Hello everybody, thanks so much for joining us for tonight's practise management webinar, which is kindly brought to you this year by the Veterinary Management Group. I'm Catherine from the webinar there and tonight we are very excited to be joined by Phil Budd, who is going to be talking to us about creating high performing accountable teams. Just before we get started, a quick reminder that if you have any questions for Phil, you can type them into the Q&A box and we will ask them at the end of the session if time will allow.
This session will also be recorded and will be available on the webinar vets platform from Thursday. So if there's anything that you want to rewatch or any members of your team that you might find would like to watch too, they'll be able to do that from Thursday. So our speaker this evening is Phil Budd, who is a business coach and entrepreneur, providing high performance coaching to help successful business owners and their teams identify blind spots and reach their full potential.
Phil believes that understanding people's goals and aspirations is the best way to identify the strategies needed to drive change and reach desired outcomes. Operates his coaching through a variety of formats, including 1 to 1 coaching, group coaching, quarterly planning sessions and alignments, where he works with clients to shape the goals for both their business and personal life. So welcome, Phil, thanks so much for joining us this evening and over to you for your presentation, please.
Thank you very much. Thank you for the warm intro and it is lovely to be with you, this evening. I will give a bit further background shortly on me, but just to introduce the subject matter, how do I create a high performing accountable team?
I think that whether you're a business owner or a business leader and you don't own a business, the term team management can instil fear in, in many people. And whether you've been a manager for many years or you're just starting out in terms of leading a team, the way leadership has changed over the last few years, it's been significant. And I'm sure you'd agree with me, albeit you don't need to comment on the chat on this particular one.
Going through the pandemic and what we've gone through over the last two years, people's expectations, people's behaviour, people's goals, aspirations has all changed as a result of the last 2 years. Again, throwing something different into the mix when it comes to managing a team. And when we throw in as well, in some instances hybrid working.
That again changes the dynamic of the culture of a team. So the adaptability that you need as a leader in order for you to have a successful high performing team, well, it can seem an ongoing challenge, and I run these sessions regularly for a number of different organisations because it's such a powerful topic that most business leaders are interested in. So there's already been a brief introduction about me.
I just wanted to expand a little bit upon that around my coaching practise and particularly how my business has transitioned more and more into helping business owners and business leaders produce and develop high performing teams. I've got 10 years of work in people development. I've managed the team myself, I've operated at board level within a business before becoming a business owner myself, experienced firsthand.
Challenges of dealing with different people, dealing with larger teams as well as smaller teams, and the challenges that come with it. I'm a qualified action coach, which makes me a business coach. And as part of that, the biggest part of my coaching career for the last 4 years has been really around helping business owners create a profitable commercial enterprise that works without them.
And the reality is, in order to do that, you need a team. So the team is a very important part of what's happened as part of my coaching. And as a result of coaching my business owners to build bigger businesses, something that's come out of my coaching is the need to coach individuals.
And this is something I feel really passionate about, that coaching shouldn't be accessible just to senior leaders and business owners. Actually, we can all benefit from coaching at what level we are within the business. So.
In June 2022, I launched the High Performance Academy. This academy is specifically aimed at employees. I'll talk a little bit more about this towards the end, but I just want to show you some of my experience around this.
And the key areas of the academy that I've launched are focused around high performance, when it comes to general employment, high performance and leadership. And something that I feel really passionate about is a module that we've introduced and a coaching programme called Introduction to the Workplace, because I think for those leaving school at the moment and those that leaving further education, the transition and the gap between business and education is huge. You know, when I left school a few years ago now.
The reality is the gap was relatively easy. Technology was relatively straightforward, business was straightforward. There's a lot more complexity thrown into the mix now, making it difficult and challenging for a lot of people leaving the workplace.
So that just gives you a little bit of a flavour about the academy. I'll talk a little bit about that at the end and I've got something that I wanted to offer you all as members, just as my way of saying thank you, at the end of today's session that's in conjunction with the academy that we just launched. So, let's set some really clear objectives for today, right?
As a coach, it's really important for me that I'm outcome focused whenever I'm in a session with a client, whether that's 1 to 1 or whether it's group, and today's no exception to that. So I want to set some clear objectives for our discussion. We're gonna talk about the practical steps you can take as a leader or as a business owner to transition your existing team.
Into high performance. I believe that is possible, and we're gonna talk about the steps that you can take. We're then going to consider the tools and clarity to get your team to take ownership, accountability and responsibility for their own performance, which will then positively impact business results.
So we're gonna focus on this in two aspects, you could say. We're gonna look at you as a leader and as a manager. And then we're gonna look at what needs to happen from a team perspective, because it's a two-way street.
Both of you have got a role to play, you as the leader, but also your team. Now, let's just get a bit of reflection, we've got a few people on the live session. I want you to think about the challenges that you are facing with your team at the moment.
These are some of the things that I thought I'd share with you that you might be able to relate to. Business results are not as good as they could be. We're growing successfully as a business, but don't have the right team to support that growth.
The team have a good attitude, but they don't seem to apply themselves. Maybe you can relate to that one. It's often easier to do something myself rather than getting my team to do it.
