31 minute read
CREATING REAL BEHAVIOR CHANGE
By Dr. Britt Andreatta
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The global pandemic has driven unprecedented change that will unfold for years. Learning professionals have already helped their organizations through waves of change, but more are yet to come as people reunite and reimagine how work gets done.
Given that people naturally resist change, this imperative is no small undertaking. People’s resistance has manifested as exhaustion and anxiety. Shifting to survival mode and online work has taken a toll on employees, who feel the strain of trying to connect and collaborate with colleagues from afar. The likely return to office spaces doesn’t necessarily ease worries, especially as workers now favor hybrid work and are willing to seek it elsewhere.
The good news is that humans are wired to survive challenging circumstances and grow to become their best selves. With that in mind, learning professionals are uniquely positioned to help their organizations give people the skills needed to adapt and thrive. By understanding the human brain, learning leaders can help their organizations drive meaningful behavioral change.
HOW THE BRAIN GETS ACTIVATED BY CHANGE
Change is a journey, not an event. The reason 50-70% of change initiatives fail is that typical approaches to managing change don’t take into account human biology and that people are wired to resist change. But once learning professionals understand the four brain structures activated by change, they can mitigate their effects, increasing people’s adaptability and resilience.
The Amygdala Sees Change as Potential Danger
Connected to all major sensory nerves, the amygdala is designed to detect threats and launch the fight-flight-freeze response to help people survive. It is constantly scanning the environment looking for any change that signals an impending threat. Biologically wired to see any change as potentially threatening, people will assume the worst until shown otherwise. The survival instinct is so strong that people are influenced by other people’s fear. In organizations, a few people spreading “doom and gloom” perspectives can amp up the entire group’s fear and distress.
Changing Locations or Teams Activates the Entorhinal Cortex
The entorhinal cortex serves as our internal GPS, making mental maps of physical surroundings and social networks to help people successfully navigate them. Many workplace changes, like
new workstations or office layouts, disrupt employees’ mental maps. The same is true when people’s professional networks are affected by change like an M&A or reorganization. People invest in developing professional relationships, building trust and rapport over time. Many change initiatives erase the results of that effort, forcing people to start over and experience mental and physical fatigue as the brain makes those updates.
The Basal Ganglia Turns New Behaviors into Habits
The basal ganglia is responsible for turning frequent behaviors into habits. It shifts the activity from requiring concentration to something people can do on autopilot. On average, it takes 40-50 repetitions of a new behavior to form a habit. Change initiatives usually require employees to shift from welldeveloped habit loops to new behaviors that are awkward and uncomfortable. Simply put, people must concentrate until they sufficiently learn the new cues and routines, which takes time and energy. Often, organizations ask people to go through a change without giving them the support or time needed to build those repetitions.
LEARNING PROS:
Get Smarter About Driving Change
By leveraging brain science, learning pros can help everyone in the organization move through change effectively, despite being biologically wired to resist it:
• Executives and senior leaders with the strategic view of the organization need skills for designing effective change and creating a culture of resilience.
• Managers responsible for leading their teams through change initiatives need to communicate effectively. They also need the EQ to navigate employee resistance and keep people motivated.
• Employees need to be supported and motivated to embrace change in a way that harnesses the power of the brain’s wiring.
The Habenula Can Drive Reluctance for Future Change
The habenula controls decision-making and actions using chemical guardrails to moderate behavior. When a person does something right – like successfully completing a project – the brain releases the “feel-good” chemicals dopamine and serotonin as a reward. When a person makes a poor choice, the habenula restricts the flow of those chemicals, eliciting a bad feeling. It suppresses motivation and nudges the person away from the source of the failure. Because most change initiatives fail on some level – think over-budget or behind schedule – people become more reluctant to embrace change over time, which can ultimately impact the organization’s ability to hit its strategic goals.
