THE IMPORTANCE OF OWNING PERFORMANCE  

Recently I was delivering a presentation skills workshop to team leaders in a corporate business. One of the early tasks required the participants to deliver a presentation introducing themselves and some of their past experiences.  

One of the presenters talked about his semi-professional football career in England and told us a story of a final that he played in where his team were winning 2-0 and looking very likely to win the game and the championship. At one point he was the victim of a terrible tackle, which the referee failed to address. As a result of this he completely lost composure, ‘taking the law into his own hands’, and ended up giving away two penalties with the game concluding in a 3-2 loss.  

I asked the course participants (who were all team leaders in their own right) “Whose responsibility was it that the team lost the final?”, to which most people replied that the presenter was responsible, having completely lost his cool, giving away two penalties and allowing the other team back into the game. I shook my head, which caused people to rethink their answers, and finally someone said: “It was the coach’s fault for not pulling him off the field when he first saw that the player’s uncontrolled aggression was so destructive”. I entirely agreed and although it was a presentation skills course, I couldn’t help but to seize the ‘teachable moment’ to talk briefly about leadership.

A quote that I often use in leadership training and development is: “When team members are underperforming, the spotlight initially falls on the team leader”. By this, I mean when a team member is underperforming in terms of competency, behaviour or attitude, the spotlight must, in the first instance, fall on the person’s leader with issues, like:  

• Were performance expectations clear in the leader’s mind?

• Were those expectations clearly communicated and understood?

• Was adequate support and guidance given for the expectations to be met?

• Was the performance monitored and the results communicated to the performer? And finally,  

• If the performance is unacceptable, then it’s the leader’s responsibility to hold the team member to account, for the sake of the overall team, and the organisation.  

In the example of the football player “losing his rag” and costing not just one, but two penalties, the coach should have warned him and probably removed him before the first penalty, but certainly taken him off the field once his lack of discipline had cost the team a goal.  

The responsibility of under-performing team member’s always rests with the team leader in the first instance to honestly and responsibly address the bullet-pointed issues above.

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