System – Skills – Self – to drive performance

How peak performance practices in elite sports can help us understand and improve board-level executive performance.

It’s often said that context drives performance. In other words, the same person may perform in one situation but fail in another. It’s a phenomenon that has long challenged talent development professionals and coaches, not only in business and other large organisations, but also in elite sports.

Organisations supporting elite athletes have responded by developing, refining, and mastering systems that increase the chances of success for outstanding athletes and teams. One such system, developed by Evans and Hanham, notably adopted by the New Zealand All Blacks prior to their back-to-back Men’s Rugby World Cup triumphs in 2011 and 2015, shows the interdependence and interconnectedness of Structure, Skillset and Mindset. Each element influences and reinforces the other, so if one is not at the required level then the other elements are impacted with consequences for performance.

In elite sport, Structure encompasses the overall strategy, including typical play styles, match-day tactics, and the structure of the training and game preparation regime. Skillset involves working on overall execution skills coupled with granular/micro skills across a variety of conditions. This might start in rarefied situations on the training ground before progressing to real, match-day situations with adverse conditions. Mindset determines athletes’ ability to stay focused and maintain their composure. It also ensures a constructive post-game analysis and dialogue; to dwell on the past only to the extent that it provides learnings.

With a little thought we can see that performance and underperformance in any human endeavour is rooted in the interaction between these three components. Whether it’s competing at the Olympics or at club level; running a global business or one of more modest scale; preparing a complex dish or just making a piece of toast you need a System, the right Skills and the right Mindset. If any of these three components are ill-adapted to the needs of the situation, you may underperform or just burn the toast!

Therefore, as coaches, we use this model to fully understand our clients’ current performance and opportunities to improve. After years in senior executive roles, and thousands of hours around the board table and in coaching discussions, we define these areas as System, Skills and Self. If each of these are developed enough to meet the demands of the situation, strong performance and a relatively stress-free existence follow. If not then frustration, stress, anxiety and underperformance ensue, often to the detriment of the wider organisation.

So, what are System, Skills and Self, and what are the most common issues that we see under each of these areas?

System

Most of the coaching issues we deal with have their roots in the System. 

Organisations are, in essence, systems and ‘A bad system’, said the American statistician W.E. Deming, ‘will beat a good person every time.’  He is, of course, right... how many individuals do we know that have performed in one environment but less well in another, even in the same company but with a different boss or in a different department? 

System has two elements or contexts: the Stakeholder Context and Organisational Context.

Under Stakeholder Context the most common issues we see relate to stakeholder relationships; lack of alignment and clarity on strategy; issues related to priorities, resources, performance expectations and also empowerment/freedom to act; a significant source of frustration for executives if not agreed and adhered to by stakeholders.

Under Organisational Context, the most common issues are in the broad area of having the right team, structure and culture and creating a high performing team. Another common area, often overlooked by fast growing business, is the need to evolve decision making processes to ensure that decisions are made with all the relevant people (and information) in the room and therefore ideally only once.

Skills

Secondly, a lack of Skills or experience, in relation to the expectations that are placed upon us, is a fundamental source of underperformance on the one hand and a source of stress on the other.   

The most common categories of skill development opportunities we see as leaders’ responsibilities evolve relate to communication: confronting conflict constructively, creating accountability in appropriate ways and, in general, developing presence and authority.  Other key skills relate to effective orchestration of the stakeholder environment, situational judgement and decision making and also ensuring that management and leadership skills are adequate for the level at which the individual is operating at.

Self

Thirdly, the management of Self - how the stresses and challenges of our environment (System) trigger us and cause us to behave - is a foundational skill for executives.

Senior leadership challenges emotionally us in ways that we don’t expect. There are multiple sources of this including direct stakeholder pressure, higher visibility, making difficult decisions and the accompanying feelings of loneliness and even helplessness. This contrasts to the early part of our career when there was less ambiguity and pressure and we could succeed by being relatively task-focused. Seeing that, as Marshall Goldsmith wisely put it, “what got you here won’t get you there” can challenge our sense of security and identity. This gap (between our self-image or actual ability and the demands of the role) gives rise to self-doubt (often called imposter syndrome) which can further undermine our confidence.

The other common areas we see in our coaching work include impulse control and behaviour under stress, resilience (as senior leadership places greater pressure on our coping mechanisms) and, as is now well understood, maintaining a healthy balance between work, a home life, diet, physical exercise and sleep.  Furthermore, a common coaching theme relates to helping leaders to really understand their character strengths and learn to leverage them in different ways as their responsibilities evolve. 

Summary

If System and Skills are out of kilter, the Self of any senior executive can suffer, sometimes dramatically and translate into a self-perpetuating spiral of self-doubt, anxiety and fatigue in which behaviour, cognitive ability, situational awareness and judgement become impaired.

Work on ourselves (Self) needs to be done in tandem with a consideration of our environment, encapsulated in System and Skills. The SSS model provides a valuable diagnostic framework for executives to think through their situation holistically. Doing so can give rise to a virtuous cycle in which the business, or a leader’s part of it, seems to run itself, leaving the executive with the intellectual and emotional bandwidth to focus on what’s really important.

For an extended version of this article which explains the components of the model in more detail, please contact ivan@and-become.com