Change Fatigue
Change fatigue is the lingering mental and physical tiredness people feel when they cannot keep up with the pace or volume of change coming their way. Overlapping changes – such as continual adjustments to the pandemic – strain someone’s ability to successfully cope. Signs of change fatigue in the workplace include disengagement, exhaustion, absenteeism, confusion, conflict and cynicism. Organizations commonly see a decline in performance, even among top performers. Because the human body cannot sustain unending change, employees often disengage since caring less about their job and workplace means they don’t feel as affected by it. Employees also learn how to “play the change game” by looking like they are participating without truly expending much energy. In turn, leaders mistakenly believe change is happening.
PROVEN WAYS TO ENHANCE EMPLOYEE ADAPTABILITY
Given all the ways the brain affects how people cope with change, it’s smart to develop strategies that account for those natural responses. The following strategies can be applied in different combinations during times of change.
Map Out the What and Why
Employees are much more likely to reach the desired destination when they understand where they’re going and why.
• Explain the change and reason for it.
Knowing the “why” helps the amygdala perceive change as less threatening and
helps employees anticipate potential gains in the future. The more they understand the purpose and personal benefits, the sooner employees can shift their focus.
• Explain how the organization will arrive
at the destination. Include milestones and signposts along the way to help people stay on track and feel a sense of progress and accomplishment. Taking the entorhinal cortex into account, create visual maps of places and people to address impacts on the physical workspace and social networks.
• Explain the habits and behaviors
employees need to change. Get specific about what employees should do and say. Use learning events to give people the opportunity to practice and build up to the needed 40-50 repetitions. are resistant to change. The more their effort is rewarded — whether with high fives, encouragement like “Good job!”, or prizes — the more quickly their brains will adapt to change. Plus, the brain sees rewards as part of the habit loop, encouraging it to replicate the behavior
Foster a Culture of Trust and Empathy
Because change can be a disruptive and difficult process that triggers worry, anxiety and fear — and moving through change requires risk-taking and vulnerability — building a team culture of trust and empathy is key.
• Start with empathy. Since the transition aspect of change is so emotional, empathy is critical. While it can be challenging to identify with others’ feelings of anxiety, frustration, and fear, leaders can learn to show empathy in meaningful ways.
• Create psychological safety. Harvard researcher Dr. Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up with questions, concerns or mistakes. It is a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” As such, it allows for vulnerability and builds trust.
• Empower social connections. Since change can impact the social maps built by the brain, identify when and where people’s social connections are likely to be new, strained or erased. Help build them up quickly by creating social experiences in a relaxed setting, or through formal team-building exercises.
• Practice patience. Patience is crucial when leading change. Leaders should find ways to stay grounded, maintain a sense of humor, and coach and support each other.
Change comes in all forms, from the small and annoying to massive shifts triggered by a global pandemic. By understanding the human brain, learning professionals can help their organizations drive real behavior change that paves the way for enhanced adaptability and a thriving workplace.
SIGNS OF CHANGE FATIGUE AT WORK
Motivate with Recognition and Rewards
Motivation is important for combatting the brain’s natural resistance to change, helping address the various emotions that are part of the transition.
• Center on purpose. People are motivated by three things: Purpose, autonomy (the ability to be selfdirected) and mastery (the opportunity to get better at things), according to
Dan Pink’s book Drive. Since autonomy and mastery can be threatened during change, it’s even more important to connect change to a larger purpose.
• Shift from goals to problem-solving.
Most change plans rarely unfold as expected, leading to a series of failures. To avoid this, frame each phase of the initiative as an exercise in problem-solving, allowing employees to be active participants. By activating the reward-seeking part of the brain, each solution to a problem translates to success.
• Recognize effort and progress.
Communicating and celebrating progress gives employees a boost and is especially helpful for those who • Apathetic and emotionally
“checked out.”
• Lack of energy, staring into space, sleeping at work.
• Leaving work early or taking more sick days.
• Using poor judgment and making poor decisions.
• Rising tension and conflict between individuals and groups.
• Growing complaints, skepticism and resistance.
Dr. Britt Andreatta is an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background in leadership, neuroscience, psychology and education to create brain-science-based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. Britt is the former CLO for Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning), and she has over 10 million views worldwide of her online courses. Email Britt.
