Developing and managing a high performance team is every leader and managers goal. Having the right team, skills, culture, momentum and ultimately results is what we aim for each and every day. Unfortunately, this perfect mix of variables is rarely what we are working with at all times. Hence the need for performance management. How do you, as a manager, leader, and coach, get the results expected of you and your team in a consistent, and hopefully predictable, way? There are likely many answers to this question, but one in particular that boils performance management down into a digestible and easily filterable manner.
Three words… Head, Heart, Hands.
In leadership literature you often hear the phrase “you have to inspire the hearts and minds of your team”. One of the many leaders I follow is David Novak (former CEO YUM! Brands), and he says those words often. But there’s a missing piece to this advice. I’ll explain in more detail each filter (Head, Heart, Hands). You need all three attributes from your team in order to achieve the results and success you’re working for.
Throughout this post I’ll refer to ‘filters’ as it relates to the head, heart, and hands. By that I mean, each is a filter for how you, as a performance manager and leader, filters and assesses the inputs and outputs of the people on your team. The ones who are expected to produce results directly. As a manager, you’re producing results indirectly through your people. In other words, if your people aren’t performing you are not performing. Period.
Three Performance Management Filters
The Head
This refers to the ‘know-how’. The knowledge, the information, and the intellect to do a certain job. Can they talk the talk? Do they understand the job to be done? Do they have the education to enable them? Can they handle the stress that may come with the role? The head is all about the mental capacity that gives an individual the platform to perform like you would expect them to.
An example of someone who meets this filter might be a college graduate with a marketing degree who recently completed a training course to be a marketer. They clearly have the knowledge to do the job (marketing), but do they meet the other two filters to actually perform in the real world? Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. The other two filters will paint a better picture.
Another example that plays out often is during interviews. The person interviewing for a job may say all the right things, know the language of the role, and impress you on paper. But once they get into the grind of the day to day they fall short. Why does this happen? Let’s continue through the other filters to see why.
As a manager, you’re producing results indirectly through your people.
The Heart
This is the passion and fire to do the job. The person shows up, puts in the effort, wants to do great work, and hustles because they are driven by a purpose and their purpose. Managers can create a platform to fuel the heart and foster an environment supports this filter, but it lives within the person doing the work. You can’t necessarily coach someone into being passionate about something or wanting to put in the effort to get the job done, but you can set the stage.
I’ve also learned that the heart shows up, in some cases, over a slope. An example is that when someone starts something new they may be incredibly excited about it, revved up to do great work, have a ton of energy, but then over time you start to see that wane. If the person’s growth outpaces the growth of the opportunity, you may see the heart begin to decline over time. Something to consider and watch for.
The Hands
Where the rubber meets the road. This is where gettin’-the-job-done is the real test. Your people can have the head and the heart all day long, but if they just can’t seem to execute and produce results, you have to decide whether or not you can help them turn the ship around, or maybe it’s time to ship out altogether. The important thing to note here is that this shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. It’s not good for you or the employee to be in a situation where they’re not able to be successful. It’s better for their long term career to get into a more suitable role where they can thrive.
There’s plenty you, as the manager, can do here to coach and support someone to success. But only if they actually have the true ability to succeed. Again, can they actually get the job done. That said, you more than likely have many people on your team and only have so many hours in the day to help one person.
Next time you’re contemplating a performance issue within your team, use these three filters to determine where the issue actually exists. The head, heart, and hands.
