I don’t want to be liked, I want to be connected
Great organisations never lose sight of their purpose. Everyone in those organisations knows they’re part of an effort to achieve something together that couldn’t be achieved alone.
They also recruit the right people who can combine their talents with others, to deliver a mutually enticing goal. These people like performing together. If they like each other too, that’s a bonus.
High performance headlines
- In a high performance environment, being connected is far more valuable than people just liking each other.
- A business full of people connected with a shared drive, mutual respect and trust in each other will generate high quality motivation and performance.
- Leaders who are serious about performance work hard to foster a culture of connectedness, because without it, they know the talent they’ve recruited won’t thrive.
The full viewpoint
The performers in these cultures know that they have to support and challenge each other in equal measure to ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If they don’t do that then everyone knows they’re not going to build the quality of trust and respect that leads to great things being achieved together.
Supporting and challenging each other so that the best individual performances can gel together, means that everyone is seeking feedback and ready to provide it. Most importantly that feedback is always clearly connected to helping everyone be better at working to deliver the shared purpose. The feedback is in context… ‘if you do more of this, then it will help us achieve what we’re aiming for.’ … ‘when you stop communicating like that, it robs us of essential insight that helps us achieve our ultimate aim.’ Providing feedback in this way is simple, but not easy. But everyone knows that the efforts to give the feedback are important and ultimately end up with people being connected more solidly to the shared purpose .
High performers in these great businesses ultimately really value the relationships they have with the people they work with. They value them, because everyone has kept focused on helping each other use their talents and develop them further. And that’s a great result for everyone.
How connected you feel to the people you work with and the purpose of the business is ultimately your choice. Whether people like you or not isn’t. If you’re serious about playing your part in creating a high performance organisation, take control of being connected and see how much more you like performing with people who are key to delivering great performance.