Picture this: A training session is about to start. About 10 minutes before class is set to begin, a huge rush of people enters the room. Some participants start wandering about looking for a seat, others head straight for the restroom or the coffeemaker. Inevitably, whenever your training is scheduled for one department or for a larger “all-hands” training, one will begin to see that participants tend to sit next to the people they already know, filling in the back row of seats. And then there is always that group making their presence known — talking loudly, laughing and claiming a whole table as their “kingdom.” So, you take a deep breath and think to yourself — here we go again.
If this training scenario has ever happened to you (or maybe it’s just been our experience), we have a strategy to alleviate some of the uncertainty, allowing the trainer to focus on the training. As our scenario illustrates, the learners are already looking for guidance, and they’ve only just set foot in your classroom. How do you handle it? What should you do first? Welcome the introverted, quiet ones or introduce yourself to the alphas within the group? You already know that there are personality differences amongst your learners, but what about their life experiences?
Luckily for our fellow L&D professionals, we have some tried-and-true ways to foster greater interaction among participants. It is a known reality that learners are diverse, so why not capitalize on one of the critical elements of diversity: varied backgrounds, especially professional experience, even if the experience is in various industries. Organizations that want to be leaders in training and development are keenly aware that they must prepare their training programs with perhaps the greatest age variation that has ever existed in the workplace, not to mention the usual challenges of coping with varied career experience, motivational factors and multiple training and development paths. Our strategy, then, is to utilize this reality to both foster greater participation and to drive our training objectives.
This article presents a facilitation technique which can be added into any company’s training toolbox. Here are three areas on which this article will focus:
How to utilize a round-robin technique to add networking opportunities and skills, while also showcasing the varied level of experience and expertise in the training session.
Illustrate how this technique enables each participant a chance to engage with co-workers he or she may not otherwise be able to interact with on a daily basis (or even at all, depending on how large the organization is).
Share how employees may benefit from the variety of perspectives in the training session.
The Technique
Typically, a round-robin is facilitated like a tournament, challenge or competition, where each person has the opportunity to play with or against one another. Some trainers use it as a teach-back, or even to train on a certain procedure or process where each participant must fill in the next or missing step in a procedure. “Evil” but effective. In addition, a round-robin training strategy is an excellent technique to use group settings whenever a trainer wants the participants to generate ideas.
In our case, we wanted participants to share their experiences in order to generate possible solutions to some company challenges. Our round-robin technique allows each learner to gain additional perspectives from one another, regardless of their experiences or exposure to the training topic. Although three categories of employee experiences tend to be used most often in our strategy, this facilitation strategy is flexible and allows for multiple applications to be utilized within an organization.
When using this facilitation technique, it is important, as a best practice, to use the experiences and backgrounds most appropriate to the organization and to the training session’s learning objectives. We see our facilitation strategy as a “fresh take” on the classic round-robin:
The goal: To foster multiple perspectives on a given training topic, especially effective at training sessions which are focused on problem-based scenarios, solution-generation or for strategic planning.
The strategy: To deliberately group the learners — prior to when the training session begins, which is a key element to this strategy’s effectiveness. This is done by mindfully pre-grouping participants by their experience level prior to a training session, instead of letting the participants sit next to the coworker whom they know so well.
The result: A more organic interaction can be cultivated, which can yield a collaborative approach to problem-solving.
This strategy is based off of one of Malcolm Knowles’ theories on adult learners. Active participation in planned experiences — such as discussions or problem-solving exercises, an analysis of those experiences and their application to work or life situations — should be the core methodology for training adults. Adults learn and retain information more easily if they can relate it to their past experiences.
The Categories
The learner’s experience can be divided into three categories: new hire, midlevel and senior-level. These are the three categories which have worked in our experience. However, this training strategy does not necessarily involve grouping or ranking by job title, nor does it need to be by organization levels within the company:
New hire: Someone who is new to organization. This can range from an employee who is new to both his or her career and to the company/industry. Experience can be up to two years.
Mid-level: Someone who may have many years’ experience within the company/industry, yet new to your company. Experience can range from two to 10 years.
