Professor Damian Hughes: How to create a high performance culture
Dec 15, 2020
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Professor Damian Hughes, an international speaker and bestselling author, discusses topics such as giving feedback in high performing cultures, exploring different ways of intelligence, creating opportunities for excellence, redefining high performance, and the power of language in creating a high-performance culture.
High performance is about narrowing the gap between best and worst performances, taking accountability, and focusing on controllable factors.
Creating a commitment culture, reinforcing non-negotiable behaviors, and role modeling are vital for high performance.
Deep dives
Understanding High Performance
High performance is not just about winning or achieving specific outcomes, but about creating an environment where people can make progress and perform close to their potential. It is important to focus on narrowing the gap between our best and worst performances. High performers take accountability for their actions and constantly seek to improve. They internalize setbacks and mistakes, looking inward for ways to grow, rather than externalizing blame. A key aspect of high performance is understanding and controlling the controllables. This includes focusing on behaviors, integrity, and role modeling the desired cultural values.
Building a High Performing Culture
Culture plays a crucial role in high performance. There are five types of culture commonly found in organizations: star culture, autocratic culture, bureaucratic culture, engineering culture, and commitment culture. A commitment culture, where there is a clear sense of purpose and expected behaviors, is the ideal for high performance. Leadership plays a vital role in creating and maintaining this culture. Leaders need to have integrity, role model the desired behaviors, and create an environment where cultural architects can emerge. It is essential to have clarity on non-negotiable behaviors and consistently reinforce them throughout the organization.
Navigating Change and Challenges
When it comes to cultural change, leaders should anticipate the stages of the change process rather than focusing on specific timelines. This involves understanding the stages of dream, leap, fight, progress, and arrival. The messy middle stage is a critical phase where many leaders falter. To navigate this stage, leaders must conduct premortems, anticipating challenges and potential obstacles, and communicating openly about them. During times of change, it is essential to focus on progress rather than solely on outcomes. High performance is about continuous improvement, resilience, and adapting to new circumstances.
Reframing Performance Metrics
Rethinking how we define and measure high performance is crucial. It should not be limited to superficial metrics like winning titles or achieving top scores. Instead, high performance should be assessed based on the impact and value created in areas such as employee retention, student engagement, and overall well-being. Shifting the focus from outcome-oriented measures to process-oriented measures, such as creating a safe and inclusive environment, allows for a broader and more holistic understanding of high performance. It is about valuing and nurturing individuals' unique strengths and creating a culture where everyone can thrive.
Originally recorded in our 2nd Series, in this episode we welcome Professor Damian Hughes, an international speaker and bestselling author who combines his practical and academic background within sport, organisational development and change psychology, to help organisations and teams to create a high performing culture. He is the author of eight best-selling business books, including Liquid Thinking, Liquid Leadership, How to Change Absolutely Anything, How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson, The Five STEPS to a Winning Mindset and The Barcelona Way: Unlocking the DNA of a Winning Culture. He has also been nominated for the 2007 William Hill Sports book of the year award for Peerless, his biography of boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson. In 2013, his latest biography, Marvelous Marvin Hagler became the UK’s best selling sports biography. He was appointed as a Professor of Organisational Psychology and Change for Manchester Metropolitan University in September 2010. He is the co-host of The High Performance Podcast, an acclaimed series of interviews with elite performers from business, sport and the arts, exploring the psychology behind sustained high performance. He is currently serving as a member of the coaching team for Scotland Rugby Union and Canberra Raiders. His innovative and exciting approach has been praised by Sir Richard Branson, Muhammad Ali, Sir Terry Leahy, Sir Roger Bannister, Tiger Woods, Jonny Wilkinson and Sir Alex Ferguson.
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