Performance Culture - The four key pillars explained.

Without the buy in of your individual team members, your team or organisation will not perform…. period! So how do you build an environment and culture that breeds growth, trust, confidence, teamwork and results?

Accountability - Values & Results

A strong set of values is an absolute must for any successful sports or business team. CEO’s, managers, coaches and team leaders must challenge the individual team members to demonstrate that they are being true to these values through the actions they take. The team values drive behaviours and the decision making processes. The open and transparent manager/leader needs to celebrate and share successes, making the values a prominent piece of recognition for living the values in a specific way. This also ensures values are part of the everyday. That said, people also need to be made accountable for not adhering to the organisations values. This breeds credibility to the values and team goals against the actual results that they are achieving.

Secondly, results the team are going after, should not be sugar coated. Being clear and having a perfect understanding from your team about the long-term goals and set outcomes (results) brings an achievement mindset. Regular reaffirmations of the values will support their achievement. Accountability drives the expectation of your desired results, meaning that your teams, and your, behaviours must support your values.

This is the 101 of Performance Culture.

Focused Communication

Communications throughout a team that are consistent, intentional and reinforces culture, are non-negotiable. This isn't putting up posters, sending ‘team lead’ emails and creating motivational slogans for people to see. Whats meant by this term is delivering consistent, factual and meaningful communication over time.

Creating and communicating a vision with individual expectations as well as creating a consistent performance language, takes mental strength and resilience. Reinforcing this shift in how and what you communicate, widens the door for open & constructive ‘critical’ conversations. These elements all need to be embedded into the teams fabrics with everyone operating to these standards and values daily.

Consistency in the performance language used and the pattern of relevant messaging is often the area that lets a team or organisation down. A message may have to be delivered in a hundred different ways, to a hundred different people, but when a culture is finally planted in the final few, the hard work has been worth it. Never try to predict how long it will take to truly embed a culture throughout a team

Leaders must be able to breathe this culture, as everyone else will look to you as a flag barer of it. This is a very powerful way to demonstrate the culture through your own behaviour. This takes a lot of discipline usually, something that a well cultured leader and their team must embrace.

Growth Environment & Mentality

High achieving organisations, teams and companies understand the importance of investing in, training of and retaining quality staff to achieve their horizon goals. Teams and those responsible for larger scaled performance teams, constantly spend time re-adjusting & planning what ‘learning’ and ‘development’ signifies and looks like in the context of their team or business.

The world-beaters at this, ensure they get the right people in the right places and orientate their leadership and skillset development to the teams goals and visions. High performing teams and organisations also invest time into learning processes and do not treat them as as ad hoc events. The culture of learning needs to be company-wide with owners, CEO’s, managers and leaders also getting involved, not just the players, athletes or workers.

When we play or work in a learning environment culture, one of the most powerful things it removes is the need for blame. By creating this kind of culture, a growth mindset is instilled throughout the team, learning from mistakes or setbacks & finding solutions to challenges or problems.

Key outcomes & desired results are the product of this, with individuals and teams consistently delivering more to keep them ahead of the game.

Mastery in Execution

Building a winning or results driven culture requires effort and creation of an environment where others can achieve. A skill and responsibility of a manager or leader. Building positive and winning habits, routines and culture has a huge impact on engagement and morale from the team, but more importantly, key results when they are needed.

The creation of this environment and opportunity for succinct team work, support and mentoring, pressure mangement and progress, aligns business systems to support that desired culture. Failing to align the systems can prove a massive obstacle as people need to operate in these systems every day.

With everything in place, the platform is set for excellence in execution, with accomplished performing teams mastering the art of delivering those results consistently when the pressure is on and when those results are expected.