The 4 Thieves Of Consistent Performance: Loneliness, Fear, Frustration, & Fatigue

Depending on the book you read, you will find dozens of reasons that entrepreneurs and salespeople underperform. Having consumed and analyzed hundreds of resources from Zig Ziggler to modern-day masters of the craft like Simon Sinek, Mark Roberge, Jeb Blount, and Daniel Pink, one of the most under-represented causes for inconsistent productivity is the mental and emotional "strength" of the individual in action.

Notice, I am focused on strength vs. the popular, but misunderstood concept of Mental & Emotional Health. Obviously, mental health and emotional health are foundational components of respective strengths. Neither can be strong without being healthy. However, an individual's health is a personal responsibility.

For us as leaders, the "strength" of the team, is our responsibility. The strength of the team is dependent upon the individuals that comprise it, and their strength is the responsibility of you, the leader.

As you measure and manage the performance of your teams, you likely have focused on the discipline of their activity, and to a lesser degree, their knowledge (and skill even less), via training.

Over 12 years of coaching leaders in multiple businesses, the most common challenge I am asked to help fix is consistency of performance. Management will coerce or incentivize a behavior, and performance improves but eventually falls off. Similarly, they may train a diminished skill, and see improvement for a time, but the next year, they see that same skill hurting performance once again.

What's causing this regression?

Ultimately, you cannot improve the team without improving the individuals, so to fix this, we need to focus on the core component of the team output: the individual.

When it comes to an individual's ability to perform consistently, it is not a matter of knowledge or intellect that robs them of the willpower to apply daily discipline to execute at a high level or apply new skills, but their level of mental & emotional strength day to day and moment to moment.

For your team members, and for YOU yourself, there are four "thieves" that rob us of mental and emotional energy. These thieves steal motivation and replace it with distraction & complacency.

As a leader, you have a responsibility to apply the proper defenses to guard against these thieves in the way you build your business and manage your teams. Let's talk about each one briefly:

THIEF #1: Loneliness - Causes: Isolation, desperation, environment/leadership

Research has shown that only 25-40% of the US population is introverted. This does not mean that they are shy, or not gregarious and outgoing. Some of the most gregarious people in business are dyed-in-the-wool introverts, meaning that they replenish their energy by taking time alone, seeking isolation for rejuvenation.

This means that everyone else GAINS strength from being around other people. Genetically, we are social animals. We are designed for tribal communion. This does not only mean being in a room full of strangers, but from developing positive relationships over time through regular positive interactions.

When individuals are isolated, as many remote workers are, or defensive because of a competitive/hostile work environment, it hampers individuals' ability to achieve these things. Furthermore, if someone feels desperate for success in their work, companionship, a sense of security (due to performance or their sense of competence, or financial stress in general life), it can be further isolating; the individual feels that they are the only one struggling with these issues and try to pull a way to hid these realities.

For the majority of the workforce, operating in an emotional deficit of positive social interactions manifests in several ways. People tend to be more distracted during business hours with pleasure-seeking activities like social media, or longer breaks & lunches. They may allow business conversations to drift further away from solving business problems towards "building rapport". Their decision-making becomes more cautious as they seek compromises to avoid conflict. They are less assertive in sales conversations because they conflate positive interactions with the fellowship they seek. All of this leads to less productive activity and slower progression of opportunities.

Thankfully, for most people, a little support in this area can go a long way. For you as the leader, you can apply some of the following to combat this thief with consistent defense:

• Connect with your people -- People want to be known, liked, & trusted. Take care of the first and most important part by knowing as much about your people as possible. That will take time, and perhaps some effort, like keeping track of your team member's profiles. If you are a solo leader of yourself, try being more open and allow others to know more about you so that you CAN be known. Even as a leader, this transparency and vulnerability is a behavior you want to model.
• Leadership By Walking Around (LBWA) -- It is not just enough to have more coffees and lunches with your people to talk to them about who they are and what they care about. As a good leader, you should observe how they work. Knowing them includes knowing their behaviors within their working environments. LBWA will allow you to observe working conditions that may be causing the behaviors you see, thereby allowing you to make changes to those conditions. It also helps others feel you care.
• Connect your people to each other -- Create opportunities for your team to be together in both structured and unstructured time. Foster collaboration in every way that makes sense, as working with someone helps you know them more deeply than just talking with them. Get people together in person...even if only on video conferences, we can connect with faces and voices better than text on a screen.
• Model the behaviors you seek -- Even as a leader, this transparency and vulnerability is a behavior you want to model. There is a misconception that since subordinates should think highly of their leaders, they should know nothing of their lives, especially their struggles. This is false. True, you don't want to drag your subordinates along through a particularly emotional roller coaster that you don't know the outcome of. That can create anxiety. However, you can instead let your people know you have struggled.   "Yes, I have been depressed, and this is how I got through it. Yes, I was struggling to master this concept, and make my quota as a rep, but here's how I figured it out. Yes, I have experienced loss and failure."  This is all very compelling, and an endearing sign of strength, not weakness. People want to follow REAL people, so let yourself be seen so that others can see themselves in you.

