Blog
ARE YOU A WIMP AND A WEASEL?
These were the words that greeted Kelly Sotherton as she crossed the line in her last event of the 2004 Athens Olympic Heptathlon to secure her BRONZE medal – and they were uttered by her coach!
Charles van Commenee thought she had not tried hard enough for silver. She was a wimp, he said, leaving Sotherton in tears. But Sotherton took on board what he said.
“Charles thought I’d let myself down – and I did,” said Sotherton. “With hindsight I’d go back and run the 800m a second quicker because that’s all I needed for the silver medal. The whole experience changed me. Before then I was quiet as a mouse, but now I’ve got an opinion. I know there are people in athletics who don’t like me and will be upset if I go and win the gold medal.
Under Charles I wasn’t allowed to show any weaknesses. As the years go by since then I’ve grown up, not showing weakness. How to be resilient, that ability to bounce back from a poor performance.”
It’s tough love sure, but it works. Under van Commenee’s guidance the British team has just secured a record haul of medals at the European Championships. He was hired 3 years ago to bring precisely what the athletics authorities was deemed lacking in the sport – that hard-nosed expectation of success and no excuses for anything less. The athletes don’t always love it or him, but they respect it and most understand they need it to deliver the best performance they have to offer.
So what can we learn in our world of business as to how we manage the performance of our individuals and teams? Perhaps it’s not the best idea in the history of Human Resource Management to start hurling personal insults at people in the workplace tomorrow morning. After all, the ability to deliver tough messages that the recipient takes on board and buys in to is heavily dependent on the nature of the overall relationship you have with that person.
Van Commenee is not a one trick pony. He has complex relationships with his charges that are characterised by as much emotional support for the person as they are driving them to succeed. He has earned the right to hold them to a higher standard through designing and delivering a culture that is predicated on being the best you can be.
The tough love is part of a wider approach that puts candid conversation at the heart of performance management. And here is a starting point for any manager. Whatever your organisation, there is nothing to stop you from talking with your team about being more candid and open. If you leave it until the next formal performance review, it is too late. Talk about it at the next team meeting, talk about it over lunch, whilst having a coffee. In short make it a part of how you communicate with people from now on. Be polite if that’s your style, but be honest and open. Finally, make sure that you are also actively there for your people to support them in whatever way necessary to perform at their very best.
Our work with Shane Sutton and the BOCT has helped us to design a performance management system that your managers can use to coach and develop their people consistently to be at their best. It is a complete process that starts with preparing the manager to be at their best, and presents a system for daily managing the performance of the teams and individuals they are responsible for. We have called it the RASCAL Performance Management System, and we believe that it can help you to bring about the kind of stellar results that the people it has been modelled on achieve.
