Energizing High-Performance Teams

At the foundation of every high-performance team lies a single force…productivity. The equation is simple yet powerful: increased productivity = increased profitability. However, the numbers prove a different reality for most organizations—only about 20% of executives report satisfactory growth and performance from their sales, marketing, and service departments over a five-year span.

Could it be that we’re focusing on the wrong metrics or overlooking the obvious? Is it irrational to consider that we are not looking at the proper indicators, or ignoring the blatant signs? In this article, we will examine the current metrics of most leaders, and how it differs from our simple practical strategy to increasing engagement, and ultimately building high-performance teams that last for years.

State of the Culture

A Trust Deficit

Here’s a powerful question to consider.  If you were to release a survey right now within your organization, would you receive feedback from less than 80% of the population? If your impulse response is yes, this article is worth every bit of the next five minutes.  Because building a high-performing team has everything to do with the question you were just asked!

As a consulting firm frequently hired to conduct market research, measure employee sentiment, and report findings, we often face the challenge of getting people to willingly share their perspectives. Why is gathering feedback so difficult? What barriers prevent employees from fully engaging?

Trust as the Foundation for Engagement

The underlying reason, we found, is a single word: trust. Today, 80% of organizations report having mid-to-low performing teams, and over 80% of leaders admit they don’t track employee sentiment toward leadership. Trust is, unfortunately, more of a personal preference than an organizational priority. 

As you have likely witnessed, in most cases, leaders do not trust their employees, and employees do not trust their leadership.  The relationships in the workplace are transactional and task oriented, then labeled as professional.  Dynamics like information siloes and unspoken culture protocols make it difficult to navigate social constructs.  This results in a decrease of engagement. People stay away from what they don’t understand.

The typical train of thought behind most leaders is governed behind pay and punitive reinforcement.  Most leaders think that buy-in should be the exchange for fair pay.  When this does not work they resort to threats and potential loss of employment, which is a fear tactic.  Anytime the leaders of an organization resort to fear based approaches, it is a sign that they have gaps in their application of emotional intelligence.

The Law of 33 and Organizational Engagement

Research on workplace engagement often points to what we call the Law of 33. The "Law of 33" asserts that, at any given time, one-third of an organization is actively engaged, one-third is indifferent, and one-third is actively disengaged. This occurs because there is rarely an emphasis on “consent analysis” or metrics that capture true employee sentiment. Leaders tend to unconsciously surround themselves with people who think similarly, which rarely reflects the wider organizational mindset.

So, what can be done to boost engagement and break the Law of 33?

The Law of Energy: The Fuel Behind Engagement and Connection

The fundamental principle behind engagement is the law of energy: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. This concept applies directly to team engagement—you can build as much energy in your team as you can control and channel.

1. Potential Energy: This is the stored potential in your teams, the latent talent waiting to be activated. Much like an apple on a tree that stores energy until consumed, employees possess inherent potential that requires intentional action to unleash. In the workplace, we activate potential through connection.

2. Kinetic Energy: This is energy in motion, the active contribution and productivity that emerge when employees are engaged and motivated. When we harness potential energy, we transform it into kinetic energy that drives tangible outcomes.

Creating Connection Through Vision, Mission, and Core Values

The first form of energy is known as potential energy.  Potential energy represents the apple on an apple tree. There is energy in the fruit, but it remains stored until something happens. That potential energy also represents the stored energy in our teams, staff, and employees. That energy remains in a potential state until we do something to unleash or maximize it.  In the work place, we call that “something” a connection.  

Connection is established through three primary mechanisms. They are vision, a mission, and core values. A vision explains where you are going (your ultimate destination), a mission shares how you plan to get there, and core values are the guidelines you will use along the way.  Naturally, the people that will engage with you first and most frequent are those committed to going the same direction as you. 

Defining Value Beyond Monetary Incentives

The second form of energy is known as kinetic energy.  This energy type is represented by the apple falling from the tree, or being digested after consumption. The energy is now being transferred from the apple to the ground where it will create more apples, expanding on potential energy, or transferred to another being to be used in a different way.  In the work place we call this kinetic energy, value.  It is when competency, capability, and capacity is exercised toward a common goal our outcome.  

