Safety Nets For Leadership and High Performance

Author: Dave Crisp

10 Apr

Both leadership and high performance arise from the same principles. The Hay Group, best known for the Hay System for evaluating jobs and pay levels, also studies leadership, for example: HERE. One of their recent studies shows companies who develop leaders best provide a space for mistakes to be made in relative safety. They rotate potential leaders among challenging jobs early so mistakes are learning experiences and not career-ending. Trial and error is the best teacher, but the risk of errors can seem too high unless a boss or organization makes it clear they won’t be, that people are expected to try and sometimes to fail.

Susan Annunzio, author of Contagious Success (www.contagious-success.com), who heads the Hudson Highland Center for High Performance for High Performance, makes the same point. Effective leaders buffer their staff from the organization’s fault-finding tendencies to encourage their people to take moderate risks and try new ideas.

Leaders and high performers first and foremost have to learn to take risks. Nothing new or extraordinary can be created without facing uncertainty. To produce exceptional results requires new thinking, which, by definition, isn’t recognized as sound by others. Everyone is ready to say I told you so when things go wrong as they sometimes inevitably must. Bosses and organizations that recognize this make sure people understand that it’s normal and OK.

A dictatorial boss who is ready to blame their staff whenever things go wrong and fire people to cover mistakes made in their departments hasn’t learned this instantly stifles creative effort. Fear permeates such teams or organizations. Cover your *** is the order of the day. Copies pile up of self-serving documentation proving someone else approved everything, but even worse they ensure no one ever risks giving approval. Entire organizations or just single departments can be paralyzed by such fearful "leadership."

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