Would you prefer to be on a team that makes you feel inspired to give all you got, or a team where you will be treated the same whether you give your best or your worst performance? Most of us think we prefer the former, but as it turns out, the latter is also important for a high performance team. We may think that treating people the same is unacceptable and tantamount to accepting sub-par performance, but think of it more like a “we are in this together” mantra of a team that is on the brink of breaking new ground, reaching new heights. When conditions are risky, or call for new ways of thinking and acting, it is important for the team to be held together by glue, which is another way of saying, team members need to encourage one another when they fall down. They need to say “get up, keep going, stay focused!” High performance teams recognize outstanding performance without altering respect for every team member.
When we set the conditions for high performance, whether it is in our own lives, or our workplaces, we can only achieve high aims when we allow for variation in performance. When people think of Steve Jobs, they may think of someone who could not tolerate failure and yet, his life not only revealed great variation in performance, more importantly his life exemplified the way in which failure can lead to the next big success. Likewise, high performance teams must examine their own best and worst performance in order to discern what works and doesn’t work.
One way we can frame the performance challenge in 2012 is to first think about creating the conditions to help others feel inspired about the future and a goal big enough to necessitate a “we are in this together” mantra. If we set the conditions, we can expect the best but tolerate less, if we can use it to learn together.
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