I’ve noticed that many short articles have a snappy heading such as above. I did think of calling it “The ten ways to increase your performance at work” but I felt that sounded too formulaic and that is not my intention. However, I do want to provoke you to consider what you need to perform at your best. The setting I’m thinking of is work but the factors are very similar for any pursuit – hobby, social, sport or activity. Try thinking of a particular focus – say work – and write down your first thoughts – what do I need to perform at my best, and increase your performance at work?
I wrote down areas such as clarity of goal, understanding why what I am doing is important (to me and to others) and a feeling of being supported in the task. These all might be related to leadership. I also wrote down having the skill, ability, and knowledge in order to produce my best work and these all relate to development and learning. I personally have unashamedly leveraged my contacts and connections when working on something important – reaching out to others who may be able to help. This might produce more efficient ways of getting something done (they may have already done something similar) or it might provoke something I hadn’t considered and open a new way of doing it.
I then started thinking that these were all quite practical things and explored what are some of the magic ingredients for me that really make me feel I can achieve high quality and quantity at the same time i.e., my output is enhanced. I concluded it is often how I am personally feeling – my mood. Do I feel motivated, focused, and energised? So then I started thinking about my mood enhancers – what I can do to put myself in the best possible place. Some of these things I’ve listed above contribute but my list then started to include words such as wellbeing, resilience, health, diet, happiness and engagement. I also felt the environment was important to me (pleasant with limited distractions) as well as my body clock (I work best early morning).
Of course, it depends on what task I’m focused on but broadly I have identified a practical list of things I can do to ensure maximum motivation, mood and therefore performance. Now I know that we all face situations and people that can be “mood Hoovers” and that might be a topic of another musing but explore what steps you need to take to feel good. My wife has just appeared in my office about to go for a run. I run because it makes me feel motivated, but she said she is running this early because she is feeling motivated. It’s an input/output thing but it all helps. Choose one thing to do that enhances your mood and do it regularly until it is a habit, and this will increase your performance at work. Not a secret, maybe, but add another nine and you could have your list of ten……now I’m off to walk the dog.
George Blakeway is the Managing Director of the Fruitful Group – a Leadership and Team Performance business that helps individuals and teams be at their best. We also develop other Learning & Development professionals and give them the tools to do this including our new Team Coaching tool. For more information about us and our solutions visit our site here.