Now be honest on that one, I reckon a lot of us maybe can relate to that. And then the final one, it feels like I have to micromanage individuals to get stuff done. So in the chat, why don't you just share with us what your challenge is.
It might be one of those, it might be highlighting something else around the challenge you've got with your team. Just put those into the chat. Can be as long or as brief as you want, and I'll read some of those out shortly as we go through today's presentation.
So we can really make this relatable. And by sharing your challenges, what I can then do during the course of today's presentation is just make that more adaptable to the needs that you're going through. But I'm sure you'd agree, a lot of those challenges.
We can all relate to. Someone's agreeing with the micromanage, I definitely micromanage a little too much, exclamation mark at the end of it. Micromanagement can seem like it's a bad thing, but actually it isn't.
And we'll talk maybe a little bit about that during today. Number 4 has been highlighted, it's often easier to do something myself rather than getting my team to do it. Do you know when I'm coaching a high growth business, particularly when they're trying to build a team, that sense of letting go, it can be really difficult.
You know you need to let go, you know you need to delegate, but it's a difficult. Yeah, number 4's proving very popular. So we'll talk a little bit about that, how you can become an effective manager and leader during the course of today's presentation.
Let me first of all explain to you what what high performance is really about. And this is my personal definition. There's many different variations of this, but this is what I believe high performance to be consistently being the best you can be.
Let's break this down. First of all, that word consistently. Now consistently, or consistency I should say, comes from self-discipline, focus, and good habits.
Being is all about the here and now. The actions and behaviours that you take each day. And the best you can be is all about the best version of you.
It's not about measuring your ability, skills, or performance to others, it's about your personal best, measuring yourself against your standards and expectations. Now I share this with you because when we talk about high performance, particularly in sports, and true it can be in business actually, we often think that it's only the top 2% that are high performance. And that doesn't sit right with me.
Because if we're saying that it's only the elite in business, or it's only people with huge amounts of natural ability in sports that can be high performance, well, That's not a particularly positive message, is it? And so for me when we're talking about performance with individuals, it is about the person measuring themselves against their potential, their ability to perform. It's about inwardly looking at what their ability is, how they increase their potential, and how they take that to the next level.
Consistent with that performance and being focused in the present around how they can improve their performance. Now that sets the scene for what high performance is about. And much of today, like I say, is going to be about not only your team's ability to perform at a high level, but your ability to be a high performing leader.
So this relates to all of you. It involves you as the leader, consistently being the best leader you can be, but this also links in with your team in terms of them consistently being the best that they can be. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the performance curve.
And this is a really interesting psychological study that is backed up by sports, but also is true within business. And I think that if you take what we've gone through over the last two years with the pandemic, how many of you would agree with me that it still feels pretty relentless out there in the workplace? You're constantly, the workload just seems as though even though we've sort of come to the end of things to a certain, it can feel like that.
The workload and the pressure within business, it feels even greater. And for many that I talk to in business, whether you're an employee or whether you're a business owner or a leader, biggest challenge that I see at the moment in the workplace is overwhelm. I see people that have gone from that state of working hard to slipping into a state of over one.
And I want to show you how this damages performance. You see at the lower end of the performance curve, well, pressure's a good thing because it does. Drive us from being in a boredom state, out of our comfort zone, into being highly motivated.
So pressure and and effect wanting to improve, that's a good thing, driving better results. When the pressure and the relentlessness of the workload gets too much, the danger is that we don't know we no longer operate in a highly motivated state, we start to get into a fatigue state. And then when you get into fatigue, you get into overwhelm.
Then you get into exhaustion. Then you get into a high level of anxiety and you get into a high level of burnout. This is probably, I would say the biggest issue facing leaders and business owners at the moment in terms of their own level of overwhelm, exhaustion, and anxiety, but also employees, a subject that really needs to be talked about more because of the challenge that a lot of people are facing.
The optimum performance level that we want to be is at a highly motivated state because it's at that stage that our performance is absolutely optimum. The challenge and the self-perception that we have is that by working harder and pushing on, well, actually that gets better results and makes us more productive. It just doesn't.
And the science backs this up. If we work harder and longer hours, it actually pushes us over the edge into fatigue. And again, the studies around this suggest that simply working harder, you, you're better to stop, rest, recover and then be more productive the following day.
So some of the challenges about the state of performance of where people are at in business at the moment is that actually they've gone beyond that highly motivated state with themselves as a leader, but also with their team. And they're doing long hours and working hard, but the reality is they're not performing at an optimum level. Therefore, the results in business are affected.
And I use this within coaching a lot, but often to speed up, you need to slow down. And I'll give you a very brief analogy on this, that in sports and athletics, before a marathon race, there's a principle called tapering off, where what an athlete will do or a runner will do, that leading up to the marathon, they'll they'll train hard, but a week or two weeks before, they'll start to reduce the amount of training they're doing. They won't carry on working as hard as they are within their training regime right up to the race.
Why? Because the body needs to recover. And when they taper off and reduce that training scheme.
What happens is the body repairs and it comes back stronger. Yet we do this crazy thing in business, which is we keep pushing on. We work harder and harder and harder, longer and longer hours, and the reality is it damages performance.
