Today, we conclude our 4-part series on one of our highly recommended strategies for driving a culture of peak performance – Implementing Personalised Leadership Coaching & Mentoring. Over the past 3 weeks, we have looked at (i) 8 Reasons Leaders Must Adopt A Coaching Leadership Style in 2024 (ii) 9 Ways To Develop Coaching Leaders On Your Team and (iii) 5 Coaching Errors Leaders Make And How To Avoid Them

Seven Strategies for Coaching Your Team for Peak Performance
Because employee performance has a significant impact on an organization’s capacity to meet its objectives; efficient and productive workers can be invaluable assets in guiding an enterprise in the right direction. Nevertheless, a lot of leaders still struggle to inspire their workers to drive performance.

Therefore, it is critical that leaders intentionally create a conducive workplace environment as well as systems that will enable their teams to thrive.

BetterUp’s research, revealed that managers who underwent leadership coaching to build resilience saw a 31% increase in team performance, a 9% increase in team innovation, and a 52% decrease in burnout. This is why we are present these 7 distinct approaches to optimizing employee efficiency and peak performance for success.

1. Examine Performance Indicators
Discussing mediocre performance without first identifying the gaps in your organisational structure will only end in using up tangible resources to play the complain game without fixing the main issue. Therefore, it is not just important to get the key performance indicators right the first time, but it is also important to review them from time to time to ascertain that your team are square pegs in a square hole and if these KPIs still support your business goals. Periodic review of KPIs can help you understand why your team members are not meeting your objectives or turning in their best efforts. Once these factors have been determined, you can create processes with the explicit intention of giving your team members greater assistance so they can thrive.

2. Always Communicate with Purpose
As a leader, unproductive communication might cause your team to become more confused and disengaged from their jobs. To mainstream productive communication, you must therefore be more intentional about not just what you say, how you say it and what your team members understand. Make it your mission to to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation.

3. Promote A Consistent Objective
While it is important to be intentional in your communication, you must be consistent with your objectives. Nothing confuses your team more that when they see you pursuit divergent goals. What you say to them is not as important as what you do consistently. While flexibility is a great skill, you want to ensure you don’t have team members confused. They must understand how they fit into the overall objectives of your company. This objective must be consistent. Developing workflow maps for your team might even be an effective approach; these visual aids would assist them in seeing the connections between tasks, situations in which cooperation could be useful, and the ultimate objective of a given project.

4. Have Realistic Expectations
It is important to have realistic expectations when you set goals for your team. Your team may not miraculously delivery 100x of their expected performance even if you have reviewed your KPIs, ensure productive communication and you are consistent with your objectives you lead with unrealistic expectations. As much as possible, provide your team with required resources, be kind and encourage them to deliver their very best. This can support team members in continuing to collaborate to achieve a common objective.

5. Prioritise Accountability
Prioritizing accountability on your team is paramount for fostering trust, efficiency, and long-term success. By holding individuals and teams accountable for their actions, decisions, and outcomes, organizations establish a culture of responsibility and transparency. This culture encourages team members to take ownership of their work, promotes collaboration, and ensures that objectives are met effectively. Additionally, accountability helps identify areas for improvement, facilitates timely problem-solving, and strengthens stakeholder relationships by demonstrating integrity and reliability.

6. Leverage Constructive Feedback
Effective leaders understand the critical role of providing feedback in nurturing growth and organizational development. By offering constructive feedback, you empower your team members to recognize their strengths, address weaknesses, and continuously improve their performance. This feedback loop fosters open communication, trust, and a culture of learning within the team. Moreover, when delivered thoughtfully and with empathy, feedback helps align individual goals with organizational objectives, motivates individuals to strive for excellence, and ultimately drives overall success.

7. Promote Inclusive Collaboration
Leaders must foster collaboration within their teams as it cultivates synergy, innovation, and shared ownership of goals. By creating an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives are valued and encouraged, leaders harness the collective intelligence and creativity of their team members. Collaboration breaks down silos, promotes cross-functional communication, and enables individuals to leverage each other’s strengths to achieve common objectives.

To further position your leaders for peak performance, you can download a free copy of the latest edition of The Peak Performer Magazine at www.thepeakperformer.africa You can also enroll your Mid-level Leadership Team for the Made4More Accelerator Program https://abiolachamp.com/m4m-accelerator and your Senior Leadership Team for the Dr. Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp MOMBASA 2024 https://abiolachamp.com/international-bootcamp/ We also have an upcoming training for leaders in public service www.abiolachamp.com/depips/

About Dr. Abiola Salami
Dr. Abiola Salami is the Convener of Dr Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp and The Peak PerformerTM. He is the Principal Performance Strategist at CHAMP – a full scale professional services firm trusted by high performing business leaders for providing Executive Coaching, Workforce Development & Advisory Services to improve performance. You can reach his team on hello@abiolachamp.com and connect with him @abiolachamp on all social media.