Senior-level: Someone with vast experience both within the organization and industry. Experience is typically more than 10 years.
The best way to group by experience is to know the experience of the learner prior to attending the training session. This information can be acquired by a registration form and then arranged as much as possible into triads, with one learner representing each of the experience levels. In an ideal world, each group would have at least representative. However, this is rarely the case. The groups might end up being one senior-level with two newbies. Or a group may only have midlevel experienced learners. And that’s okay: Just know that, as a trainer, you may have to offer additional support and guidance to those groups that don’t have a more “seasoned” learner.
If you don’t have or can’t get the participants’ experience levels prior to class, you can have each learner identify themselves and situate each group in a
different area of the training room. You can then pick a representative from each group to form a more balanced triad. Again, you may end up with some lopsided experienced groups, but the end result is to get varied experiences. Even if their years of experience may be similar, they may have different perspectives from job location or interaction with mentors and/or leadership.
The Rationale
Why does this deliberate grouping work? The “newbie” or new hire brings a fresh set of eyes. For example, the newbie may simply ask the question, “why?” or ask the reasoning behind a course of actions they are supposed to take. The mid-level person may have just encountered the topic scenario and can describe what she or he did to resolve or complete the task at hand. The mid-level learners may also be able to recall their first experiences on the job and may even be able to provide advice along the lines of “Here’s what I wish someone told me my first day on the job.” And the participants with the most experience can offer what they have learned over the years and how their knowledge of the training topic, skills and abilities morphed with each encounter. These learners will usually be the ultimate example of “learn from my mistakes” and can even act as a mentors or guides to the other learners.
The Benefits
Here are a few of the possible benefits of using this facilitation strategy at your next training event. Our round-robin strategy:
Fosters the known benefits of peer collaboration and peer learning.
Increases employees’ networking skills.
Encourages all participants to share their unique expertise.
Enhances the company’s learning culture.
A great way to determine if the collaborative learning experience worked (or not!) is to ask about it on the course evaluation or learning survey. The statement could be written as an agree/ disagree statement or based on a Likert scale. The results can then be shared electronically with leadership. However, we have found the best way to get learners’ reactions is to build a discussion around the experience. Comments from past training sessions have been everything from, “I learned so much just talking to my other teammates,” to “I’ve been doing this job for so long I forgot all about the little stuff and why I do it a certain way.”
As L&D professionals, we know the value of our training programs and we strive for the learner to gain new perspectives, knowledge and skill sets. So, it’s critical that every learner be engaged, from the new hire to the learner who is about to retire. The efficacy of this facilitation strategy is that it purposefully fosters and encourages learners sharing and utilizing their vast experiences to solve challenges or to create new opportunities for their organization. Moreover, by building the training session on a solid foundation of learning objectives aligned to the organization’s goals, the stage is set for a successful training event. As we know all too well, without setting the objectives in place on the front-end, neither the employee nor the company will see the connection, let alone appreciate the value of the training event.
Trent Bartholomew, M.Ed., CPTM, has 30 years of experience in learning and development, and is the lead instructional designer and course manager for the System Safety & Technical Training Department at Amtrak. Nicole Koval, M.S.Ed., is a passionate learning and development professional with a knack for instructional design and problemsolving. Nicole is a technical training consultant with a local utility company. Email Trent and Nicole.
Enhanced learning. Engaged working.
The world has witnessed unprecedented changes due to the pandemic. Businesses have been affected on a global scale: Those operating through the new normal a year ago have now embraced it as a way of life defined by remote working, hybrid work and more.
Learning and development (L&D) professionals worldwide know that the old methods of embedding knowledge are no longer as effective as they used to be — many external factors have now significantly impacted the way employees improve their knowledge.
Can training take a backseat in this new reality? The answer is no. Training is now more paramount than ever before.
Learners must now manage new events and situations which never would have arisen earlier. Teams need to be abreast of the latest updates, procedures, policies and best practices.
Training once a month or once a quarter will not work. Many organizations need more employees to be trained daily. However, getting employees to learn daily is easier said than done.
And employees will not enjoy a daily dose of training unless it is bite-sized, relevant, fun and something that can help them in the moment of need.