Now I'm labouring this point really heavily because it is a big challenge at the moment. The amount of hours that people are working, the amount of lack of holiday that some people have had. The lack of time off, all of this thing, when you step back and look at your own performance and look at the way you're working, the reality is, is it's not about optimum level.
Interesting stat here by Gallup that I just wanted to share with you. More than 80 87% of the world's workforce is not engaged. Yet engaged workplaces are 21% more profitable.
And this is where we're going to start to transition the subject. We've started understanding high performance, we've understand a little bit about optimum performance. We're going to start to understand the importance as a leader and as a manager about engaging your workforce.
Now I'm a big believer. I developed my clients into becoming good coaches themselves because when you coach, you get engagement, and when you get engagement, you get better results within the business, that's the reality. So some of the things we're gonna talk about are very much within a coach-like style.
Now this principle that I've got on screen now was, was, developed by a number of individuals, top coaches years ago, Sir John Whitmore, but also er another gentleman that wrote the book The Inner Game. And you may not be familiar with them, but what they introduced is this principle of how you drive high performance, and it's a very simple formula, that performance equals potential minus interference. So if you increase someone's potential.
And you reduce their interference. They improve their performance. What type of things are we talking about when it comes to potential and interference?
Well, potential could be around their skills. Around their understanding of how to do a role. Interference could be you as the manager.
You as the manager could be interfering with their performance. But also things like we've talked about overwhelm, length of hours being worked, all of these things, fear, anxiety, worry that not not doing a good job, these things can hamper someone's performance. So what we're gonna look at within this are two elements, really, how do you impact their potential and positively impact and increase their potential.
But then also how do you reduce their level of interference and how do they do that for themselves as well. Now we'll start off by looking at the interference piece, and there's two elements here that are worth highlighting. External factors.
And internal factors, external things that interfere with us, and internal factors that can create interference. Now by the way, I should have said this at the start, I want to make this as interactive as possible. So please, if you've got any questions, observations or comments, please put them in the chat area and I'll be sure to comment on them or answer any questions during the course of today's event.
So in terms of the external factors that can cause interference, things that others tell us, social media. The environments that are around us. And COVID-19, wouldn't you agree, has called us all of us an element of interference.
Social media is a really interesting one. I'm seeing this with a lot of high performing individuals that I coach. Majority of them are coming off social media.
Majority of them are coming off the majority of the channels, particularly on their phone, because they find that it causes an element of interference on their own performance. It either causes an element of anxiety, causes them a feeling of worry, some instances it just doesn't make them feel very good. And for some that want to perform at a high level, they've realised they can't manage themselves around that well enough, so they've decided to come off it altogether.
What others tell us, you know, what we read about in the media. What we take in as information. This can cause interference, and during the pandemic, I pretty much stopped watching the news.
Why? Didn't make me feel good. Cause interference.
So these things can have an impact on us. We don't always think they directly do, but they absolutely add up and cause interference. Then we've got internal factors.
Overwhelm, living up to expectations. Previous issues or mistakes that we've gone through, mental and physical health, having the right necessary knowledge. Some of the pre-formed beliefs that we have about ourselves, what people have told us over the years.
A lack of clarity about what our role might be or what success looks like or what the future holds. Fear of the future. All of these things that have an impact on our performance, they kind of hold us back.
And this isn't just about talking about what happens with sports individuals, this absolutely applies within the business and to your team members. 58% of people say they trust strangers more than their own boss. 58% of people say they trust strangers more than their own boss.
That's quite a staggering statistic, wouldn't you agree? And so now we're still gonna start looking at the skills needed as a leader and as a manager to build that trust, build that engagement, help increase the potential, and help reduce that interference. Now, this was said to me many years ago, OK, and I had a team at the time that was particularly challenging.
And, years ago I wasn't being coached at that point, just to be clear, because my coach would have been pulled me up on it. But I remember saying that this, this team's really difficult, really difficult. And the response by my manager at the time was very clear and very powerful and I always remember it.
You get the team you deserve. If I've got a poorly performing team, does it say something about the team, or does it say something about me as a leader? Now there could be a contribution of both factors, but I firmly believe as leaders and as managers.
We take the ownership first, we take the accountability and responsibility first for the performance of the team and the performance for us in the way that we develop our team. You get the team that you deserve. So let's look at the key components of leadership first and then we're gonna look at management.
And I've broken this down within the high performance academy into, into really 5 key areas. We've first of all got communication. We've got decision making.
We've got emotional intelligence, we've got behaviours. And we've got vision. Now, let's talk a little bit about each element, just briefly.
When we're talking about communication, we're talking about that ability to lead and communicate in a way that's effective, the way that we meet with our team regularly, the way that we ask for their input, the way that we try and truly understand how they're feeling and where their level of performance is at. What do you like around decision making? Do you procrastinate in making decisions?
Are you a clear decision maker? Does your lack of decision making as a leader cause interference for your team? Does it cause them challenges?
What's your level of emotional intelligence like? Do you pick up on the things that are unsaid? And do you lead by example with your behaviours?
Or do you fly off the handle a little bit? Do you show frustration? Do you show negativity to your team?
Do you lead by example on these areas? Now what I thought we'd do, just to make this a little bit fun, is do a bit of a mini quiz, OK? Now you're not going to share your results, but this is a great way to try and embed the learnings that I'm going through with you this evening.
