Performance "Super Heroes"

Wouldn't it be fantastic if you had a team of super heroes!

Imagine how much work would get done if one member of your team could move at the speed of light, how effective planning would be if someone had the gift of time-travel, and how strong engagement would be if somebody else had supersonic hearing. By now your imagination will be running wild - invisibility, flight, x-ray vision...with powers like these high performance would be guaranteed.

I discussed this concept with a leadership group recently. I asked them how they would use their chosen super-power to improve the performance in their team. The results were very interesting.

For example, a manager with the ability to travel through time said he would go back to the beginning of the day and provide a slightly different focus - but the response to him was "what is stopping you going straight back to your team now with that message?" True, he couldn't travel through time - but neither should another second be wasted once he realised action is required.

Another with the power to move at the speed of light wanted to get all her e-mails out of the way so that she could focus on the more important things. This was met with a challenge to go and prioritise the really important work anyway - the e-mails would still be there afterwards, and if anything in her inbox was truly urgent then the sender would probably call her to get a quicker response.

Invisibility created an interesting discussion. The ability to "spy" on staff to see what they were really doing seemed very appealing! But why would they not be doing the right things anyway? Any manager who doubts that their team carry out the instructions they pass on the minute their back is turned must have serious communication shortcomings, and must not spend enough time observing their team and following up actions. If people genuinely do 'switch off' when the boss isn't looking then maybe they are in the wrong job and with some honest reflection the manager will admit that they know this to be the case and they should act immediately. Whatever the issues are, a 'cloak of invisibility' is not really necessary to manage and lead people to deliver the right results. A manager can find out all they need to know in an open, and very visible, way.

And so it went on. As each "super-power" was discussed, the managers in the group realised that they already possess the powers and abilities they need to achieve their desired outcome. And they don't need to be an imaginary comic-strip character to have a super-powered impact on performance.

So why not take a closer look at your team - you may find that you already have a team of "super-heroes"!