Earlier in my career at one of the world’s great companies, Panasonic, I worked for a gentleman that taught me a valuable lesson about business and about leading that I carry with me to this day.

We had embarked on some ambitious new product development and growth plans and were struggling with a fair number of uncharacteristic but vexing software quality problems.  I would from time to time sit down with the group manager, a man that I’ll call Sam, and I would painstakingly describe the problems I was seeing in advancing our business.

Sam was a good listener and he would nod his head, stare out the window deep in thought and when I was finished, he would sit back in his chair and close his eyes…in obvious contemplation of the very challenges that I had just outlined (or so I thought).

After a few minutes of silence…and I was sure the silence was needed to let his great brain process on the issues, he would leap out his chair, smile at me and say, “But Art-san, the solution is simple.”  And with that, he would walk away, usually at a brisk pace.

I only had to experience this situation twice in order to appreciate the two deep lessons that I had learned from these encounters. 

First, I learned that it was a complete waste of time to bounce these problems off of Sam!

And second, I realized that he was right. We tend to take complicated situations and look for complicated solutions when most of the answers are pretty clear.  They may not be easy to implement, but they are usually clear.  Indirectly, Sam had given me a valuable lesson in Management by Occam’s Razor!

The 6 C’s: Your Leadership and Performance Power Tools

The same lesson goes for leading.  While there are no silver bullets for becoming an effective leader, there are in my opinion Six Power Tools that a leader can use to improve his or her effectiveness and drive performance excellence. 

1. Context: people do their best work when they can link their efforts and contributions to a bigger cause.  Ensure that your team understands your firm’s core strategies; leverage the power of a clear vision to provide high-level context and constantly involve everyone in providing input back into strategy.  And don’t forget to feed people’s hunger for results and progress updates. 

2. Connection: related to context, study after study shows the important human need to be connected and to feel valued and appreciated.  As a leader, pay attention to your people; empathize with their issues and give them the respect of asking for their input and listening to their concerns. You will promote strong performance if you establish a personal connection with your team members.

3. Credibility: people and teams do their best work for leaders that they respect.  My own research indicates that many leaders shoot themselves in one or both feet by not backing words with actions, by not treating people with respect and by not paying attention.  Treat every encounter as an opportunity for you to strengthen your credibility. 

4. Conditions: your principal job is to create the environment for your people to succeed.  It’s as simple as surrounding yourself with great individuals and then working unceasingly to do everything possible to ensure their success.  Focus on creating a high performance environment where values are clear, feedback is constant, goals are meaningful and accountability is the de facto expectation for and from every member.

5. Customer Connection: it doesn’t matter whether our customer is internal or external, we do our best work when we are armed with a clear understanding of how our efforts will enable our customers to succeed.

6. Communication:  master the art of feedback—this is your most powerful communication and performance tool.  Maintain a Questions to Comments ratio that helps you understand at a deep level, and when it is time for you to be understood, provide context and link your communications to vision, strategy and customer. 

As another career mentor once indicated to me in a slightly awkward but nonetheless meaningful phrase, “You will be as successful as you are able to communicate.”

The Bottom-Line:

So, you are concerned about high performance and improving as a leader.

It’s simple.