Getting Extraordinary Results from Ordinary People

What’s the secret of those people who seem to get such incredible results despite the fact that they are working with basically the same pool of people as we are?

We live in a results based world. We’re judged by what we produce and what we contribute to our families and communities. In the last 20 or 30 years, there’s been a lot of focus on developing management skills because we’re told that good management skills result in good results. Although this is not untrue, it’s not the full story either. Certainly a strong set of management skills will ensure you get results (or worst case show you’re trying), but getting extraordinary results from ordinary people requires more than just a finely honed set of management skills.

When researchers look at those people who achieve extraordinary results, they certainly find good management skills, but they also find good management skills in those who get lack luster results too. Good management skills are vital to achieving success, but they aren’t enough.

The secret of those people who tend to get extraordinary results is people who work with and for them want to help them get results. They are distinguished by the fact that they are not just managers, but leaders. Those who get extraordinary results tend to be extraordinary leaders. Here are the attitudes and habits research shows makes the difference between ordinary managers and extraordinary leaders. Understand and assimilate them and you’ll see your own results improve dramatically.

There are no ordinary people

Extraordinary leaders recognize every one of their people, given the right circumstances and challenges, have the potential to produce extraordinary results. They know there are no ‘ordinary people,’ just ordinary leaders who get ordinary results from people with the potential to do much more. It is this recognition that, a ‘weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place,’ that describes the way they treat their people and, in turn, the way their people choose to give their all to help them achieve the results they crave. Look for strengths in your people.

Set the tone

Great leaders lead by example. The company becomes the boss. If you are positive, dedicated, persistent, and goal-oriented then you’ll develop this sort of atmosphere in your department or organization. If you are negative about your people, depressed about the future, and disinclined to go the extra mile then don’t be surprised when you’re employees begin to mirror your attitude. Model the attitude and behaviors you want from your people.

Give your people a great reputation

Dale Carnegie outlined ten timeless principles for perfect human relationships, one of which is “Give people a high reputation to live up to.” Tell your people what you are trying to achieve, explain the importance of their contributions to these goals, train and skill them to be effective, and then invest confidence and belief in them. Tell them how certain you are they will excel. People will go to the ends of the earth to preserve a good reputation, so give them one!

Use your coaching time well

In his book ‘How to become a better boss,’ Jeffrey Fox suggests that you spend 90 percent of your one on one coaching and management time with your top performers. So, if you spend ten hours of your week working with your people, you should spend six of those hours with those people who are delivering 70 percent of your results (the time tested 80-20 rule applies everywhere); spend three of those hours with your emerging ‘stars’ (those who have the potential to make the top performer group) and spend just 10 percent of your time with those who are not contributing and never will. Effective investment of your coaching time will pay big dividends.  Don’t assume that your top performers need no time just because they are getting results; these people are your gold, treasure them.

Give lots and lot of recognition

Every study on why people leave jobs, or stay in jobs, excel in jobs, or ‘die’ in jobs, highlights the key role of recognition. Institutionalize as many initiatives as you can to catch people doing something right. When you do, thank them privately, but praise them publicly. Not even money has the motivating power of public recognition for a job well done. The great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said ‘the easiest way to knock a chip off someone’s shoulder is to let them take a bow.’ 

Catch even your worst people doing something right and praise them publicly and you’ll see their attitudes change.

Evolving from a good manager to an extraordinary leader requires nothing more than additional focus. Doing all of those things that make the people who work for you look and feel good about what they are doing will result in the best possible results.

How to be THE Expert in Your Field

You do not have to be a genius to become an expert. You just need to work a little harder than anyone else at doing so.

As you can read in Leadership Charisma, our research demonstrated that employees found leaders who were focused on their own personal development charismatic. Those leaders who displayed a clear commitment to their own ongoing development, who continually sought to improve themselves and their knowledge, were more charismatic than those who did not.

That research also showed that leaders who appeared creative – approaching their jobs with imagination and originality, taking bold, calculated risks, or inspiring innovation – were also highly charismatic. There is undoubtedly a certain creative spark that some people have and others don’t, but knowledge and a high level of expertise can go a long way to enabling any leader to be much more creative – and therefore charismatic – in the eyes of his or her people.

This was pretty much as we had expected. All of the existing charisma research we reviewed before we started our own study indicated that a very common attribute of charismatic people is an expert reputation. Those with a charismatic persona are generally viewed as having above-average expertise or ability in some key area that is of interest to those who find them charismatic. It’s easy to see why others would find expertise attractive. We would all like to perform at above-average levels and the opportunity either to learn from people who do, or even just to be associated with them and the results they achieve, makes them attractive. Expertise is a common component of charisma.

