More Impact, More Easily

8System eight: Performance

My foundation of psychometrics came from work I did with the British Psychological Society almost two decades ago, and it taught me one very important lesson — performance is about more than just the person. It's equally about the environment a person works in. The impact of that environment plus the person's behaviours is what results in performance. In essence:

Perhaps you've seen a person who was a high performer in one business but couldn't make it work in another? Perhaps you've even been that person. This subsequent performance has got nothing to do with the individual. They didn't change between jobs. The environment changed and impacted their performance. B + E = P.

This formula is at odds with most performance improvement thinking, which focuses on where the individual went wrong, and what their manager expects them to get right next time. This philosophy forgets to take into account how the environment may have contributed.

As a leader, you have a huge amount of control over that environment. You can control how at home a person feels. You can create a threatening or calming dynamic, introduce sudden new pressures or set reasonable expectations. You can reduce their resources — halve their team, for example, or their budget or time frame. With such environmental changes, it becomes harder for anyone to perform — no matter how ideal their ...