Awareness is the Key to Top Performance and Excellence

By Nasim Smadi - Founder of www.bestbookbriefings.com

Many global organizations have started to abandon their old methods of evaluating, raising, appraising, promoting, training and transforming their employees. In fact, they have had recourse to more effective ones. Examples of these effective methods are:

-         Instead of grading the employee’s performance or writing an appraisal that describes performance throughout the previous year, the organization focuses on whatever is expected and required from employees and what they can do.

-         Shifting from training to mentoring, and from curing performance weaknesses to investing in employees’ strengths and talents.

-         Shifting from the traditional performance evaluation techniques which the Human Resources Department supervises to personal mentoring and instant interaction between the manager and his direct reports.

-         Transforming the evaluation process from describing employees’ successes and failures and previous performance to defining what they have to excel at doing in the future. This method defines performance measures and aligns the expected with the required.

Deloitte, the multinational organization, discovered that its managers worldwide consumed 2 million hours doing performance evaluations that concentrated on employees’ failures, rather than successes. Despite the fact that Deloitte is a renowned consulting firm, it spent several decades in such futile practices. It was not except few years ago that it adopted the new prospective performance evaluation approach.

What it is that impedes managers’ and organizations’ ability to change employees’ attitude and raise their productivity?

To answer this question, we need to look into the outcomes of the Behavioral School, Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Behavioral Economics, and Positive Psychology which concepts have started to spread and change the roots of organizational behavior, influence, change, and development. By using a variety of tools from these sciences, we came to identify the core of the problem. This materializes in the difficulty of changing individuals’ personal attitude and organizations’ structural approach in spite of the great efforts and cumulative attempts to design development tools and change matrixes. Among these are the “Seven Habits” formula, “From Good to Great,” the “360 Degrees Feedback” methodologies, as well as personality assessments, motivational, and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) systems…etc.

Recently, “Sloan Management Review” published a scientific study in which; both; Nik Kinley Talent Director at YCS, London, and Shlomo Ben Hur, a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at IMD, Switzerland, identified these four essential factors for changing behavior and developing employees’ performance:

-         Employees’ personal/internal motivation

-         Employees’ cognitive abilities and skills

-         Employees’ psychological skills which are ingrained in their personality, such as, strength of will, self-confidence, flexibility, assertiveness, and tenacity.

-         Supporting environment exemplified in the positive organizational culture, as well as supportive human relations and collective attitudes.

In spite of the importance of the above factors, they are-in my opinion-not enough for empowering employees to change their behavior and improve their performance due to the following reasons:

-         Personal motivation, psychological skills, habits, knowledge and supporting environment are not enough for changing and fixing behavior by creating new habits and performance patterns.

-         Human performance does not take place away from the attitudes, pressures, and changes which our bosses, colleagues, and customers expose us to. Thus, change would not occur without factors that work freely along with a satisfactory personal vision.

-         We think we want and accept change. Even more, we believe we call for and struggle to attain it. Though we admit we differ regarding its tools, purposes, trends, and methods, rarely do we realize that we resist change, whether we are aware of this or not.

As such, the missing link or reason for our failure in changing our organizational behavior and developing our employees’ performance can be summed up in one word, namely, “awareness”. Each person has to be aware of his self and actions. We also need to be aware of whatever drives others’ behaviors, habits, problems and decisions-be they bosses, reports, assistants or adversaries.

Organizations’ cultures have changed radically. They have become complex, interactive, and constantly moving toward uncertainty and instability. In such environments, it is impossible to improve performance through evaluation processes, training programs, availing financial resources, and emotional support initiatives. These make self-awareness and being aware of the world the core of change. It is not logical that employees await their superiors’ instructions to obtain some training or information. In fact, employees know what their superiors know and learn as much as they do. Even more, they might educate themselves through open digital platforms without seeking their boss’s approval or having to sit for hours in a classroom or asking a question about what is good for them.

The new organizational behavior applies to all employees. Yet, it applies specifically to all the millennials who have just got jobs, as they own unlimited work and educational tools. This is but a digital, enthusiastic, flexible, interactive, cooperative, and self-confident generation. Traditional training and educational methods will not work for them. This is the first generation to spring from digitization and electronic operations. Indeed, more than a third of it used electronic devices before being five! They are connected with friends, parents, teachers, as well as knowledge sources which have made them-at such an early age-busier than all the previous generations, including the X-generation. Due to the problems related to work style, we have to take into account each member of this generation’s strengths in order to make up for their unique way of making decisions. This uniqueness results from their sense of responsibility and ability to solve problems. Likewise, it reflects their natural alignment with technology, confidence in the flow of information, as well as adeptness in managing and using it.

The new generation is more aware than all the previous generations. Awareness is the key to responsibility, source of decisions, drive of positive action, and root of creativity and innovations. As such, organizations should bear half the responsibility of changing behavior in free and inspiring workplaces. The employee should bear the other half, as this process has become a fully integrated one. Empowerment and freedom in choosing roles –instead of abiding by rigid and static job descriptions and tasks-are key solutions. Awareness is, therefore, the criterion. It is the root of will and core of performance strength. Awareness is the “positive realization of reality, imagination, good and excellence.” 

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