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Developing a results-minded culture within your business is certainly neither a simple nor overnight process.
It relies on the backing of a highly motivated group of individuals, who all recognise that working together as a team is the best way to achieve the best results.
However, the most mindful of leaders will also realise that this approach is a double-edged sword, yes we can develop this culture, but by striving for only the best results we can push even the most motivated of teams into a group of tired, unmotivated individuals suffering from the effects of burnout.
Burnout Explained
These days most of us have heard of the term, “burnout”, but how many managers and leaders understand when the symptoms of this are beginning to creep into their team?
In order to recognise when this is happening, it’s crucial for managers to understand the signs associated with it.
According to Mental Health UK, the official definition of burnout is:
“Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. It can occur when you experience long-term stress in your job, or when you have worked in a physically or emotionally draining role for a long time.”
These symptoms begin slowly at first, so they are difficult to spot, but as a leader it’s up to you to help these individuals, not only to create a high-performing team, but also to ensure their burnout doesn’t impact their personal life too.
How to Create a Results-Minded Culture
Keep Things Simple
There is nothing more damaging to productivity and high-performance than complex or poorly managed processes.
Keeping things as simple as possible must be your guiding philosophy when it comes to fostering an atmosphere of high-performance.
Simplicity in internal processes and in the way you manage your customers, is the best move for a few reasons:
Everyone Understands Them.
Everyone Can Get Behind Them.
Easy to Scale or Replicate.
Measurable Results.
Keeping things as simple as possible is key for ensuring everyone understands what is happening and why, they are easy to replicate for future processes and most importantly of all, you can glean useful and measurable data from them.
Develop Values That Make Sense
If you can’t get your team excited about your plans going forward, then there’s a good chance you’ve got your values all wrong. After all, who’s going to be able to get behind a selection of values that don’t mean anything to them.
A recent poll by People Management reveals that more than 58% of employees would consider leaving their roles if they didn’t feel that their values aligned with their employer.
By sitting down with your team to develop some clear, shared values it means that everyone within your organisation can seriously invest in them and place the time and effort into pushing your business forward.
Set the Tone
You’re the leader in your organisation, people look to you to set the tone, and if this isn’t done so with a very deliberate and considered approach, then it’s very easy to veer off track.
In order to develop this results-minded approach, you need to be the one in the driving seat delivering on those goals and values you sat down with the team to create. If you lock yourself away in your office everyday, you begin to lose this connection and those values quickly dissipate.
What this means for you on a daily basis, is you need to be communicating regularly with the team, celebrating when things go well, troubleshooting when they don’t and pushing yourself to those high standards each day.
Get Out of the Way
As we’ve mentioned, being part of the team is a great thing, but this can only go so far, and it’s up to you to recognise when this happens.
If you find that your team is coming to you for answers on even the tiniest decision, it’s a sure fire sign you’re too involved and you need to let go.
At first, being micromanaged is a frustrating thing for an employee, but over time you’ll find that this frustration quickly turns into dependence. When this happens it means that your team has lost confidence and believes that you no longer trust their judgement.
If they feel they need to come to you to check on every aspect of their day, this is the opposite of a high-performance, confident team. This lack of control is one of the biggest reasons for burnout culture in a workplace.
Now you’ve clearly defined your expectations and what values you’ll be holding your team to, you need to take a step back and allow them the freedom to get on with the job you hired them to do.
Conclusion
Preventing a burnout culture and nurturing a happy, motivated, and above else, healthy team in both body and mind, work hand-in-hand. If you fail to take the time to invest in your team, how can you expect to construct a team that places positive results at the forefront of their thinking?
Creating a culture like this is never an easy one, but once you’ve got the cogs moving, you’ll find a motivated group of people who are looking to aspire to great things.
Richard LeCount is the Managing Director of usbmakers.com
