Sustaining Business Performance: Leadership Behaviour Does Count

Monday, January 31st, 2011

The fundamental purpose of being in business is to perform at a level which delivers significant results for customers, staff and shareholders. From a people perspective how do you achieve those results but also optimise and sustain them?

When people think about optimising performance and sustaining that performance level, they often imagine a high toll on staff, with staff burnout and high staff turnover.  But what I am discussing below is the opportunity to optimise performance in a way that staff find engaging and inspiring. The purpose of this blog is not to delve into all the detail of how this is achieved, but to pitch the concept of how you can achieve both optimum business performance and happy staff.

If you imagine a graph where the vertical axis represents staff performance and business results and the horizontal axis represents the behaviour (leadership and staff) utilised to deliver those results.  In many organisations the focus is much more on the vertical axis of results. Where this is the case, achieving these results can come at a real cost for the people and ultimately the business when the focus is on what you achieve and not on how you achieve it. A number of unsatisfactory behaviours will tend to creep in and this adversely impacts the culture, and ultimately costs, the business.

In order to optimise business performance you need to equally focus on the performance / results axis, as well as on the leadership and staff behaviour that delivers those results.  How are people communicating, what is the level of openness, trust and respect for example that is being displayed? If there is an issue it will show up in staff engagement surveys, water cooler conversations or staff retention rates as a precursor to showing up in the P & L.

When you get this balance right between what you are achieving and how you are achieving it, business becomes more enjoyable and business performance comes more easily and at a lower cost.

Contact us to improve your business performance through leadership behaviour improvement or return to the Stepshift Leadership Blog for more business advice.