Pastor Ron Edmondson recently shared the four questions he asked of his staff as they prepare for the new year.

• What task do you have to perform in your area of responsibility that you most need to get better at doing?
• In what area of the ministry (organization) do you wish you had more experience?
• What personal or spiritual discipline do you want to improve in 2009?
• How can...I personally help you improve in your work, spiritual or personal life in 2009?

Four excellent goal-setting questions, but I don't think he went far enough. Rather than using these questions to conduct what is effectively a two-way conversation between the leader and the individual team members I would recommend that everyone on the team ask and answer these questions with each of their teammates.

That would be a powerful high performance technique.

 

It's been on my to-do list for months (at least!) but it's finally moving from to-do to done. That's right -- the 1st issue of Highlighting High Performance is ready for delivery.

Please, hold the applause.

Those of you who only read my feed haven't seen the sidebar item about my newsletter, so here's what I'm talking about -

Highlighting High Performance is the monthly email newletter for anyone who wants to excel.

Each issue features a variety of tools, tips and techniques designed to help you achieve high performance in whatever you do.

I'll be hitting the send button on December 1st, so you still have time to sign up to receive the inaugural issue. And I'll even make it easy for you to sign up while it's still fresh on your mind -

The leadership and team building principles used in the military are not that much different from those used in the civilian world. For example, I was recently re-reading a list of tips for non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and a number of them struck me as applicable to leaders in organizations of all types. All I had to do was replace the military-specific references (soldiers, NCO's) with more universal terms (team members, leaders) and I was struck by how the tips were descriptive of successful leaders in all walks of life.

Here, then, are five ways to know if you're doing it right:

• If you are doing it right, you constantly question whether you have done your best.
• If you are doing it right, your soldiers trust you unquestioningly.
• If you are doing it right, soldiers--to include soldiers from other teams, squads, platoons, etc.--see you out for counsel and advice.
• If you are doing it right, other NCOs seek you out for the same.
• If you are doing it right, you spend part of your limited free time finding answers to prolems that do not yet exist.

So what do you think--are you doing it right?

 

(The original article, Are You Doing it Right by Staff Sergeant Alan J. Marinoff, first appeared in NCO Update Volume 9 Number 3, May/June 2000, published by The Association of the United States Army)

Ever since the anthrax scares that followed the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the United States Government has been trying to devise a system to rapidly treat a large number of people in the event of a large-scale anthrax attack. I'm surprised it took this long, but it looks like a clever - and, in hindsight, rather obvious - solution is coming, thanks to the United States Postal Service:

WASHINGTON (AP) - If there ever is another anthrax attack, the letter carrier may deliver your antibiotics. Federal health officials are beginning a project in Minneapolis-St. Paul to let letter carriers stockpile a personal supply of emergency antibiotics so they are protected and ready to deliver aid to the rest of the city at a moment's notice.

"These letter carriers are being asked to put their lives on the line to help their communities," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Wednesday. By ensurng they are protected first, "the carriers can be ready on short notice to take to the streets."

The project aims to overcome a big hurdle of emergency planning. The government has much drugs stockpiled in case of future bioterrorism, but few ways to get them quickly to panicked citizens. Leavitt noted that if someone possibly has inhaled anthrax, the chances of survival are best if antibiotic treatment begins within 48 hours.

The U.S. Postal Service came forward, he said. "They have people who every day walk to every house."

Those carriers could provide "a front-end quick strike," added William Raub, Leavitt's senior science counselor.

But could letter carriers successfully deliver medications to a great number of homes during an emergency, when the carriers might be mobbed? Would they be willing?

To address the first issue, test projects in Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston over the past two years paired letter carriers with police officers on holidays. Carriers volunteered to do double routes, delivering empty pill bottles along with a "This is a Test" flier explaining what was happening. In Philadelphia, 50 carriers reached about 53,000 households in eight hours, Raub said.

This outside-the-box thinking demonstrates that at least somewhere in the USPS there are individuals and teams who are willing and able to consider a problem and develop innovative solutions. Can you say the same about your organization?

Developing a high performance team is all about building and managing relationships. One of the most overlooked relationship in that context is the relationship between the team leader, the team member and the team member's family. While it is admittedly difficult to walk the fine line between taking an appropriate interest in your team members' family life and putting your nose where it doesn't really belong, your ability to effectively walk that line can go a long way towards building your high performance team.

There are a number of simple ways to demonstrate that you value the importance of your team members' families. Among them are these:

• Be aware of the basics - names of spouses and children, ages and activities of children, etc.
• Send cards on appropriate occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, etc)
• Let the spouse know when the team member is recognized for an achievement at work. Better yet, if there's going to be a presentation at work, invite the family.
• Minimize - or at least minimize the impact of - unplanned events that can wreak havoc on a team members family life
• Plan events that include family members during work hours. It doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive; you could do something as simple as inviting families to come in for pizza during lunch.

A word of caution, though; don't forget your single team members. Concentrating too much time and effort on the needs of your married team members can serve to alienate those who, by choice or circumstance, are unattached. They likely also have family relationships that should be taken into account, and a leader who truly cares about this aspect of team building will take the time to discover the important relationships in the lives of these team members.

Of all the methods you can use to help you achieve your goals, one of the most effective is to form an accountability partnership. Just as the name implies, in an accountability partnership you and a partner hold each other accountable for staying on task to complete specific tasks. Beyond that basic requirement, there are very few limits on how you form your partnership and with who. For example, although I've been involved for the past year in an accountability partnership with Dan Weedin, we have yet to meet each other face-to-face. Regardless, I've found our weekly discussions to be extremely important in keeping me focused on achieving my goals (and I'm confident that Dan feels the same).

While that lack of limitations makes it very easy to form an accountability partnership, there are some steps you can take to make your partnership as effective as possible. Beyond joining forces with someone who you believe will be a good 'fit' as a disciplined and supportive partner, here are five tips for forming an effective accountability partnership:

1. Set a specific day of the week and time of day to talk. This will make it easier to develop the habit of talking on a regular basis as well as provide some needed predictability.
2. Use a strictly enforced agenda for your discussions. If either of you needs to discuss something outside the agenda schedule a separate call/meeting. Your accountability calls/meetings are strictly for accountability discussions.
3. Adhere to a 1/2 hour time limit for your calls/meetings. Anything less makes it difficult to accomplish a full accounting while anything more can encourage wandering off-topic.
4. Send 'read-ahead' information to each other whenever possible. If one of your goals for the week was to complete a written document promise to send it to your partner. Not only does that provide an even more tangible deadline, your partner may notice something (spelling/grammar/etc) that you missed.
5. Be brutally honest with each other when it comes to what you have and haven't accomplished - and why. This is the cornerstone principle of using an accountability partnership to its best advantage.

While I consider these 5 tips to be the most important to forming an effective and productive accountability partnership there are no doubt others that warrant consideration. If you have any tips that you think are equally important I'd love to hear about them in the comments.