Microlearning fits the bill perfectly and can be used to create continuous learning journeys that help your learners develop themselves continuously.
What is a Continuous Learning Journey?
To put it simply, apart from the core training that learners partake in, they also need repetition to help them remember the concepts.
Why does training need to be repeated in smaller doses? The reason is the forgetting curve. People either ignore or forget a large amount of data. The forgetting curve explains how people tend to forget the material they learned over a period of time. For example, seven days after a given training, the learner will retain less than 20 percent of what he or she learned.
Training programs need to be designed to allow for continuous learning by reinforcing the key information in smaller bites. Periodic reinforcement through regular interventions using smaller “learning nuggets” helps bridge the gap created by the forgetting curve.
Continuous learning helps learners recall their training and apply it on the job.
Delivering Better Experiences That Lead to Better Retention of Learning
Traditionally, we have used printed job aids and displayed them in work areas, and it has worked! However, today’s learners must internalize a lot more information than will fit on a flyer to keep pace with the competition. Being digitally savvy, they prefer the learning to be available at their convenience — at the workplace or outside. They can learn while they are commuting to the office or in the field waiting for customers. Learning must be made available to them at their fingertips.
So, how are the typical learning programs rolled out?
For example, an induction program will have a combination of instructor-led training or virtual training and eLearning. They are all combined over two to seven days or more in some industries. After the induction program is completed, the participants are handed reading material and expected to know and understand the materials without any other intervention.
Another example would be that of new people managers. They are provided with classroom or eLearning material and expected to manage people efficiently immediately after that.
Is he or she ready immediately after a course to manage people efficiently?
As mentioned earlier, after a week or so, the learner tends to forget the majority of their training — but they are still expected to be optimally efficient. That can lead to a mismatch of expectations. To address the challenge, the L&D or HR teams must get in the driver’s seat and continuously equip learners with what they need. This is where continuous learning helps in bridging the gap.
How to Deliver Continuous Learning Experiences
When you build new programs or revise your existing programs, consider continuous reinforcement using microlearning approaches:
Before and after the training for easy consumption.
Build them quickly with a focus on real-time applications.
Sustain that for a specified period to help learners build mastery.
Ensure availability on any device.
Next, we will see how microlearning interventions can be designed and delivered as part of the continuous learning journey.
Various forms of microlearning interventions include:
LEARNING NUGGETS: Bite-sized
interventions, each addressing one learning objective. There can be multiple learning nuggets for a specific competency.
LEARNING ACTIVITIES: Trigger activities
such as going through a PDF and answering a question, researching a topic and submitting a note on the topic. You can also add crossword puzzles or other brain teasers to the mix.
VIDEOS: Videos built using infographics, motion graphics or with whiteboard animation.
QUESTIONS: Two to three questions per learning nugget. Also, stand-alone quizzes to support the learning.
GAME-BASED ACTIVITIES: One game-
based activity per competency per level (so to attain a level, one game-based activity can be designed).
Continuous learning can also be implemented as memory boosters (short nuggets based on the courses that are administered earlier). These features are generally available in LMSs, LXPs and microlearning platforms, and can be utilized by organizations to implement microlearning and continuous learning journeys.
An Example of Continuous Learning
Induction and onboarding are crucial for an employee to understand an organization’s culture, its products and services, organization structure, policies and so on. Employees can’t remember everything they heard in the induction and onboarding sessions.
However, induction and onboarding are crucial for employees to feel at home and get the right perspective about organizational work practices. This lays the foundation for employee satisfaction and performance in the long run.
This is where the continuous learning concept can be implemented using microlearning interventions. Microlearning nuggets that talk about the key people of the organization and its key processes can be provided as reinforcement to help the employees recall the information.
Conclusion
These best practices can help to ensure that continuous learning journeys are the way forward in optimal training delivery that leads to better learning and better retention of concepts, thereby leading to better application of learning.
Suresh Kumar is a learning professional with over 16 years of experience in strategizing and providing learning solutions for varied customers across the globe. For the past 5 years, Suresh has been leading Tesseract Learning as its CEO. Email Suresh.
