Introduction to the 7 Disciplines

One definition of the word discipline is "to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way".

Being a great leader and high-performance coach requires us to be controlled and also build healthy, positive, and influential habits.

Living and working in such a busy and demanding world, it is easy to get distracted, lose focus, or get caught up in endless reactive situations. As a result, we can put our time, energy, and attention into situations and tasks that do nothing to help improve performance or productivity across our team and organization. We can unintentionally get to a place where we are accidentally ignoring the very people we are here to serve, lead and coach. Our people!

StellaHP's High-Performance Coaching System is underpinned by 7 Disciplines of Effective Leadership. The word disciplines can just as easily be swapped out for another word such as habits, routines, or practices.

The attributes of each discipline are critical to achieving sustainable performance improvement. They are all supported by international research.

Discipline 1 - Drive for Results

Effective leaders and high-performance coaches operate with a strong results orientation. Leadership and coaching are not only about developing and communicating a vision and setting objectives but also following through to achieve results. Effective leaders ensure results are communicated to their team and they set expectations that their team will achieve those results.

In addition, effective leaders ensure that progress on the required results is tracked regularly and they provide written or visual performance feedback on progress towards both team and individual targets. They also regularly discuss progress on results (achievement) with both their team and individual employees.

To assist individuals to achieve the results expected of them, effective leaders help them break down results and targets into manageable objectives and key result components.

Think of this in a sporting context from two perspectives.

If you were on a sports team competing but you had a coach who did not care about the results you were getting or was not driven by helping you improve, you would probably soon lose respect for them. Their credibility would be damaged and very quickly you would start asking yourself "why am I doing this"?.

Now imagine it from a team player perspective. In most sports games there is a scoreboard. A form of visual feedback that allows the players and supporters to track the score in real-time. As a player this helps you in the moment to make decisions and know where to focus next. It also keeps the spectators engaged in the game.

If we all trained and played a sport on a weekend but nobody kept score, we would soon lose motivation. We would begin to question why we were showing up each week to training and to the game. We would start to ask questions such as "Why am I doing this"? and "What is the point"?

At the end of all your effort both from an individual and team perspective you want to see a result. Within the result lies part of your ongoing motivation for continuous improvement.

Discipline 2 - Focus on Critical Work Behaviors

Results do not happen in isolation. They happen through doing things, which we would call behaviors. High-performing leaders understand the critical work behaviors or methods that maximize the results they want their team to achieve. The reason for this is the precise actions that people take during their work to determine results. Of course, not all behaviors are critical. High-performing leaders understand the difference between critical behaviors and baseline behavior. Consequently, effective leaders teach their people better work methods than they have been using and frequently communicate expectations.

One of the ways that they do this is by observing and modeling the actions of their high (exemplary) performers. These high-level performers excel in their job under the same conditions as average and low performers. They simply know how to make their work easier and more successful. They are an in-house goldmine of on-the-job performance! 

Exemplary high-performers usually have a subtle technique or improvement mindset that makes them a high performer. Great leaders know this and extract this information so they can share it across the wider team.

Discipline 3 - Provide High Levels of Positive Feedback to Reinforce Behavior

High-performing leaders provide frequent, immediate, specific, and positive feedback (praise) to encourage the critical work behaviors and methods they are seeking from their team. This is the primary way they inspire and motivate their people to high performance. Research evidence suggests that this approach is the single most effective driver of employee performance.

Effective leaders also provide significantly more positive feedback than negation, correction, criticism, or reprimand. Evidence strongly suggests that high-performing leaders use a positivity to negativity ratio of at least 5:1. This means, interactions with them are typically paired with positive emotions.

Their focus is on "catching people doing things RIGHT" and then letting them know where they are on track. Effective leaders are not narrowly focused on catching their people doing things wrong. While they do this in some situations, it is not their primary way of operating as a leader coach.

Discipline 4 - Willing to Confront Poor Performance

High-performing leaders are willing to address and coach poor performance – big or small. They do so fairly and unemotionally, with their observations put in behavioral terms and backed by evidence.

To do this, high-performing leaders are highly skilled at questioning techniques (coaching) particularly in directing the conversation through open-ended questions.

They ensure that any performance conversations are a two-way dialogue as opposed to the traditional one-way monologue. They engage their people in their own performance conversations and allow their people to figure out how to improve. In doing this they give their people autonomy and ownership.

Coaching leaders ensure that any discussion on performance weaknesses is clearly focused on specific actions for improvement.

Coaching leaders follow up on these conversations to support and guide their employees in the change they are seeking.

Discipline 5 - Have a System for Noticing What People are Doing

High-performing leaders have a system, or process, for frequently noticing what their people are doing. This system allows them to show a sincere interest in their people, build trust, inspire, help their employees to overcome challenges, and to make decisions about how to manage employee work behavior.

If they can’t observe their people directly, they have a process or system for uncovering what they have been doing, by checking in frequently, discussing directly, or by obtaining information from another source.

Discipline 6 - Support (Serve) and Develop Your People

High-performing leaders serve and develop others, both formally and informally.

Day to day, they help their people find tangible, active solutions to specific work challenges they face. They also encourage their people to contribute ideas that could improve performance. They have two-way conversations with their people and teams.

More formally, they frequently hold developmental, or coaching, conversations, to guide and coach their people to achieve key outcomes and goals. During these discussions, they mostly focus on strengths; while any discussions about weaknesses are clearly focused on specific ways the individual can improve.

Discipline 7 - Create Purpose by Linking Work and its Impact on Organizational Performance

High-performing leaders understand that their people want a high sense of meaning and purpose in their work specifically, they want to know how their work connects to the bigger picture. They create meaning and clarity of purpose for their people, by consistently letting their team know how their work has a positive impact on areas such as their business unit’s mission, strategy, and broader business objectives.

Research conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council indicates that making a connection between an employee’s job, organizational strategy, and making employees aware of the importance of their job to organizational success, are the two most high-impact drivers of employee engagement.

An Example of Linking Work to the Bigger Picture

A few months prior to the successful Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon, President Nixon visited NASA. This was the legacy of President John F. Kennedy who had this vision.

While President Nixon was proud of everyone at NASA and quick with gratitude, he was most impressed with the cleanliness of the entire organization. So much so, that he asked to speak to two of the janitors.

When he did speak to them, he passed on his compliments and told them how amazed he was by how good a job they had done and by the cleanliness of the place.

One of the janitors apparently replied to him by saying something along the lines of:

"With the greatest amount of respect Mr. President, our job is not to come here every day and keep this place clean. Our job is to come here every day and help put a man on the moon".

This is an example of two janitors in a large organization who understood how their day-to-day work links to the bigger picture of the organization and as a result can buy into it and find meaning and purpose in their work.