Your performance isn’t just about you: Why your behaviour doesn’t always bring out the best in others

Performance doesn’t happen in isolation

Before a race, the last thing I needed was news about my competitors. Some of my staunchest supporters were nervous for me, and it came out as comments about my rivals, what they were doing or what they’d said. I learnt how much the people around me could influence my mindset before a race, and how important it was to have the right people around me.

The ripple effect

A leader’s behaviour travels in the same way. Someone who prides themselves on solving problems can teach everyone around them to bring every problem straight to their desk. Their own performance may be exceptional – the team’s performance and growth stalls.

A leader who believes they’re providing clarity can take away other people’s confidence to make decisions. Someone maintaining high standards can create so much anxiety about getting things wrong that people stop taking initiative. None of them are acting from a bad place. They’re trying very hard to deliver, but what they intend and what the team experiences can be very different.

Pressure makes it worse. If we like control, we become more controlling. If we avoid difficult conversations, we avoid them even more when the stakes are high. It was the same with my supporters. Their nerves came out in what they said, often without them realising the effect it was having on me. As leaders, we’re equally capable of being unaware of the impact we’re having on others, particularly when we’re focused on delivering results.

The coaches who helped me most understood this. They managed their own nerves rather than passing them on to me.

That’s why self-awareness is a performance skill. It’s useful to know how you behave when things are going well. It’s more valuable to know what happens when you’re tired, frustrated or under pressure, because that’s when the people around you feel it most.

Creating the conditions for other people to perform

Before a race, my best coaches would tell me how strong my warm-up looked, remind me of what had been going well, or talk about the race plan. They never said “you’re going to win”, because that focus on the outcome wasn’t helpful to me. My fitness was the same either way, but the conditions I was racing in were very different.

The same principle applies to your team. How you communicate and respond when things don’t go to plan all influence the conditions in which people perform. Someone who provides clarity, trusts their judgement and makes it easy to raise a concern will get a very different performance from someone whose reactions they can’t predict.

Part of being a high performer in a leadership role is taking responsibility for those conditions. High performance still needs honest feedback, difficult decisions and demanding standards. What matters is whether people can focus their energy on meeting those demands or whether they’re spending it managing your reactions.

A different way to review your performance

We’re comfortable asking whether we delivered what we set out to achieve. We’re less used to asking what it was like for other people to work alongside us while we did it.

• When I’m under pressure, what changes about the way I communicate?
• Do people feel able to challenge me or tell me when something isn’t working?
• Am I helping others take responsibility, or making myself indispensable?
• What does my behaviour make easier for the people around me?
• What does it make harder?

The answers won’t always be obvious, so sometimes you need to ask other people and listen to what they say. That takes confidence, especially when you’re the person others look to for answers.

High performance is something we influence in others

I still believe in personal responsibility, preparation, discipline and the desire to keep improving. Those disciplines helped me enormously as an athlete and they matter in the work I do today. But sustained high performance requires us to look beyond our own contribution, because our behaviour can either increase or limit the performance of those around us.

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do for performance is to stop and notice what your behaviour is making possible for somebody else.

Explore your impact on others

If you’d like to find out what your team would say about working with you, that’s a conversation I have with leaders and leadership teams through my coaching and development programmes. Please do get in touch, I’d be delighted to talk it through.