Where there are two or more minds trending on the direction of success, and the means by which they get there, we have agreement.  Agreement is the foundational element of engagement (we engage with people we agree with).  We build on the energy associated with this engagement when the value of doing the work is high. As you know, energy is the substance of productivity, so relatively speaking, the higher the value the greater potential for energy.

Adaptability in Meeting Needs

A person or people will only spend their potential energy with you because of a value you have.  The value can be economic or sentimental, physical or emotional, transactional or transformational, but a value has to be associated, nonetheless.  In combining connection and value, we realize that this can take form in a multitude of ways, but we are going to show you a simple and practical way to ensure that you create connection and value in your organization, then leverage this to enhance engagement, the catalyst to High-Performing teams.  

Practical Approach to Fostering Engagement

Step 1: Establishing Vision, Mission, and Core Values

In our work with clients struggling with underperforming teams, the first question we ask every leader is whether they have established a vision, mission, and core values.  In most cases, these already exist for the organization, which is why we start here.  In the event these are nonexistent, just applying concepts alone has proven to enhance the synergy (same energy) of your teams by 5-10%.  

These elements serve as powerful magnets and repellents, attracting the people to your organization that are best suited to work within the organization long term.  As you have likely assumed, these elements have everything to do with connection and potential energy.  There should be a vision question that redirects everyone back to the “North Star”.  The question should be easily answered with a “yes” or a “no”.  More on this later.

Step 2: Creating Accountability in Micro-Cultures

The next question we ask is whether they are keeping track of how these elements of vision, mission, and core values show up in the organization’s micro-cultures (departments and teams led by managers).  In most cases the answer is, “No”.  Here lies the second indicator of underperforming teams.  The reality is every organization has micro-cultures, because wherever there is an established leader there will be a subset of rules thereby forming another culture. If this culture is not assessed regularly with public9 indicators that hold people accountable, then the core values are just words and do not lead to impact.

Following questions about core values, we focus on understanding more about the organizational structure, and incentives for employees.  A list of studies have been done to reveal the fact that employees do not stay for pay alone.  There has to be more reasons for an individual to commit to your organization.  You must have internal success metrics that help you to know when you have over delivered in the lives of your staff.

Step 3: Implementing Success Metrics and Incentives

Sometimes we encounter resistance here, with statements like, “I’m not incentivizing people to come to work,” or “I am not going to buy loyalty”.  In these moments, we remind the leaders that they may be strongly underestimating the number of opportunities that lie await for people to pursue.  We remind them, in a subtle way, that their staff is their first client, not shareholders or customers.  So the same tenacity placed on overdelivering for buyers, should be the same effort, if not more, spent on continuously winning the loyalty of staff and employees.

In a perfect setting, both the employer and the employee share the sentiment of serving one another in partnership.  That’s when there is a beautiful dance and a clear understanding that both parties are in a relationship for a greater good, the client and customer.  However, the onus for establishing this trust belongs to the employer. A simple two-question framework we use for helping to re-engage staff are as follows:

1. When it comes to [success measure] how does [company name] add the most value to you?

2. When it comes to [success measure] where could [company name] add more value to you?

These questions are designed to help you uncover what each individual values most.  Obviously, no answer will be the same, but it will have something to do with what each individual sees as success.  By associating the company with what the staff member views as success, it creates buy-in.

Step 4: Strategic Distribution Channels

Now here’s the catch, these questions cannot be distributed across the entire organization from your HR department, in the form of an email.  That is a sure fire way to have the email overlooked, because people do not respond well to personal questions in a transactional medium.  It must be distributed by managers, in person, to no more than 10 people at a time.  Ideally, your managers ask these questions during their weekly, 15 minute, one-on-one meetings with their downline.  The managers are not responsible for providing the solution, simply collecting the data.

Then you will gather the feedback from the managers via your data platform, and build on this information by hosting a focus group (managers and directors) where they provide further insights about nuances the upper management never knew.  This is the time to listen to suggestions on how to improve engagement through incentive.  Note that most of the time it is not about money, it’s about you (leadership).

