Performance as a People Model: 3 Behavioural Shifts That Change Everything

In this article, I’ll unpack three key behavioural shifts leaders must make to drive real cultural change. These shifts form the foundation of what we call the “Performance as a People Model©”... A broader framework that also identifies seven leadership conditions essential for building people-powered performance.

Successfully leading organisational change involves exemplifying the change in a manner that goes beyond ‘typical’ leadership training. It means changing the culture, and that means leaders must change how they lead.

I tend to find that few organisations undertake such a transformation with the goal of changing their own culture, the primary focus is on transformation of their leaders. However, in my experience there always comes a realisation that the required shifts in the way leaders work is difficult to embed without a supporting cultural change.

These shifts are challenging because from senior teams top-down, leaders must understand both what changes are required and the importance of these changes, not only for the sustained success of the company but for their personal growth as well. At a personal level, which creates the professional platform, we are changing ingrained habits that have been re-enforced through repeat pattern driven experiences. Therefore, everyone typically requires substantial and ongoing support to proficiently adopt this new leadership approach, which we can achieve through the one-2-ones, and one of the main reasons we recommend a 12-month partnership in our P90XL Leadership program.  

There are three fundamental behavioural shifts that illustrate the challenge of building new everyday leadership approaches, which in turn influences the culture at a very practical, real-world level… In the understanding that each shift also represents a profound break from the typical way that organisations have encouraged leaders to historically behave.

The fact is leaders have been conditioned, as was required and expected in the second half of the last century, to view their main value as providing answers, and some may even believe that’s what coaching is. However, our workplaces are evolving and to evolve with them, and create sustainability, leaders are required to build better mindset, skillset and action sets, not least in mastering the art of listening, reflecting, and trusting the inclusion of diversity… All of which takes time and practice. Most successful leaders eventually embrace the concept that they don't need to be the problem solvers and come up with all the answers. They may know the answers, though use that insight to influence others to come up with the right solutions and close the ‘Buy-In-Gap’ to shift from compliance to commitment.

In our programmes we will lead cultural shifts together through our quarterly cultural strategy sessions that can cascade down throughout and across your company or division.

The first shift, asking the right questions rather than giving the right answers reflects a pillar of lean manufacturing:

1. Leaders must facilitate the platform for everyone, at every level, to build new capabilities, embodied in Kaizan (continuous improvement)

It is about infusing a collective purpose that allows all our people to grow as human beings, not simply through on the job training as paid labour.

“I am able to contribute my best self to the work”

The second shift, ‘getting people to put system solutions in place’ also reflects a pillar of lean manufacturing:

1. Those closest to a problem generally understand it best and be empowered to observe issues first hand to find effective solutions.

This is in full recognition that when problems aren’t fully solved, they inevitably return creating still more waste that the organisation could have avoided.

In any sort of transformation initiative, there can be a sense among team members that change is happening ‘to’ them rather than by or for them. This can be especially true in leadership and culture transformations. Therefore, the goal is to take a more inclusive approach, changing the culture through shifts in our leaders’ behavioural approaches and strategies, such as empowering the team to come up with solutions, while still maintaining a degree of control and influence.

Empowering leaders are far more effective at influencing team members creativity and social conscience behaviour.  By empowering team members, leaders are also more likely to be trusted, compared to leaders who do not empower their team members. However, our experience in western cultures does not prove that empowering team members alone will always boost ‘routine task performance’, though interestingly it does very much so in Asian companies we have worked with, especially in China.  To unlock team motivation and boost routine performance we will look at other influencing factors, including whole person growth that we need to embed into our Employee Value Proposition at a macro level, and at a micro level teaching our leaders to infuse collective purpose.

There is also no doubt that the biggest danger to any operation is complacency and change only truly begins when emotionally intelligent leaders create a platform where everyone within the organisation can actively question the emotional reality and the cultural norms underlying their team’s daily activities and behaviours.

The third shift is about connecting the company goals to individuals work, which reflects another important pillar of lean manufacturing:

1. Leaders are expected to coach rather than command, supporting their teams in problem-solving and personal improvement efforts

This behaviour involves connecting the future to today by translating the organisation’s macro purpose, vision and business objectives into practical targets that people can work toward each day.

That constant cycle requires more than simply setting targets: it requires leaders to understand and explain how their people’s work contributes to the organisation’s ambitions.  And they must understand their people’s personal goals as well, recognising that work is more engaging when it has meaning to the individual. This is the path to learning how to intrinsically motivate people and use positive and negative re-enforcement to gain discretionary effort. As opposed to the far more traditional leadership methods of extrinsic motivation, the so-called carrot and stick approach, using threat of punishment or removal of an existing benefit as a form of potential punishment, or the unilateral use of money, bonuses or pay rises. 

In theory, a cascading deployment system is amazing, such as tour proven model. In practice, it can fail to deliver the alignment it promises for two reasons:

Firstly, because companies do not have effective processes for two-way communication. A cascading strategy requires strong bottom-up communication channels to be effective. Otherwise, we fall foul of the strategy-execution gap.

The traditional concept of Top-Down Leadership is completely outdated… The immutable practice of Bottom-Up Leadership engages, empowers and evokes contribution at all levels, which enables Top-Down Steering.

Secondly, because the tools at their disposal are failing them, Spreadsheets and PowerPoints won’t cut it.

The only way we have found to effectively deal with the challenges of a cascading deployment system is to build culture around it.

When leaders cascade strategy, the most common mistake is to cascade it vertically. In fact, business units who work together to build their plans are much more aware of the strategic priorities and the annual performance of their strategies. Plus, cross-functional cooperation reinforces strategic alignment.

🚀 Want to see where your culture supports or sabotages performance?

Download our Performance as a People Model© and discover the 7 conditions that shape true engagement and accountability in your organisation.

Plus... The 6 deeper leadership shifts we use to align culture and mindset

This tool helps senior leaders assess current gaps in leadership behaviours, cultural alignment, and team engagement, so you can build a plan for sustainable change.