Managing for Peak Performance
Managing for Peak Performance
Managing for Peak Performance
How can managers bring out the best in their people? This seems to be the number one challenge: keeping people actively engaged and challenged by their jobs.
How do some managers seem to have a knack for kindling peak performance in people, while others complain they're stuck with zombies?
Most managers want their people to achieve excellence at work. We really can't ask for more.
In fact, peak performance can be defined as a combination of:
Excellence
Consistency
Ongoing improvement
To achieve peak performance, each person must find the right job, tasks and conditions that match his or her strengths. Facilitating the right fit therefore becomes one of a manager's most crucial responsibilities. While every employee has the potential to deliver peak performance, it's up to the manager to find ways to make it happen.
It's easy to spot peak performance when it happens. It's what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008). Employees who work at optimum levels experience a state of "flow," typically losing themselves in a project, meeting or discussion. They may lose track of time or where they are.
Each of us has relished such moments, but it's hard to purposely replicate "flow" experiences. Many managers struggle to find the right words to rekindle motivation in people who have lost their enthusiasm.
It's even more frustrating for managers when they know their people are capable and talented, but are just going through the motions like zombies, without enthusiasm or joy.
Two Sides of the Disengagement Coin
Disengaged employees often appear to lack commitment. In reality, many of them crave re-engagement. No one enjoys working without passion or joy.
While many factors cause disengagement, the most prevalent is feeling overwhelmed (or, conversely, underwhelmed). Disconnection and overload pose obstacles to performance, yet they often go undetected or ignored because neither qualifies as a disciplinary issue.
Meanwhile, managers try to work around such problems, hoping for a miraculous turnaround or spark that reignites energy and drive. They try incentives, empowerment programs or the management fad du jour.
While it's impossible to spark flow moments all day long, you can greatly improve your ability to help others achieve peak performance. You don't need carrots or sticks.
You can't sprint to peak performance, the brain needs careful management and rest. Brain science tells us that as knowledge workers, we need to manage our thinking minds with care.
You cannot expect a human being to sit at a desk for hours and produce quality work without providing these essential elements:
Food
Rest
Human engagement
Physical movement and exercise
Challenge
We often forget that thinking is hard work. If you work too many hours, your brain's supply of neurotransmitters will be depleted, and you won't be able to sustain top performance. Without proper care, the brain will underperformand brain fatigue mimics disengagement and lack of commitment.
Peak performance also depends on how we feel: hopeful, in control, optimistic and grateful. We need to know that we're appreciated.
What do you think about this? If you're a manager, are you providing optimal working conditions for your people to find flow moments in their work? Are you bringing out the best in them?
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