Performance is a choice.
This is our aspiration for everyone. This is what we are working towards being true.
We play our part, every day, helping customers understand the power of these four words, but also in appreciating the responsibility required to make these words as true as possible for everyone we’re privileged to work with.
Performance is a choice and that choice is a lot easier when…
– You understand the difference between performance and results, and the way in which the two concepts are related.
– You’ve had the opportunity to realise that you’ve got what it takes to carry out your role with confidence and ambition, which will result in you performing to your own strengths and recipe.
– You’re fully focused on the conditions that you’re performing in and ready to choose the best approach to preparing yourself and delivering a performance within those conditions.
– You’ve taken the time to create connections of expertise, value, understanding and expectation of the people that you work most closely with and perform alongside on a day-to-day basis.
– You know you are valued and valuable, and you have the explicit support and permission of key people around you to seek to excel.
– Your basic human needs to feel a sense of autonomy, competence and belonging are strongly present in your life.
For some people these things are true and have been a consistent feature of their life experience, allowing them to develop and grow, unencumbered by adverse systems and structures. For many others, performance is a tougher choice – sometimes much tougher.
So what?
We believe that any leader who has had the benefit of these favourable playing conditions also has a responsibility to ensure that colleagues, teammates and co-workers who haven’t been naturally afforded these same privileges do not have to continue their pursuit of personal performance excellence encumbered by those environmental factors that they face through no choice of their own.
Thinking about – and then acting upon your answers to a few simple questions will help level up the performance playing field and give more people a place on the same performance start line:
1. Who do I work with for whom it’s a lot tougher to show up as themselves?
2. Who do I work with who hasn’t been given opportunities because they don’t fit the accepted image of a performer in this world?
3. Who around me do I see making the same choices as others who are not like them, but are given different labels for their behaviour?
4. Who can I open doors for that swing easy for me but are closed to them?
5. Who can I champion and give a lift to?
6. Who can I ensure feels valued and valuable?
7. Who can I celebrate for their difference?