A Cup of Leadership CaffeineWarning, this post has been rated “I” for Intense by the Leadership Bloggers Association due to graphic intensity, strong and slightly colorful language and frequent cajoling to get it in gear and get moving.  It’s also been rated “M” for excessive Comingling of Metaphors in an attempt to make a point.

A fair number of leaders that I encounter are busy floating along on the current created by the urgent daily events in the workplace. This never-ending flow of “stuff to do” numbs their leadership senses and dulls their performance edges as weeks and months and quarters give way to more weeks, months and quarters.  It’s like sitting in the leadership equivalent of a lazy river at the local water park.

It’s time to quit doing everything and getting nothing important done in the process.

The best leaders that I know refuse to let the daily flow of activities derail them from their primary mission of driving results by helping people drive results.

These performance-focused leaders are intense.  They engage with a purpose and view every encounter with an employee or a team as an opportunity to learn, to evaluate, to teach and to improve.

You know these characters.  They are the ones that get things done and leave their people stronger and smarter in the process. They are also the ones that all of the motivated people want to work for in an organization.  While they may not exude warmth or encourage group hugs, they do exude a sense of caring for the people that strive, learn and push the envelope on performance.

One of the keys to becoming a performance-focused leader is to master the art of asking the right questions. Constantly.  These leaders engage with a purpose and maintain a high Questions to Comments ratio at all times.  This high ratio allows them to learn, evaluate and identify opportunities to teach all at  the same time.

Remember, they seek to understand, to evaluate and to teach and ultimately to impact performance.

To understand a performance-focused leader and the constant questioning, you need to understand the questions running through their minds:

  • How does this issue tie to our strategy?  Does it change anything?  Does it offer new options?
  • How hard and how thoroughly has this individual thought through the issue at hand?  Has he/she connected the issue to our strategy?
  • How complete is the proposed solution?
  • How can I coach this person?  Is there real-time feedback to offer here?  Is there a coachable opportunity?
  • Is this individual earning my trust and the trust of teammates?
  • Have my repeated encounters with this person raised a red flag?
  • Have I just learned something that I did not know?

And many more.

One performance-focused leader described her every encounter with her colleagues as an opportunity to determine whether she was doing her job.  “If they have a good grasp of the situation and have a well-developed idea or solution that aligns with our core strategies, then I’ve done something right.  If the individual is weak in any of those areas, then I’ve failed to educate and support properly and chance are other people are struggling with the same lack of knowledge or insight.  That’s a sign that I need to step it up.”

And while my intense, performance-focused leader might sound like a passionless automaton…a Leadership Terminator, focused on search and destroy, that is not the case.  They’ve learned to engage with a purpose without being jerks.

6 Suggestions for Improving Your Ability to Engage with Purpose

1.  Recognize the “Lazy River” syndrome that dominates our days. It usually starts with our willful submission to the tyranny of the calendar.  We allow our days to be filled with meaningless chatter in endless meetings where people debate trivial nuances instead of hard issues.  Regain control of your calendar and fill it with activities that focus on the right priorities.  Or don’t fill it all.  Leave it open enough to engage and observe your people and teams in all variety of settings.

2.  Set the right priorities. They include items that deal with creating value, building competitive advantage, innovating and winning.  Assess your own priorities and the priorities of your team members by attempting to connect activities to value creation with no more than one or two degrees of separation.

3.  Teach your team members the questions that you want them to ask as they fight through their days.  Does this fit?  Is it a priority?  Can I see how it either creates value or will help someone create value?  Teach them your questions.

4.  Ask the same questions at every encounter. People will learn what’s important.

5.  Do something with what you learn from asking the right questions. See also the memo that says your priority is to drive results by helping people drive results.  Start helping more and being an obstacle less.

6.  Resist the “results at all costs” temptation. While this entire post is about driving results, as soon as you cross the white line of effective, people-focused, respectful professional leadership practices and enter the “ends justifies the means zone,” you’ve sold your leadership soul.  Don’t go there.

The Bottom-Line

Time is precious and leading is a privilege.  No one can afford to squander either the time or the privilege that they’ve been entrusted to execute.  Walk in the door with a sense of purpose.  Create and instill this sense of purpose in the people around you and drain the water out of the Leadership Lazy River.  You and your team can do better.  Today.