By Steven J. Stowell, Ph.D. Emily Hodgson-Soule, MPC, StePHaniE S. Mead, MBa
Tipping the Scale:
THE SECRETS OF SUPER-PERFORMERS
Organizations everywhere need people at all levels to contribute more value in new ways to strengthen the enterprise and maintain a competitive advantage. The volatility of the business environment in recent years has made the need for toplevel performance from everyone ever more pressing. In most organizations, performance falls along a continuum, with non-performers at one end, superperformers at the other, and reliable, consistent performers in the middle.
Super-performance is a skill that comes naturally to some people, but anyone can be taught how to raise their performance to a higher level — and it has little to do with getting more done. The difference between a steady performer and a superperformer is mindset: The way that work is perceived, approached and executed.
Super-performance is highly subjective and the way that it looks in your organization depends on the role that you fill, but there are some personal characteristics and behaviors that support superior performance across the board and aren’t bound by job-specific rules, expectations or organizational culture.
Although there are many qualities that a super-performer might exhibit, we have chosen to highlight four that we believe are critical in today’s organizations — and give you some ideas for how to nurture learners’ innate strengths and develop their skills in these areas.
PURPOSE-DRIVEN WORK
Super-performers understand how they fit and why they matter in terms of the broader goals of the organization. They have a keen sense of the value they bring to the workplace, know how they can uniquely contribute to the business and care deeply about the success of their team and organization. This drive for holistic success causes them to do their best work. They are proud of what they accomplish with and through others and find great satisfaction in the work that they do each day, regardless of how sophisticated their job might be.
Super-performers work with great drive and intensity, but what is more important is their commitment: They take personal
responsibility for outcomes and the quality of their work, act with greater empowerment and care deeply about the business mission and the contribution they make to it. They view their work not as an extension of their identity but as a reflection on their character.
Being unsure about how you can add greater value to your organization is not uncommon. Help employees discover their own unique purpose within the organization by asking them to take the following steps:
• Reflect on the unique set of skills and experiences that you bring to the organization. Create a comprehensive list. Even skills that don’t seem relevant may add hidden value to the organization’s mission and purpose.
• Understand the longer-term goals of the organization by doing your homework, talking with leadership and really listening to what is being said and done.
• Assess how your experience and abilities intersect with the strategic goals of the organization and the expectations of your role.
TALENT AND SKILL ACQUISITION
Super-performers offer talents in many areas but never stop learning. They seek opportunities to leverage, strengthen and expand their capabilities so that they can contribute to the organization in deeper, more significant ways. They take pride in continuously improving their abilities and challenging themselves to learn more and be better in their current roles, but they also set themselves up for greater influence in the organization in the future.
This is not to say that all superperformers desire a management track; to the contrary, some superperformers are most effective as individual contributors — but they willingly share their knowledge and are often viewed and respected as experts and mentors. Super-performers hone and leverage their strengths but are also keenly aware of their weaknesses. This humility allows them to readily seek feedback, be coachable, learn from others and grow continuously as people and professionals.
Making an honest assessment of your strengths and limitations can be difficult even for people who are profoundly self-aware. To help employees gain a better understanding of what they bring to the table (and some things they may need to work on), ask them to complete the tasks below:
• Ask someone you trust to create a list of your strengths and a list of your development needs. Meet with that person to discuss their perspective and be very open to their feedback and ideas.
• Decide which of the listed items have a bearing on the way you want to work, your career aspirations or your ability to contribute more value to the organization.
• Create development goals for both your strengths and your limitations that will allow you to get to where you want to be. Discuss your goals with your leader or a trusted mentor.
FOCUS, DISCIPLINE AND FORWARD MOMENTUM
Super-performers have a clear understanding of their priorities and focus their attention and efforts on the tasks and projects that will support their larger goals. They are less concerned about the volume of work they do and more focused on how it provides inherent value to the organization. Super-performers spend their time doing the right things rather than more things. They make tradeoffs by weighing the urgency, importance and value of a task against the finite time and physical and mental resources they have available. They use their understanding of the organization’s mission and their own intuition to decide what really needs to be done to move themselves, their teams and the organization forward — and then they get to work.