Step 5: Review and Revise

This method of surveying will deliver on 80%+ results, assuming the relationship between leadership and middle management is healthy.  Managers that are unable to get feedback from their constituents is a signal to probe deeper. Now that your staff feels heard, you have potential to capitalize the moment. Leveraging the insight on what your staff members desire, you can build incentives around this.  You will not be able to please everyone, but we encourage you to focus on the trends.  

We will use these trends to set challenges (90 days is perfect) that spark teams to drive toward goals and milestones.  This model works best in a meritocracy, where people are already conditioned to earn through performance; however, it can be applied to any work setting.  After each challenge (usually broken up by quarters of the calendar year) you can determine the impact of your efforts. Then the cycle repeats itself.

Case Study: Marq Neasman Consulting’s High-Performance Culture

Here’s an example of how we use this same formula within Marq Neasman Consulting, one of 4 companies under the Marq Neasman brand. The vision of the consulting firm is to develop the world’s most impactful leaders and businesses.  The mission for doing this is to establish $100 million brands leveraging the High-Performance Leadership Systems.  

Core Values

Our core values are rooted in singular words, which we have defined. They are service, purpose, excellence, success, leadership, and culture.  We use defining questions for each of these values to ensure every service or product we create is in alignment with it.  We do not hire professionals that do not have a deep sense of connection with at least 4 out of 6 of our core values.  We do this to ensure the integrity of our culture is embedded, whether leadership is present or not. It also helps tremendously with employee referrals and engagement.  A strong indicator of the power in core values is the fact that we rarely have to hire outside our network.

Metrics and Incentives

On to the incentives; we focus on just one guarantee, which is the same guarantee we offer our clients.  It is 40-60% increases in impact, income, and influence on an annual basis.  For every team member the core value of success can be summed up in one or more of these three items.  The metric for success may change from year to year, as life unfolds; and we are prepared for this, just as is the case for our clients.  Therefore, we expect our employees to grow at the same rate we help our clients grow.  

If we could not replicate growth internally, then we would not be able to validate the principles and systems of High-Performance Leadership.  A distinctive factor, we eat what we sell.  

Accountability

In the event an associate or staff member does not see 40-60% growth in impact, income, and influence cumulatively, then curiosity is peaked and questions are raised.  The first question is was there improvement at the rate of 1% each day.  This is the first agreement our staff must embrace, because it guarantees 38% growth annually. 

To help with metrics, each of these three “incentives” has clear milestones associated with all of them.  Income is easiest and it is revealed in offers made, and products sold.  Impact is revealed in projects completed, processes created, and people transformed. Influence is revealed in roles, responsibilities, and relationships.  The hardest of the three is Influence.  Despite ease or difficulty to accomplish, each metric is objective and clear to everyone.  It is also simple, which helps keep engagement high.  Everyone knows what is expected of them, and how to achieve it. 

As a result, from the date of its inception, Marq Neasman Consulting Firm has not only seen 40-60% increases, but so have our staff and clients.  It’s a huge testament to the power of High-Performance Leadership Systems, and the minds of our people. 

Power Thought

In closing, we honor your courage and commitment to look into the abyss, and do hard things. This journey of High-Performance Leadership is not for the weak and weary.  It will take a bold and energizing vision to overcome the many obstacles that lie await.  And since no man does anything great by him/herself, we must be avid about recruiting and developing talent to the fullest potential.  

Let us remember that as leaders, the low-hanging fruit to building high-performance teams is in engagement. It can be found by simply leaning into the needs and desires of our current staff, and removing those that no longer align with our vision, mission, and core values.  Let us set our sights on growing in awareness, acknowledgement, action, and accountability to our staff first!  After all it is far more important to gain the buy-in of the people inside the business before those on the outside.  It is our job as leaders to get the best out of our team and we should uncover every opportunity to do such.  This is where the game of business is won; checkmate.

If you have found this to be insightful, take a moment to share it with your circle of influence.  If you need more assistance implementing the strategies you have just learned, click the link below connect with one of our Executive Advisors.