So you're gonna get 1 point for each statement that is true in your business. So if the statement that I read out is true and you're adopting it, then you get 1 point. So just make a note of each of the statements and see whether they're true.
Is there a documented business plan for the next 5 years? You get 1 point if that's the case. If there is a documented business plan for the next 5 years.
Is this true? I don't procrastinate in making decisions. You get a point for that one as well.
Team meetings and one to ones are held a minimum of once a month. And let's add another word in there, consistently once a month. Now be honest with this, you know, you may think they're a good idea and want to do them, but do you hold team meetings and one to ones regularly with your team consistently once a month.
If you do, you get a point. I'm a good example to the team when it comes to time management, focus and self-discipline. Now I can't see your faces, but I reckon there's going to be a few wry smiles.
I reckon there's gonna be a few people on here as leaders that are thinking, I expect that of my team, and they're going to be scratching their head a little bit uncomfortably, saying, I'm not particularly good about myself. I expect my team to be, but I'm not good. Are you a good example to your team when it comes to time management, focus, and self-discipline?
I'm able to see things from another person's perspective. Are you genuinely able to do that? Or is it all about your needs, what you want to get across to the individual, it's less about their feelings and what they're thinking.
So if you want to put it in the chat, great, but don't worry if not, don't feel embarrassed about it. What have you scored out of 5? There's just simple questions there, there's a lot more that I could ask, but there are a great pointer on thinking, where are you currently at with your leadership that's gonna drive performance, OK?
If it's low, don't worry, there's an opportunity for improvement. That's what it's about. Let's look at management.
Accountability, productivity, delegation, learning and development, and culture. Do you hold your team to account? You know, this is a, a reality for a challenge for all people in business and leadership, that with the demands of business and the pressure, it's very easy to set expectations but not follow through on them.
And again, you know this sort of thing is right. Most leaders and managers need to hold their team to account, but often it's knowing how to do it and having the time to do it. But it's so important when it comes to improving the performance of your team.
What about productivity within your team? Are you measuring productivity and managing your team to ensure they are producing good results? Are you delegating effectively?
You know, when it comes to delegation, we talked about that earlier point that sometimes it feels easier to do things yourself. That again causes interference, and the reality is, it doesn't help you build a high performing team. What about learning and development?
Do you put someone on a training course when they're not performing very well, or do you see learning development as a critical part of them performing well? Just take a moment to think about those areas. Again, we're gonna do a bit of a mini quiz.
One point for each statement that is true in your business. Do you conduct regular appraisals or reviews and are they conducted? With all members of staff, regular appraisal reviews are conducted with all members of staff.
Is that true in your business? There are defined roles and responsibilities for each member of staff. Is that true in your business?
Does every person know exactly what they need to do? Are they clear on their roles and responsibilities? Or do you have it for some, but because you've grown a lot over the last year or so, actually you haven't put them in place for those new employees.
I do not feel the need to check in with my team when I'm on holiday. Now, just put a smiley face in the chat function if you, if, if that might be you, where you are checking in with your team when you are on holiday. OK.
The reality is when I'm coaching a lot of leaders and managers. They do this. They check in with their team.
The team don't know why they're hearing from you, but they're still hearing from you. I do not feel the need to check in with my team when I'm on holiday. Personal development plans are in place for each member of the team.
Personal development plans are in place for each member of the team. Point for that if that's the case. Negative behaviours are not tolerated.
I see this a lot where you've got an individual within the team that they're a great performer. They've been with the business for a long time, but they've got terrible behaviours. And the leader and the manager simply doesn't know how to deal with it.
In fact, what they end up doing a lot of instances is ignoring it. And what it does is cause damage to the team. So again, out of 5, what have you scored?
If you scored a low score. Doesn't matter, it's about the opportunity for improvement. If you scored a high score, what does this highlight to you about how maybe you can take it to the next level?
Here's some key questions to think about around management. You haven't got to score yourself on these areas, but again, I want you to reflect. I want you to go away from today's session, reflecting and thinking about how you can improve as a leader and as a manager.
And whenever I meet a manager or leader, and they say, look, I've got a team, they're just not taking ownership and accountability. These are the questions I always ask them. Now the reality is when we look into it and I coach an individual through this, it's not about there being one answer being the main problem.
One question being the problem. It's usually multiple that need to be addressed. So if you've got ownership issues within your team at the moment, be honest with yourself and ask yourself these questions.
Have I set clear expectations? Do my team actually understand what is expected? We may think we've explained our expectations to the team member, and we may think we've been clear, but actually do they understand what is expected?
Do my team appreciate the impact or consequences? Do they appreciate the impact or consequences of the actions? By the way, Catherine, just a heads up, I think the green highlight around the screen is still around your name.
You might need to pin my screen so that it becomes visible on the recording to those that watch it on demand, just so you've got a heads up. I think so far it's got you circled around you, just so you're aware. So do my team appreciate the impact or consequences of my actions?
Do my team have the tools to do their job? Do my team need training to do their job well? Do I hold my team to account?
You see, when we're looking at ownership. There's a number of things that are affected. Remember I said earlier, you get the team you deserve.