They have the fortitude to set ideas into motion and the drive to finish what they start, using their situational awareness and knowing instinctively when a given set of conditions may require greater levels of effort, timeliness, precision or care. Super-performers are creative but also extremely disciplined. They know when and where to follow strict rules and use prescribed processes to ensure that they meet their responsibilities with accuracy, efficiency and speed, but they also know when they can improvise in order to increase their output or meet a tight deadline. Many super-performers create their own processes or structure within their workflow, allowing them to move through their responsibilities with greater speed and ease.
With seemingly endless to-do lists, many people in today’s organizations struggle to keep their heads above water. To help employees prioritize their responsibilities and decide where they really need to be spending their time, use the process below for guidance:
• Document your responsibilities and rank their importance in terms of their true value to the organization. Decide what can be deleted, delegated or
• Meet with your leader or a trusted mentor to discuss your streamlined list. Decide together how to prioritize your tasks and then create a stepby-step plan for making progress on those items.
• Decide which disciplines, processes or procedures will help you to focus on your priorities in the most effective way. You may choose to use or modify existing processes or create entirely new ones depending on the situation.
BALANCE, RESILIENCE AND SELF-CARE
Super-performers have an extraordinary work ethic but don’t put themselves at risk of burnout because they understand and respect their limits. Employees are often encouraged to work themselves to the breaking point, and while this may result in short-term gains for the business, the organization and its employees will both experience negative consequences from an overly demanding culture in the longer term.
Super-performers apply their energy in a focused and intentional way, give everything they have to the demands of the job when it’s necessary and then they step back to breathe and take care of themselves. They build up their physical and mental durability by cultivating an optimistic outlook and use that strength and positivity to face enormous tasks or difficult situations with good humor and a healthy response to intense pressure.
When super-performers encounter adversity, meet resistance or make mistakes, they take responsibility for their contribution to whatever has gone wrong, learn from the experience and create a new way forward. Challenges are viewed as puzzles to be solved, not impassable barriers. Nothing will prevent super-performers from reaching their goals, they may just need to get creative to achieve them — and sometimes that means taking some time for themselves. Allowing for personal time and space helps super-performers refill their well of energy and return to work with renewed vitality and drive. Encouraging self-care and building resilience is good for the individual and good for the business.
Physical and mental health are essential components of a productive workforce and a greater quality of life. Here are three ideas to help employees take better care of themselves on and off the job:
• Create a list of things outside of work that bring you joy. Schedule some time in your calendar every week to engage in those activities and be committed to following through.
• Strengthen your ability to focus on what is possible and what can be done rather than what can’t be done. Being in tune with the positive aspects of a situation will give you a more confidence and allow you to find opportunities for growth and change in difficult situations. • Use your time off and make an effort to completely unplug while you’re away.
Equip your colleagues with the skills and authority to handle the workload while you’re out.
Super-performance is about the kind of person you want to be and the life you want to live. No matter where employees currently fall along the continuum, a shift in mindset can boost their contribution and value. Performance excellence has the power to change your life, both personally and professionally — and the benefits of that are immeasurable.
Steven J. Stowell, Ph.D., is the founder and president of CMOE, a leadershipdevelopment and organizationeffectiveness solutions provider. Emily Hodgson-Soule, MPC, is the senior director of program design and development at CMOE. Stephanie S. Mead, MBA, is the executive vice president of CMOE. Email the authors.
TAKEAWAYS
Super-performers are valuable to the organization because they are self-directed and require little formal management. In addition, higher-level leaders often follow the guidance of super-performers because they are talented in so many different areas and are so firmly committed to their work and the mission of the organization. No matter where a person sits in the organization, super-performance is a wanted commodity.
L&D functions play an important role in helping all members of the organization grow into super-performers, offering development tools, training and other resources that support and inspire people to elevate their performance and influence in the organization. In our work, we have seen an intense appetite for insights into improving performance at all levels in all types of organizations.