THIEF #2: Fear/P.H.E.A.R. - Causes: desperation, incompetence/skill, environment/leadership, confusion

As I discussed in this previous post, F.E.A.R. is often defined as "False Evidence Appearing Real" or "Forget Everything And Run". From a performative behavior standpoint, it means, forget how important this is to the overall goal, forget how little time you have to complete this task, forget how many other things are depending on the quality and timeliness of this work, and RUN. Run to distraction, run to procrastination, run to seek pleasure, or some pacification when triggered by fear.

The other take on fear: Past History Eclipsing Actual Reality, is even more insidious. This is based on past experiences that provide clear and tangible memories of past experiences that we don't want to live through again. Both are weapons of the thief that robs us of mental and emotional energy.

Fear can be caused by desperation because you are near missing your quota. It can also stem from uncertainty about one's level of skill/ or chances of success. That general concern can be exacerbated by past history (P.H.E.A.R) of when leadership has created an environment in which it is unsafe to fail (a difficult task to balance safety when driving standards of excellence). Fear can also come from the desperation of poorly compensated workers who realize the scope of work required to meet their financial goals is not sustainable.

The Defenses for this thief are mirrored in some of the defenses for Thief #1, but here are some considerations for combatting fear as the leader of a team:

• Compensation -- While setting high standards is important, making the level of effort required to reach a state of economic security should not be daunting. Compensating your people fairly creates a level of emotional and mental energy that can allow team members to be more enthusiastic and creative in excelling in their performance. It is very rare to see industries that require dynamic and engaging representatives to utilize a commission-only compensation plan. Help people feel safe by paying them in a way that keeps their energy high.
• Training that makes learning happen -- Many organizations provide "training" in only the loosest sense of the word. While often technically thorough, most training activities are little more than slide presentations with a few questions at the end to qualify for completion. You may personally remember the cramming and dumping that got you through college. Can you remember anything from Economics 101? Adult learners need a combination of techniques to ensure that adequate learning takes place to drive behavioral change. When individuals are empowered with more than just exposure to information, adult leaders need live instruction (cognitive), exercises to discover & establish core principles (constructivist), and application exercises to develop practical skills & build habits (behavioral). While learning can take place through the efforts of the learner, these concepts ensure that the training being delivered has the best chance of making that learning happen. As the leader, empower your people to be mentally strong by ensuring the training you implement makes learning happen to combat fear.
• Lead the culture/be a better leader -- Environmental factors contribute to fear and frustration in a variety of ways. The working environment you provide for your team is driven by culture. Is the culture that surrounding your team by design, or by default? The term "by default" means that the cultural influences of the larger organization beyond your team may bleed seamlessly through to your team members. No matter how little influence you may have on the factors outside your team, you can provide an environment of safety and motivation by being a stronger leader and dictating how your team members will interact, ensuring that they don't feel uncertainty or reprisal from your leadership.
• Document & coach proven processes -- Especially for new members of the organization, fear often arises in knowing how to find success in reaching the standards set for them within a culture that is new to them. How things worked in previous roles may not be acceptable or efficient in this new role. Having a well-documented process to follow elevates a great deal of fear in performing their daily tasks. Fear is further eliminated by knowing that the processes they are being shown have led to success for others previously in the role. That type of trust in the process, repels fear. Even for you as an individual entrepreneur, each time you have to "invent" a process on the fly, it requires a lot of mental and emotional energy. If every conversation you had with a prospect to move them toward using your services was a unique creative exercise, the amount of mental and emotional energy you would have to expend in each conversation would make the process tiresome, and eventually open the door to another thief: Fatigue. However, when your customer interactions have a clearly documented structure to the flow of the prospect conversation, providing a broad framework for conversation to flow freely and authentically within, giving you familiar guideposts on what to say, do, and position next, the conversation would be as effortless as your daily commute to work. Just think of how afraid you were as a brand new driver, white-knuckled behind the steering wheel, unfamiliar with the route you were taking, the feel of the vehicle you were driving, and even the process of driving safely as a whole. Compare that to how you felt once you had the process of what you did inside the car as well as where you guided it mapped out in your head. Do that for yourself in your daily business processes to keep fear at bay.