So what's happening within your management style that's affecting the lack of ownership? What could you do better in this regard to drive better and better performance? And this is a massive one.
Do my team feel empowered to make decisions and take action? The analogy that I always use around this, right, and I'm not saying for a second that you treat your staff like children, but I use the example always with my son who's 6 years of age. I can keep telling him to tidy his room.
The reality is, is given that instruction, it may get some results. He may do it eventually, and I may have to become stronger in how I tell him to tidy his room, but the reality is, he's never gonna take ownership. Whereas if I reason with him and help him understand the benefits of tidying his room, helping me understand clearly what I expected him, showing him how to tidy his room, maybe giving him some tools or some storage area so he can put his toys away.
And then hold him to account to make sure he does tidy his room. And maybe reward him for doing that. Do you see how that changes?
The more likelihood he's going to have of being able to tidy his room. Now I've used a very simple analogy there. But hopefully it's effective in terms of helping demonstrate the point about when we're trying to get people to take ownership, it's often the way that we delegate that ownership and how we handle it.
That gets the right result. So this leads into another point, which I, I briefly touched upon already, which I refer to regularly within my coaching with leaders, business owners, but also with team members, which is the principle of the point of power. Now above the point of power, we've got ownership, accountability, responsibility.
Below it, we've got blame, excuse, denial. Now you'll notice that the letters on the far left are in a deliberate order. Ownership, accountability, responsibility, if you take the starting letters, the O, the A, the R.
Spells all. It means that when you're above the point of power, when you take ownership, accountability and responsibility, you're in your boat, you've got your roar, you're making progress. When you adopt a process of an attitude of showing blame, excuse, denial, where again you take the first starting letters in that BED the spells bed.
When you're below the point of power, you're in your bed, you're going nowhere. And, and maybe you can relate to this example. You know, I've worked with many people over the years, very along my career, type of people that maybe have been within the business for 1015 years.
And whenever I used to go and see them or have a conversation with them, they'd always be the type of individuals that would moan about their job. They'd sit there and say, can't stand working here, really don't enjoy it. Same problems day in and day out.
And I'd sometimes say to them, why don't you leave and go find another job? No, no, I could never do that. I could never do that.
And what would happen, another 5 years they would stay. Now, I'm not picking on those individuals to be absolutely clear, and in a way, if that's their choice, that's their choice. I'm not judging them.
But it's interesting, isn't it, that some people operate a blame excuse to an our state. They don't really make any progress, they don't do anything different. But they're happy to moan or criticise about that.
You see, when you've got ownership, accountability and responsibility, you're more solution focused, you're more driven to find an idea that's gonna work. Do you as a leader and as a manager, sometimes slip below the point of power? Have you over the pandemic, maybe got a bit of negative, blaming the economy, blaming inflation, blaming whatever it might be, recruitment.
I hear this quite a bit at the moment, not from people I coach because I coach them through it, but when I hear business owners say recruitment's impossible at the moment. Is that a fact or is that what you choose to believe? Because there's good people out there looking for roles.
Again, you get the team you deserve, maybe it's the action or inaction that you're taking, which is affecting the results you're achieving. Are you above the point of power or are you below it? Now this generalised principle is really powerful when you demonstrate it as a leader, but also when you adopt it within your team.
Above the point of power or below, ownership, accountability, responsibility. Below, blame, excuse, denial. Now the next thing that I thought would be practical, just to share with you is the importance of having good meetings.
Now this links in with that point that I made earlier about good communication. And I'm sure many of you, again, just put a smiley face in the in the chat function where you regularly have meetings that go on and on. You never really maybe achieve what you wanted to achieve.
It takes you away from doing a load of stuff and you can't remember the actions from the last meeting. It just feels like I'm meeting with people. I've got to do it.
It feels like I need to do it, but it isn't really making any difference. Well, that's pretty common. Meetings can be and should be very effective within businesses, but it's how you structure and go around, go about them.
And I just wanted to share a really practical tip that I use with er with clients that I coach. You see, when we're looking at the structure of communication with the businesses that I work with, we focus not on having long meetings infrequently, we look at having frequent meetings but much shorter. Short to sharp meetings, and one of the structures that we adopt is what we call the line structure.
It's very simple structure meeting, which is first of all, you look at last week, what did you achieve? The I stands for issues. What did you face and how did you solve them?
The O stands for opportunities. What have you spotted this week? What could be worked upon?
And then next week, what do you, what do you commit to do next week? This is a really simple meeting structure that my clients use on a weekly basis with their teams to review the week, discuss any issues, look for opportunities. And get commitment for the next week.
Now this reality is a as a a meeting, even with a large team could be done within 45 minutes to an hour. A regular sharp meeting that gives very good focus. Some little tips around this as well that's worked well with businesses that I've worked with, is don't set long agendas.
Set outcomes that you want to achieve, and if there's discussion points, ask them as a question. When we put statements, psychologically it doesn't get us thinking. When we put a question as an agenda point, it gets us thinking before we go into the meeting.
So questions as agenda points and outcomes that we want to achieve. Another few things around this. See this work really well with businesses in the manufacturing sector, they have standing meetings only.
