181 - Leadership - Standard of Performance - Mentality

Teams at their best are all about connection and extension. There is a military-like sense that you can’t let your buddies down

A leader is responsible for setting the standards that apply in pursuit of a vision. You are the one who has to conceive, instil and model the standard of performance. What is the mindset it seeks to instil within the team you lead?

Teams at their best are all about connection and extension. There is a military-like sense that you can’t let your buddies down. We demand and expect a lot of one another, and of ourselves first and foremost. Bill Walsh was the legendary San Fransisco 49ers American Football coach. His fantastic book The Score Takes Care of Itself provides a lot of the inspiration for my thinking about standard of performance. Walsh talks about how a leader’s job is to facilitate a battlefield-like sense of camaraderie among his or her team, an environment for people to find a way to bond together, to care about one another and the work they do, to feel the connection and extension so necessary for great results. That is the strongest bond of all, even stronger than money.

Some people have situational character: good results = good attitude, bad results = bad attitude. That has no place. It takes extraordinary fortitude to stay with the standard of performance when times are bad. I also love the mindset of the one-point underdog as the optimal sweet spot. No room for complacency but also no hopelessness that we can’t prevail. Also the mindset of happy dissatisfaction. Celebrating wins appropriately. Guarding against always focusing on what’s next to the detriment of the ability to enjoy the successes. But also guarding against prolonged indulgence, and getting back to implementing, and working to lift even further, the standard of performance.