THIEF #3 Frustration: - Causes: failure, poor communication, isolation, despondency due to environment/leadership

The last two causes above have been addressed in other areas already. Let's talk about the first two. Failure and poor communication.

In many ways, both failure and poor communication are subsets of other areas previously addressed. Frustration arises for both you as an individual and for the team members you lead when your processes and activities fail to produce the best results. To combat this, having well-documented processes that produce success in the specific environments you or your team members are working in is an essential defense. The next step is to pass those processes on with training that actually makes learning happen as described above.

However, once training has taken place, the learner has to move through the difficult transition from "conscious incompetence", knowing the skills but realizing fluctuations in a successful application, into "conscious competence", consistently being able to apply the new skills with their focused attention.

As the diagram above shows, this is the place where frustration creeps in for both you and the team members you lead. To defend against this thief, you must apply a new tactic rarely implemented and often done so poorly in many organizations:

• Coaching vs. Training -- Coaching is often misinterpreted as a minor additional duty for managers. Commonly implemented in sales organizations as "deal reviews" or pipeline reviews, where the manager asks about the status of opportunities in progress or the pipeline in general and offers "helpful" suggestions on how to get the deal closed, or what activities may help to close the gaps toward quota. Yes, these can be very helpful, but in most cases, they are stressful interactions where the rep being "coached" is striving to save face and prove competence. True coaching is focused on specific skills that the team member is looking to improve. Rather than trying to hit some specific outcome or goal, the focus of true coaching is individual growth toward skill mastery. This has to be done separately from providing advice toward finishing the current software development project, planning the next marketing event, or closing the current deal. Coaching time is exclusively for the skill development of the individual for one targeted skill at a time. No golfing coach can improve your "golf game" in a session. However, in a few sessions, over time, they can improve your grip, then your stance, then your swing, etc. By and by, your overall golf game improves. If that golf coach takes the time to talk to you about how to approach the next hole you are about to play, giving you dozens of corrections to make before addressing the ball, how much could you hope to improve for lasting performance? Think the same for your approach to coaching after you provide effective training for your people. Similarly, if you are not addressing your personal list of specific individual skills as a leader or as an entrepreneur and seeking coaching for those specific skills, you may be feeling the thief of frustration creeping into your daily activity. Have you ever felt yourself thinking "What's the use? I'm no good at this."... Did you consequently have to "Pump yourself up" to try again? That's the thief of frustration in action. Find a coach or be that coach to bar the gates against this thief of mental and emotional strength. This may be difficult to do without the other defense against frustration: you have to be a better leader.
• Lead the culture/be a better leader -- Culture drives every behavior within your team, even your own. The responsibility for "culture by design" falls on you, the leader, even if you are only leading yourself. Making coaching, safety, process, training, patience, and collaboration a part of your culture cannot happen unless you work on the many small skills that lead to your performance as a leader. Find a mentor or a coach for yourself, break down the skills you have vs. those you need, and work on them regularly to be the kind of leader who can create the kind of culture that guards against the mental thief of frustration.

THIEF #4: Fatigue - Causes: All of the above

This is the boss fight of all the thieves. All of the other thieves just make way for this thief to creep in and steal the mental and emotional strength of you and your team. When you or your team members are dealing with fear and frustration while feeling isolated, the weight of the work weighs on both mind and body.

One of the most common explanations for procrastination and poor performance is burnout; a very real condition that saps motivation and quality of execution. The prelude to full burnout comes with small daily decisions to avoid the more taxing or intensive tasks to take a few moments to recuperate from the daily grind.

• Re-Creation: The defense for this thief is Re-Creation vs. Recreation. While recreation is important, it is just as essential that you and your team take dedicated time to engage in rejuvenating activities that don't just provide a mind-numbing rest, but re-create the positive energy that awakens and strengthens the mind and body.
• This can be physical exercise, sports, or hobbies. Instead of bingeing streaming shows, how about creating engaging and memorable experiences? Restful pastimes like reading can do wonders for expanding and energizing your mind without exertion. For that matter, if you have been pouring over technical or skill-building books day after day, re-create some of the fun you remember from reading your favorite mystery or spy novel. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Each of these four thieves is constantly working against us all. For both you and your team, take the time to build these defenses into your weekly operating rhythm to ensure your mental and emotional strength stays high.