It's amazing how short the meetings are and how productive are when you take away the seats. When people are standing, you get to the point very, very quickly. So more frequent meetings, shorter in time scale, super focused, good structure like that we've got with the line element that we mentioned there, and meetings will start to become productive and they'll start to become useful.
Now, what I want to move to now, which is they're now really looking at increasing the potential of an individual. OK? And when we're looking at coaching an individual and how they drive and own their own performance, which I really firmly believe is important, there's another 5 areas to consider.
6 areas I should say actually. So we've got mindset, feedback and feed forward, defining success, habits, behaviours, communication. Now, if we talk about mindset, I struggle with the word mindset a little bit.
I call it more now emotional management because I don't believe that your mind can be set, your mood can be changed. How many of you wake up in the morning in a really good mood and you come in and suddenly you've got a load of emails and something's gone wrong, your mind changes, you've got to manage that emotion, but it's not necessarily set the same throughout the whole of the day. So, in terms of high performance, as an individual within your team, one of the things to get them to look at and to work with them on is their mindset.
Their positivity, that principle of being above or below the point of power. Feedback and feed forward is, is, is massive. And I think sadly, culturally.
The way that we're often brought up through society, there's negative connotations to feedback. We often only want to hear positivity when it comes to feedback. We put a post on social media, we only want to see how many likes and good comments we get.
When we do something like a net promote score, we only want to see a high score. When we get feedback from clients, we only want to hear the good stuff. Well, good stuff's great.
But it's the areas that are blind spots are where we need to improve, that's gonna improve us in terms of our performance. And for many years I wasn't coached. And when I look back, it's my biggest regret.
I really wish I had a coach when I was a lot younger. Not sure what it would change in terms of outcome, but coaching's taught me that it's highlighted where my blind spots are. Now, is it uncomfortable?
Yeah. But when we're uncomfortable, we learn and we grow. It's about learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Defining success, I mean, I've seen this again a lot over the last two years. A lot of people become a little bit lost around what success looks like for them. The future's been uncertain, we've not been able to plan too far ahead.
But if you want to become a high performer, goals and drive of where you're going and what your future looks like, personally and in business is so important. What about the daily habits? This is thinking about the habits of your team day in, day out, their structure, their routine, the discipline, their diary structure, how long they're having meetings, what things they say no to.
The physical routine as well, around looking after their physical health. And what about their behaviours? Handed in tricky situations.
Challenging communication. Behaviours and communication are really tightly linked. So those 6 areas are really powerful in terms of increasing people's potential.
And one of the things for me within the academy that I feel so passionate about is really coaching individuals through these elements, because the reality is, is that we're not often taught these things. We're not, we're not taught about mindset really, are we, when we go through education. We're not taught how to handle feedback, we, we find it uncomfortable and difficult.
Most people do because we've never been coached or developed around it. We maybe set goals when we're younger, but we don't set them as we get older necessarily. We're not really taught about habits, behaviours or communication, communication maybe to a degree.
So these are the things. That will help drive personal high performance with individuals within your team. Now getting the most from your team.
By nurturing and coaching an individual's abilities, behaviours, and mindset is what drives high performance. And again, I feel really passionate about this statement. High performers are made, they are not born.
Everybody has the ability to create their own personal best. They stop measuring themselves against other individuals and focus on their own performance, they will increase their potential, they will perform better. It's about consistently being the best that they can be.
Now, within this, I just want to share with you a principle about understanding behaviours. And I use a tool called Thomas disc, which is a behavioural analysis report which looks at the way we communicate and our preferred behavioural styles. And there's 4, behavioural styles.
There's a dominant individual, there's an influencer, there's someone that's steady. And there's someone that's conscientious. Now let me very briefly describe each four types of behaviours, and I'm gonna do it very briefly and very candidly.
So a dominant individual, give you an example of a type of thing a dominant person would say, you would say, Phil, you've got 5 minutes, don't want to see any PowerPoint slide, get straight to the point, tell me what you do as a coach. These, we call them Ds, dominant individuals, high D's, when it's a dominant style of behaviour. They're very direct in the communication, very driven, very results driven.
I, influencer, is someone that's much more motive. Give you an example, type of person, when you sit down for a business meeting, you spend the 1st 40 minutes talking about what they got up to at the weekend. Now you might be irritated by that, but a high I is very emotional.
They will talk very people based, and they are very much about a social element. That's a high I. We then got steadiness.
This is someone that's very much a team player. Now steady individual is the type of person. That will go to a shop, try an out outfit on 4 or 5 times, eventually decide to buy it, but then maybe take it back.
Now there's no right or wrong with this. I'm just using some very simple examples to demonstrate the different behavioural styles. We then have a conscientious person.
Now rise smile if this is true. Of you, type of person that does a spreadsheet for their holiday. So they'll have their holiday mapped out on a spreadsheet, morning and afternoon, what they'll be doing.
Type of person that has a spreadsheet for the holiday, that's a high C. Now what I want to show you here within the different behavioural styles of how our behaviours change when we come into conflict and when they're put under pressure. So with a D, a dominant individual, or when they're in conflict, they start to demand more.
Their personal fear is losing. Their personal strength is being a problem solver. But their strength when overexerted or extended, is preoccupation, preoccupies preoccupation goals over people.
