120: Morten Hansen on Individual High Performance

We often focus on company performance and leadership, but what about individual performance? What can we learn from just the individual and how can we improve it so that everyone on your team is a star performer? Today’s guest has the answers.

Morten Hansen is a management theorist, motivational speaker, and author. Formerly a professor at Harvard Business School, Morten now teaches management at The University of California. He also co-authored the New York Times bestseller Great by Choice with Jim Collins. Morten has recently released a new book titled, Great at Work, which he dives into, on this week's show.

Morten was working 80+ hours to achieve good work, but his colleague was working 50 hours a week and still delivered good work, if not better. How was it that she was able to achieve such great quality of work within less time? This spawned the question, why are some people great at work and others are not?

Through extensive research and five years later, Morten discovered that there were 7 factors or principles that explained two-thirds of people’s work performance. If you’re good at these seven things, it will go a long way into really performing exceptionally well in your role. This is great news because it doesn’t necessarily mean ‘do more’ or ‘work harder.’

The great performers are not the ones up in the middle of the night sending emails at 3 a.m. to their staff. In fact, they’re much more organized; they’re more focused and incredibly good at prioritizing. Morten found that if you’re working more than 65 hours per week, you’re getting diminishing returns in your performance.

To find out how to increase your performance and what the seven principles are, listen in for more!

Interview Links: Mortenhansen.com Morten on LinkedIn

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