Before we look at how you can build a reputation as an expert, let’s first define an expert – in what some might think are somewhat cynical terms. For our purposes, an expert is simply someone who is seen to know more than the majority of people on any topic. So to be an expert you do not have to know everything about your chosen topic, just more than the majority of people around you.

So how do you become an expert? Two basic steps:

Part 1. Develop your expertise continuallyHow do you achieve this? Read. It’s that simple. Almost everyone around you tells themselves that they no longer have the time to read as much as they’d like (though the reality is that they’ve just made something else a higher priority). If you wish to build expert power you need to read much more than anyone else on your topic. Stay on top of your industry, read widely, and educate yourself so that you are as up to date as anyone else on developments in your industry or profession.

"Read books. Read websites. Read other people. Circle the pitfalls and highlight the opportunities. Then build a vision of how it all could be better and work like hell to make it happen"– Michael Dell, founder, Dell Inc.

If yours is a broad-ranging profession, then select a strategically important slice of industry to focus on. Pick the topic that is of most critical importance to whomever it is you would like to find you charismatic.  Remember, charisma is about others’ perceptions. Make it a goal to become the authority on that segment – first in your immediate group, then in your organization, afterward in your region, then in your country – and, ultimately, in the world.

Focus on those books that specifically address the newest developments in your field, the most innovative new approaches to addressing the key challenges in the target segment of your profession or business. The more you study the latest trends and developments in your field, the greater the distance you put between yourself and your peers. Most people learn about new developments third or fourth hand. By reading the latest works in your field before your peers, you steal a march on most people you’ll encounter.

Set a goal of reading one of these books per week. That’s 50 books per year. Your reading rate will increase with practice, but it takes 30-60 minutes per day, six to seven days per week to read a typical book.

Buy your books monthly and take the time to select the four or five each month that are the freshest and most relevant available at that point in time.

We strongly recommend e-book readers (e.g., the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or the Sony Reader) as an aid to this objective. With these excellent devices you get instant online access to just about any decent new book that hits the market. Not only do you have instant access, but the books also tend to be less expensive than their paper counter parts (especially when you factor in the cost of shipping or the time to go book shopping). Most e-book readers also have a very nifty feature that allows you to highlight passages in the books you read, and even add your own notes – with a view to later exporting those passages for use in your word processor, for example. A great investment!

Part 2. Coming soon will cover How to Build Your Expert Reputation. 

High Impact: Retention and Development Strategies in a Competitive Workforce

 

Would you say that all your employees are top performers? Probably not! Did you know that unless all your people are ‘superior’ performers, you are losing money unnecessarily . If you can move performance of an employee from ‘bottom’ to ‘average’ or ‘average’ to ‘superior’, the results can be tremendous.  Regardless of the size of your organization, these moves can have a dramatic and measurable financial impact. Profiles tools’ and solutions allow you to identify your top, middle and bottom performers.

Say for example you are manager of a sales team in your organization:

John’s Sales Team

• 10 salespeople
• Total quota of $8,400,000
• Total sales of $8,203,000
• Average sales per sales person is $820,300

Here we see the team carrying a combined annual quota of $8,400,000 that has fallen short by $197,000. Next step is to identify your top, middle and bottom performer’s annual sales.

Top performers (2 employees)

-Total sales $2,200,000

-Average quota performance 184%

Middle performers (3 employees)

-Total Sales $2,960,000

-Average quota performance 115%

Bottom performers (5 employees)

-Total sales $3,034,000

-Average quota performance 67%

Worrying facts: Your bottom performers were 67% complete against their quota and that 50% of the team are bottom performers.  Your top performers are proving that more can actually be done and in reality no one was hired for middle or bottom performance. Sales are now being lost unnecessarily.

Imagine the impact if you could change one thing, developing your bottom performers to be average performers.

Imagine if…..

Performance improvement	Additional annual sales	New total sales
Raise one bottom performer to middle	$452,467	$8,655,467
Raise ALL bottom performers to average	$2,262,333	$10,465,333

That is over $10 million dollars in new business from a simple performance shift that can be easily done once you understand how to make your team work as efficiently and effectively as possible.  Learn today about the cornerstones of performance.


Don’t take my word for it; hear from organizations that have already impacted their business in such a way.

“It’s a shift from ‘low performer thinking’ to ‘maybe they are not in the right job, and we should find them a better fit.’ It is a mentality shift, and (by applying data from the PXT), I can figure out that if poor job fit is the case, I can help them go into a different job and do better” – Eastman Chemical Company
"Before implementing the ProfileXT® the average sales per sales rep was $169,409. After one year of implementation with the ProfileXT®, annual sales increased to an average of $233,952 per sales representative. The ProfileXT® assessment increased the Bard Medical’s Critical Care sales by $64,543 per sales representative, a 28% annual increase." - Bard Medical