They're preoccupied with goals over people or their team. Influencer, well, when in conflict, they're likely to attack. Their personal fear is rejection.
The personal strength is to be an encourager. They speak without thinking when that strength is overextended. Steadiness.
This person complies. When in conflict or under pressure, they comply more. The personal fear Or this sudden change.
Their personal strength is that of being a supporter. Their strength overextended, is procrastination in addressing change. And then when we look at the compliance or the conscientious style, this person in conflict avoids, their personal theories being wrong, their personal strength isn't organised, remember they're detailed spreadsheet for the holiday.
But their strength overextended is over analysing everything. Now I'm sharing with you this, there's a lot within this, and we're not gonna cover this to, I, I spend hours on this with clients coaching them through it. But when we understand people's behaviours and understand where they're coming from.
We can start to adapt our communication. So maybe you work for someone or work with someone that at the moment is under pressure and they're being quite demanding. Well, that would suggest they're a high D.
Maybe you've got someone that under pressure they attack. Well that suggests they're an influencer. Maybe you've got someone under pressure at the moment within the team that is just complying, not speaking up.
And then maybe you've got someone withdrawing from the team and simply avoiding situations where that's likely to be a conscientious or compliance person. The challenge with behaviours, and I've observed this and seen this myself, is often we make judgments. We make judgments without understanding the individual.
So when someone attacks, we think maybe there's got an attitude problem. When someone's demanding, we're thinking they're difficult. Well, actually, when we understand the behavioural style.
We start to understand where they're coming from, and when we understand where someone comes from, we can start to adapt our style. This is true in leadership, but this is true as an employee within the workplace. You see, when we understand other people's behaviours, we can form better relationships because we can adapt.
We become better communicate to ourselves and we become more aware. Which dis part of the profile do you think is being your more dominant style? Is it dominance?
Are you a high dominant person? Are you highly an influencer, steadiness, compliance? It's not about what's right or wrong, but it's about understanding yourself.
It's about understanding others and adapting your communication. We can only do that when we understand the behaviours of the individual that we're communicating with. So, Going to start to come to the end of today.
I want to make sure we're done definitely within the hour. And I said I wanted to do something by way of saying thank you. So, I'm currently taking on founding members for the Academy.
We've currently filled 50%, of the academy intake for, June already. We've got 100 members that we're gonna take on. We've already filled 50 of those across various different businesses.
And that founding members I offer, I've only really been offering to clients and people within my community. But my way of saying thank you is I wanted to extend that to, to your community and network. And that's 500 pounds per month for up to 10 employees from a business, or 800 pounds per month up to 20 employees.
So it, it works out the 500 pounds a month model, 50 pounds a month for them to come into the academy, be coached by me, receive educational videos, receive live coaching. And really start to drive their own personal high performance. If you're interested in that, I've just included the email below, members at higher performance academy.co.uk.
You'll find me on LinkedIn as well. We'll keep this very straightforward. Just drop me an email at [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn.
You'll come across me quite easily, I would have thought, and, and then connect with me and we can, we can get you look looking at whether the academy is going to be right for you. And what I do offer in line with this is a two hour complimentary coaching session to explore the academy in more detail before you even sign up, just to be clear. So I'm not expecting you to come back to me immediate and say I want to be a member.
You might do, but, you might want to spend a bit more time complimentary with me to work out whether the academy is going to be right for you and your team. One of the things we produced, and I'm really passionate about this. Is people reflecting on their own performance and how they can improve and so we've developed our own assessment tool which assesses high performance.
And out of that, individuals within the academy develop their own personal development plan, and they develop it because they need to take ownership for their performance. So that's again is all included as part of the academy. They get online videos, they get live sessions from me, and they get accountability to implement the learnings and drive high performance and to measure that performance during the course of the academy.
Just to go through some of the founding principles, we're gonna wrap up shortly with some top tips that I want to conclude with. But just to give you some further explanation overview of the high performance academy that we've launched, it's founded or built on 5 core principles, designed to ensure a maximum, maximum behavioural change. We're not trying to do just training here, we're trying to drive behavioural change within individuals.
So the short videos through educational videos that we provide, bite-size chunks of education, each video is, is no more than 6 minutes. The main focus each week is the consistency of the learning and taking time to reflect and act on what they learn. We've got the live coaching sessions that I mentioned.
We're gonna be having thought leaders from around the UK and worldwide speak at those events to talk about high performance, people even from sports areas as well. There's gonna be support, personal development plans. Time management tools that individuals can use to, to really embed their learnings, and we're gonna have groups, forums where they can share learnings with other employees from different businesses, because I think that's really powerful as an employee.
Accountability, we're gonna hold people to account during the course of the academy. And I mentioned as well, we've got the scoring matrix and assessment tool that is gonna then track an individual's progress during the academy to make sure they get the behavioural change and you see the impact on the business that you want. So that's just a little bit about the academy.
Remember, it's members at high performers academy.co.uk or find me on LinkedIn, drop me a message, and then we can have that complimentary 2 hour session to see whether the academy is gonna be the right for you.
Right, let's finish with some top tips. So, and I want you to start to process your learnings from today as well and put them in the chat area, what stood out from today's session that you're gonna put into practise. So first, top tip, recognise it's not about working harder, it's about optimum performance.
