Think different - Double performance

Think different – Double your team’s performance.

High-performing, profitable and perfect teams are indeed diverse - Just not in the way you think. Lessons from some recent conversations with clients

Diversity and inclusion is paramount whether you like it or not. 

People tend to focus on diversity of gender, race, religion, and factors linked to demography. Most businesses miss the point. A diversity of thinking is necessary too. Who’s your ‘Court Jester’? Who’s challenging the ‘Group-Think’? Are your ‘Mavericks’ being recognised and rewarded instead of being side-lined?

This article from Forbes highlights that investing in diversity increases profitability.

A team should be as diverse as possible in every way:

According to this report from Deloitte, high-performing teams are cognitively diverse as well as demographically diverse. Cognitive diversity will enhance team innovation by 20%.

This piece in the Harvard Business Review highlights that “true DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) progress requires both types of diversity.”

These reports highlight the importance of teams being as diverse as possible in every way.

This topic keeps coming up in conversations with our clients. In this article we will share two stories to help you improve the performance and profitability of your own team.

A coffee meeting in the city. The foundations of a world-class team:

I was in the City of London recently, meeting up with two of my contacts. 

One of them runs a headhunting business. We were discussing how he supports his clients to build high-performing, engaged and profitable teams, businesses that want to grow.

Over coffee, we identified that as a group, the three of us had the raw ingredients to create a world-class team.

The head-hunter’s primary focus was connection and building relationships. This type of thinking is key to people in networking, marketing, and sales. They are your ‘who and why’ people. The other contact’s primary focus was on process and delivery. This is vital once you have made the sale and have to deliver on your promises. You need people like this that are always asking ‘what and how’. Finally, my focus is on direction, the drive for growth, the overall vision, the ‘when and where’. I’m also the ‘Maverick’, the type that will ‘call-out’ and ‘name’ the elephant-in-the-room, irrespective of how embarrassing it might be.

Put simply- the three of us all think and look at the world in different ways. If we were building a business together, it would be the start of something world-class.

 Without anyone in each of these three areas, teams and businesses are likely to encounter challenges. A two-legged stool will always fall over. Three legs gives you a solid foundation.

The three legs are: Blue – Thinking, Red – Feeling, Green – Gut instinct.

Of the three of us, which of us reminds you of yourself? 

Answering that question will start to give you an idea of who you need around you to build a world-class team that is performing, engaged and profitable. 

(To find out how you can double the performance of your team, click here to book

your free ticket for our next executive seminar, where we will uncover our 7-step 

formula for doubling team performance and increasing profits)

Why do entrepreneurs and scaling companies struggle with administration and paperwork? 

Because it’s boring? When leaders are so focused on direction, sales, and people the answer is probably ‘Yes!’ and so things like that get left behind. 

It’s why a good first hire is often a personal aide, an executive or virtual assistant.

Do you recognise this from the early days of building your business?

A client of ours- a city accountancy practice

Building on the topic at the coffee meeting, I mentioned earlier, when my team and I started working with an accounting firm in the City of London, they were heavily focused on delivering the accountancy work.

The team only had one person who was focused on networking, building relationships and sales. There was no one in the team providing overall direction for the business.

No wonder, then, that the team was struggling to grow. 

They lacked diversity of thought and of character. They lacked a team that focused on sales. The one character that sat in that space felt lonely and misunderstood..

The task for this accountancy business is to identify more sales-oriented people and build a commercial team to drive the growth.

Are your team similar in any way?

How has your team performed over the last 3, 6 or 12 months?

How do you track the performance of your team and your business? Is it performing well?

(To find out how you can double the performance of your team, click here to book

your free ticket for our next executive seminar, where we will uncover our 7-step 

formula for doubling team performance and increasing profits)

Key questions to ask yourself:

With the above stories in mind, we invite you to ask yourself the following questions:

What’s your own individual primary way of thinking? Is it Blue – Thinking, Red – Feeling, or Green – Gut instinct?

Once you know that, what about each member of your team? Where are the gaps? What hidden talents are there?

How are you educating your team members on their colleagues’ primary ways of thinking? How often do you take a step back, individually as a leader, and collectively with your team, to identify and deal with potential challenges?

Finally, who can you bring into your business to support you to:

• Answer these questions?
• Facilitate a conversation with your team? And…
• Provide an alternative viewpoint, so you can spot what’s missing?

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Combined, my team and I have over forty years of experience in executive development.

🚀 Over that time we have worked with more than 6,760 business owners and leaders. We have developed a 7-step formula for doubling team performance and increasing our clients’ profits.

🔗 To find out our formula, so that you can double your team's performance and increase your profits, book your free ticket for our next executive seminar by clicking here.