The below article is an excerpt from Dr. Michael Frisina’s full essay titled “People Are the Heart of Performance.”
We have heard it said many times that culture is everything to organizational performance. Even so, many organizational leaders still struggle with the behavior competencies that seem vague, fuzzy, and soft yet so vital to the financial and productive prosperity necessary to sustain the organization. Behaviors are the building blocks of the culture. When behavior changes are expressed in terms of the work people do, their mental scripting, expressed in terms of how people are affected by their behavior, it is much easier for people to understand the need for behavior changes and why they are necessary to drive performance excellence and serve the legitimate needs of clients and coworkers as people.
For example, in health care when nurses learn and comprehend that their “emotional depression” impacts the safety and quality of patient care they are more likely to change their behavior. When pharmacists learn and adapt from a mental mapping of filling two hundred prescriptions per work shift to enhancing the quality of life for people, performance increases dramatically. What mental scripting would motivate, energize, and enhance your work performance? Seeing your work as stuffing pills in plastic bottles or dramatically improving the quality of life of another human being?
It should come as no surprise that influential leaders have a nonnegotiable commitment to excellence. They link this commitment to a moral obligation of stewardship, exhibited continually in consistent and intentional behaviors that translate into highly effective performance. As a result they continually make a significant difference in the lives of other people. Your ability to influence as a leader is directly proportional to how you choose to lead yourself and manage the impact of your behavior on others. A few bad habits can nullify your influence on the people who desire for you to step up and lead them effectively. People who have succeeded in achieving titled positions of authority get very protective of their habits. Like you they believe, falsely, that they have succeeded because of the very habits that may now be holding back the performance of their departments and teams.
At COORS, we are here to transform the self-awareness of your organization, which in turn translates to teamwork, aligning leaders with organizational culture. We believe that emerging healthcare leaders are assets for organizations, which is why we work to create environments that promote leadership, teamwork, positive communication, and, in turn, organizational growth.
