up again and go hard until the next crash.  Similar to the below diagram:

Unfortunately while they maintain a high effort their productivity is actually in decline over that time which means they spend a large amount of their year with their effort higher than their productivity as follows:

This is a fast path to burnout and doesn’t inspire people to want to work with you for extended periods.   It’s usually a very quick way to result in staff turnover.  And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the costs to the business of hiring and training new staff.

Let’s now think athletic principles of maximising productivity.  In this case athletes know that they just can’t train really heavy every single day of the year.  (Note that their training schedules may look heavy to us mere mortals but in actual fact they are mixing up their training to incorporate lighter training and recovery periods.)

Their effort vs productivity schedule looks more like this:

As you can see – the athletes actually reduce their effort and make sure they recover as they know it is an important part of their overall performance.  They know that if you’ve had a really hard running session one day and you try to do the same thing the next day, it will feel as though they are training way harder and will have a higher risk of injuring themselves.

All athletes know that one day of rest is far more productive than being unable to train for the next 7 months with a torn Achilles tendon.

Again, it’s the same principle in the workplace.  If you are effectively “running on dead legs” at work, your productivity will decline.  And that could be the least of your worries.  You will also have a far higher risk of experiencing stress and all those effects that come with it.  For example – the same hormone, cortisol, which fights stress also fights cancer causing cells – and it doesn’t multi-task!  Where would you prefer your cortisol to be working?

It is important to plan your time – days, weeks, months and years to allow yourself to have recovery time to go hand in hand with your periods of hard work.

So what do we mean by recovery?

Recovery can take a number of different forms.  It may involve switching off from work completely.  For example it could be holidays or even just long weekends away throughout the year.

In the shorter term it might be finding a relaxing pastime that really helps you to mentally escape from work.  For example this could be going to the movies or out with friends for dinner.

Of course it’s not suggested that you should whip out and see a movie in the middle of your workday.  However there are ways to break up your day to give you more perceived recovery time such as switch to some tasks which absolutely need to be done but don’t take as much of your mental energy to do them.  Stay tuned for my next blog where we will explore this concept in further detail.

Give yourself permission to be productive

Of course the hardest part for most people about incorporating recovery is giving oneself permission to do so.  Many of us were brought up with the belief that you have to work harder to be more successful.  Don’t get me wrong – hard work certainly does go a long way to success – it’s certainly not about shying away from hard work, it’s just important to factor in some smart, considered and well-planned recoveries as part of the process in order to take your productivity to the next level.

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Understanding team member’s pace can improve business outcomes.

Do you know the natural pace of everyone in your team?  If you don’t, chances are your team is capable of giving you more output than it currently is.

In my last article I discussed the concept of natural pace and how you can use it to increase your productivity while actually decreasing your effort levels.  In other words – more output, less input.

Last time I discussed how it’s important for people to work more closely to their own natural pace. Let’s now think about this from a team perspective.  No doubt you will have a mix of people with different paces in your team.

What happens when people of different paces need to work together?

People of different paces will prefer to work in many different ways.  For example faster paced people will generally prefer shorter meeting length, shorter emails and will probably access their emails more often than the slower paced colleagues.

These and many other differences may result in friction in the workplace if people don’t understand each other’s pace. For example the faster paced people may think the slower paced people are wasting their time in meetings while the slower paced people think the faster paced people are trying to rush them and therefore decrease the quality of their work.

Once the pace of each of your team members is known and more importantly understood it’s easier for people to start to use these differences for good rather than evil.

Let’s take an example

Dave is an adviser who is fast very fast paced (75 according to the pace indicator).  He works with Michael who runs their compliance team (27 according to the pace indicator).  Dave may send an email request to Michael about a very important client that needs an urgent response.  Of course Dave expects a response in around 10 minutes.  Michael prefers to access his email twice a day to maximise his productivity.

Dave then tries calling Michael who is deeply engrossed in a task and so lets the phone go to voicemail.  By this stage Dave is of course fuming and walks to the other end of the office to see Michael and in a less than co-operative tone asks for a response to his email.  Michael assumes it’s another request that isn’t as urgent as Michael claims it to be (they rarely are) and so gets defensive about being spoken to in a certain way and is less likely to be helpful.

Dave comes across as rude and Michael comes across as unhelpful.

What if they both understood each other’s pace?

If both Dave and Michael both understood each other’s pace the situation could be very different.  If they did they would have understood that they just prefer to work differently and would have worked out a way to work together.

For example, Dave will know that Michael only accesses email twice a day and prefers to work with little interruptions.  Michael will realise that Dave is not being rude, he just likes juggling a number of tasks and prefers quick responses so that he can move quickly between tasks.

They may have negotiated that Dave will email for less important things and try not to bother Dave unnecessarily for things that can wait.  Michael will also be prepared that some things really do need a quick response and that Dave will call when truly urgent and will make an effort to action those rare items as quickly as possible even if engrossed in a task he would prefer to complete first.

Pace may also change the way you assign tasks to people

Another example is if you are allocating say three tasks to two different people doing the same job description but with different paces, you may choose to give all the tasks to the fast paced person at the same time.  They will then jump around between the tasks for variety.  This will energise them and raise their productivity.

Conversely you may give the other person the same tasks one at a time or at least let them know that they can choose to work on the tasks one at a time so that they don’t feel too stressed.

