Talent doesn’t always equal high performance
Do you have a talented team? Check.
With the right skills? Check.
Even though you’re headed in the right direction, you can’t leave a high-performance culture to chance.
Building a high-performance culture — one that supports a high-performance team and aligns highly skilled professionals with a shared vision, goals, and objectives to deliver excellent results consistently — requires intention. The foundation of a high-performance culture includes the following:
- Trust
- Collaboration
- Respect
- Shared purpose
- Performance management
- Continuous learning
A high-performance culture requires careful development and continuous investment. To build a high-performance culture or make your high-performing culture even better:
Assess where you are: Your culture is constantly evolving. Survey your talent to verify those changes are keeping you directed toward high performance. Gallup studied over 2.7 million workers and determined the best questions to ask to measure employee engagement.
Develop managers: Managers are central to the employee experience and a high-performance culture. If they don’t have the skills to have effective conversations with employees, it creates a chasm that blocks performance. Managers need to know how to resolve conflict, communicate, and manage performance without micromanaging. Above all, help managers identify and leverage their unique strengths.
Commit to employee development: Offer training that enhances an employee’s performance with current responsibilities, prepares them for the future by teaching them new technology or equipment, and expands opportunities to help them reach their career goals.
Align individual professional goals to achieve company goals: A high-performance culture drives everyone to reach company goals using the SMART goals method: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. Using SMART goals, managers have an effective performance management process. A growth mindset and continuous performance feedback are essential for high-performance cultures.
By ensuring your employees have all the skills, training, tools, and resources they need to boost productivity and innovation, you are on your way to building a high-performance culture.
Industry Perspective
"Since day one, what’s really drawn us together at Total Tool are our core values," said Mary Johnson, director of human resources at NEFCO. "These values have been established for many years now, but we continue to reinforce and emphasize them in tangible ways. It’s not just throwing a poster on the wall that says these are our core values; we reinforce and live by them, daily. We keep our culture and communication strong with simple touchpoints such as email reinforcements from our President that speak to our values and mission.”
Only 37% of high-potential leaders have a development plan. That’s a surprising statistic for an organization’s most valuable talent. See what Talent Strategy Group’s 2025 Potential Report reveals about developing future leaders.
This "Tip of the Week" is provided by the Talent Development Council | Texas A&M University.
INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY MAGAZINE
The May/June issue of Industrial Supply magazine features an in-depth cover story about GHX Industrial. Plus, we're featuring articles by contributing writers Dr. Bharani Nagarathnam and Frank Hurtte, as well as interviews with numerous product and distribution industry experts.
