In the pursuit of high performance, one needs to be highly motivated. FILE PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK
We have heard it said numerously that we use 10 percent of our total capabilities and capacities. Human beings are excellence-seeking animals.
That is why we have made tremendous progress and advancement in various areas of life. In everything, we do we always want to perform highly. But not all people muster those feats.
How then do we develop and execute a culture of personal high performance?
In the pursuit of high performance, one needs to be highly motivated. This means that one dedicates more energy to the accomplishment of the goal. Personal excellence demands zeal and relentlessness.
A great coach can help. Great performers have personal coaches to help them scale new and challenging heights.
A coach crafts positive and supportive relationships and they are exceptional in listening, due to the failure rates they have developed patience and perseverance and of course, they tend to be very good communicators of the vision and mission.
They also understand the role of personal values in high performance. It is the coach’s joy for one to register higher levels of performance consistently.
A mentor and a coach aren’t the same. They shouldn’t be used interchangeably. Although mentors and coaches can both challenge self-limiting beliefs and assumptions. A mentor is an experienced person who can guide one in their personal development.
To set one on the trajectory of higher performance one has to measure their progress. If we can’t measure our performance by certain gold standards we might not know if we are improving or marking timing.
This is where we must assign key performance indicators. We must assign quantitative parameters to our goals. Industrious people keep pushing the envelope.
Individuals who perform at the highest-level place time constraints on their goals. You can’t have a blank cheque in personal excellence.
That is where the concept of SMART goals comes in handy. One can have a personal auditing system for feedback. Then they keep improving the measures in a process we can call stretch SMART goals.
High performers belong to elite clubs where standards are very high. It is in these exclusive clubs that high-performance behaviours are modelled and benchmarked.
Top-grade performers are people who have learnt and internalised the technique of eating their frogs first. This is a metaphor to mean that they do the hard things first.
Which therefore means that they don’t procrastinate incessantly. Procrastination busters include understanding the debilitating effects of perfectionism, setting goals, task chunking, and erecting deadlines.
Stress management and burnout can impede one’s achievement of more goals faster. For one to be more productive and effective one has to learn strategies like work-life integration, usage of positive energy boosters, developing the requisite competencies, planning one’s day, proper physical wellness, having hobbies and taking regular breaks, and quality sleep.
Undoubtedly admirable performers have countless aptitudes for time management. It is impossible to find high achievers who don’t set goals, schedule, prioritise, minimise distractions and have no time wasters.
Indelible performance is a product of knowledge. One of the greatest fountains of power is knowledge management. They continuously replace obsolete knowledge.
No woman or man can achieve stratospheric performance without cultivating a positive and supportive environment.
This is an encouraging environment with good vibes. The people around us can easily determine how far we can go.
Therefore, we have to choose our synergies very well. There is a saying that says a team makes dreams work. There is also another that says that our network determines our net worth.
Mr Magoma is a HR practitioner and Trainer, richardjellican@gmail.com
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