Remember we showed you the performance curve and how it's about not going into that fatigue and anxiety and burnout stage. 2, your team taking ownership starts with you taking ownership as a manager and as a leader. It's all about starting with you in terms of your own high performance as a leader and as a manager.
Focus on areas that reduce interference. Are you getting in the way of your team's performance? What can you do to reduce their interference and support them?
Start developing your team's potential. Remember the look, the ways that we, the ways that we looked to that, the different ways you can increase their potential, ongoing learning and development. Sort of putting KPIs, managing their performance, holding them to account.
Let's get your reflections. What are you gonna take away from today that you're going to implement? Thank you for the first share.
The performance curve was very good, that was appreciated. I'm glad you got value from that. What else have we got?
Any other key learnings from today, you're thinking, do you know what, I've heard that before, but I'm gonna take that away and I'm going to implement. I always finish my webinars a little bit earlier. Why?
Because it gives you the opportunity to step away from the session before you spend time with your family, consolidate your notes and think about the action that you're gonna take. So, giving you an extra 5 to 10 minutes to do that reflection before you spend time with your family just means that this is a really good use of time. Can't see any more comments coming through, so I just want to say thank you to Dawn and to Catherine, and thank you to everyone that's attended this evening.
I, I really appreciate it. I hope you've gone away with even one or two things that's gonna make a difference to producing a high performing team. Thanks very much.
Oh, that's great, Phil, thank you so much. That was wonderful. We have had a couple of questions that have come through on our Facebook group, so I'll just share those with you now if that if that's OK, if you're alright for time, .
So let me just pull them up. So we've had the comment is 5 years too far ahead for businesses to plan? I think you touched upon that earlier on in the in the session.
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. I would say that with most things that setting goals 5 years out is a great thing to do. In terms of the business plan, the reality is that may evolve.
But without a plan, and this is I think been an issue for a lot of people of late, the thinking becomes very short term. So I, I believe, and some may disagree with that, I believe there's a huge need to now start thinking longer term. Otherwise all the decisions that we're gonna make are based on short term goals and short-term thinking.
That could do with to do with site investment, it could do with recruitment, system investment, and if we make those short term decisions, that's gonna negatively impact high growth later on. OK, lovely, thank you. Another question is around delegation, which I think a few people touched upon earlier as well in the chat box.
How do you know as a leader what is best to keep and what you should delegate? Oh, that's a, that's a, that's a great question. Well, I think that it, it, it comes down to defining what your role as a leader.
You know, we talked about earlier defining your role of your team. Well, what's the role of you as a leader and where do you add the most value? I'm a big believer that particularly in senior leadership and with business owners, their value is in strategy, in leading, and coaching their team and driving the high performance.
Really at that level, the doing is down to the team. I know sometimes people would argue with that and say that you need to lead by example and get involved and do things. In most instances now in modern leadership, most of the team view that as meddling.
They just want to be left to get on with it. Yeah. So I think that in terms of the, it's understanding where you add the most value, where your team had the most value, and sticking to those roles and responsibilities.
Brilliant, thank you, that's great, great advice. We've got one final question, you touched upon how er sorry, what success looks like for you and your team, how often would you suggest evaluating that? So with all of my clients, they meet with their teams every 90 days.
So as part of the reviews that you're doing, a 90 day step back and planning session allows you then to adapt to the changing needs of the business. The question that was made earlier on about is it, is it too early to make a long term plan? Well, you can have a long term plan with long term goals, but that's where the short term planning comes in to make sure you're reviewing the success, you're reviewing what you're achieving, and how do you adapt to make sure you achieve those longer.
Term goals. So quarterly planning is a great thing to do with your team, to get them more engaged, but secondly to review the success, see where the opportunities are, and then drive things forward. So if you've got a 5 year plan, if you've then got quarterly planning that goes on, regular team meetings, regular one to ones, that communication, that management style drives the consistency and the performance of the business.
Wonderful, thank you. I think consistency is key, isn't it? I know you touched upon it a few times, but yeah, that that's brilliant advice.
Thank you very much, Phil. We are slowly, coming to the end of the session. Dawn has just popped the link into the chat box for the session that we've got next month, as part of the practise management programme.
So that's, wonderful. And yeah, just again, just to say thanks so much for the tips all the. Advice that you've given them tonight, I could have spoken to you for hours about that.
I think it's such a fascinating area. And again, thank you very much to BMG for their continued support with the series this year. The session will be recorded.
It'll be on the webinar site from Thursday. So if there's any bits that you want to revisit or any, anybody in your team who you want to share it with, please do feel free to, to, to do that. And, I just wanted to say as well.
Fill the lion meeting tips. I thought that was wonderful. That's definitely something that, we'll be bringing into the webinar vet team huddles and I'll send you a template for it and if you want to share it with the community, you're welcome to share it out.
I've got a one page template that you can use for it, so you're welcome to have that. Oh, amazing, thank you. Oh, that'd be great.
We, we'll pop that on the blog and anybody who wants to can access that then as well. No problem. Lovely.
Oh, that's great, Phil, thanks again and thanks everybody for joining us. We hope to see you next month on the next session.