Why not consider pace as part of the hiring process?

You may even want to consider a person’s pace before you hire them.  If you have a role that requires the successful candidate to focus on one task for longer periods, you might want to know their pace.  If their result was something like 72 that’s probably a red flag that they will find the job taxing.  It doesn’t mean they can’t do it or won’t do it well.  It justs means that they would feel like they have to expend a lot of mental energy in the role.  At the end of the day their chance of burnout is higher and that may not really serve you or your business.

So the more people know about not just their own pace, but also the pace of those around them, the more productivity (and harmonious) your team is likely to be.

If you or your team doesn’t know each other’s natural pace, please go to www.inside80performance to “calculate your pace” to start your journey to your productive best.

And of course if you would like more tips on maximising your team’s productivity while keeping them energised and burnout free please contact Inside 80 Performance.

The post How is your team’s productivity? appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Find the right pace to optimise your output.

It seems that so many people claim to be focused on their output, but in reality more people seem to be interested in the input.  Many people feel the need to “look busy” (and of course spend countless minutes telling you how busy they are) or be seen to be “putting in the hours” and feel as though they are working really hard in order to justify their existence in the workplace and to get ahead.

You have probably found that some of the “busiest” people you know are actually the least productive.

If you are a manager of employees who feel this way then chances are your employees are not at their productive best and you might want to think about reframing your culture.

In actual fact, in order to improve your productivity it’s really important to decrease your effort levels.  That is, working has to feel easier.  I know this may sound counter-intuitive to many but hear me out…………Feeling like you are running the proverbial marathon every day is only going to lead to burnout in some way, shape or form – low productivity is unfortunately your best result from working this way.

Olympic swimmers don’t just get in the pool and start flapping – every aspect of their stroke aims to minimize any unnecessary use of energy.  They don’t get a gold medal for wasting energy kicking really hard, they get a gold medal for getting to the end of the pool first.

It’s the same principle in the workplace.  There is no point turning up to work and just flapping.  The harder you feel you are working – chances are the more your productivity is on the decline.  Bad news I know but the good news is there is an easier way to improve your output without feeling like you’re killing yourself.

When trying to decrease your effort levels at work there is no one-size-fits all approach.  One of the easiest ways to tailor your approach is to be familiar with you natural pace.

Knowing your natural pace and trying to work more closely towards it will decrease the amount of effort you are putting into your day.  The good news is that once you work with your natural pace instead of against it, your productivity will increase and your effort levels will decrease.

So what is natural pace?

Just as some athletes are built for sprinting and others are built for endurance distances, we all like to operate at different paces.  Some people naturally like to operate at a faster pace.  These are the people who if even if they are under no time pressure on a Sunday afternoon, are honking at the person in front of them as soon as the traffic lights go green.

Conversely the slower paced people are ones who at the same set of traffic lights think “relax – an extra three seconds really won’t make a huge difference to your life.”

Of course on a scale of 1 – 100 people can fall anywhere in terms of natural pace.

To calculate your natural pace, go to www.inside80performance.com and click on “calculate your pace”.

Which pace is best?

It is important to realize that your natural pace is just perfect – whatever it is.   There is absolutely no right or wrong pace.  The trick becomes how do you use your pace to decrease your effort levels?

Working closer to your natural pace – faster paced people.

Let’s talk about the fast paced people first.  These are generally people who scored above 60 on the introductory pace indicator.

Chances are while you were growing up your parents and school teachers probably kept telling you to “focus”, concentrate” or “avoid all other possible distractions”.  Sound familiar?

Contrary to popular belief, if you fall into this category you actually will be more productive and less likely to suffer burnout if you regularly switch between tasks.  You are better to have a few tasks you are working on at a time and use each of these tasks as a distraction.

Now let’s not confuse this with multi-tasking.  You are still better to focus on one task at a time.  You will just generally find it easier to focus on one task for say 30 minutes and then switch focus to another task for another 30 minutes before jumping back to the first task again.

You will probably find that you prefer to access emails regularly rather than switching them off and only accessing them say twice a day.

And if you fall into this category you certainly have the capacity to be very detailed – don’t let your slower paced friends tell you otherwise.  The difference is you prefer to do this for shorter periods rather than longer periods.

Working closer to your natural pace – slower paced people.

If you scored below 40 on the indicator you are at the other extreme where you prefer to focus on one task for longer periods of time.  You generally prefer to see a task through to the end before starting the next task.

You were probably very popular with parents and school teachers as the ability to concentrate for longer periods was generally looked upon quite favorably.

In your case, it is certainly better to try to decrease your distractions outside the task you are working on as constant interruptions may leave you feeling a bit frazzled and will certainly increase your effort levels while having the opposite result on your productivity.

For example – contrary to your faster paced friends, you may find it better to switch off your email and only access it twice a day at a time that is convenient – say upon completion of a task.

No one solution for everyone

Being aware of your natural pace and working more closely to it is a key way to increasing your productivity and most importantly reducing your effort levels.  It is a different way of thinking to the old belief that everyone should decrease all possible distractions in order to maximize productivity.

If you are interested in more tips around how to work more closely to your natural pace and increasing your output while decreasing your input please go to www.inside80performance.com

The post Is your output as high as it could be? appeared first on AdviserVoice.