Accelerate Your Performance

Organizations sustain high performance when people are aligned and understand where the organization is headed. Although there will always be people who are resistant to change, the best leaders persevere through pushback to help create incredible results in our school systems. Such as, Hudson School District Superintendent Nick Ouellette, PhD, who understands that even though reaching agreement is important, so are his non-negotiables, as well as the ability to move quickly to positively impact the students we serve.

This episode answers questions such as:

• How can we reduce the number of initiatives implemented in our systems?
• Why is alignment so critical to helping teams focus?
• What can we do to manage resistance to change?

Recommended Resources:  Measuring What Matters, The Key to Success: Continuous Leader Development, The Improvement Maturity Model to Pursue Excellence & Build a Bold Leadership Team
Recommended Podcasts: Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance, Embrace the Call for Transformation in Higher Ed, Refresh Strategic Goals to Move Forward & Now is the Time to Be Bold and Courageous

Families are a great resource for educators. They offer a unique perspective and window into the life of our students. When we approach building relationships with families the same way we approach building a team within our organization, students are more successful. Today's guest, Dr. Holly Ellis shares how leaders can invest their effort into relationships that increase student engagement and confidence.

This episode answers questions such as:

• Why is it essential for schools to engage families in relationships to support students?
• How can leaders find time to build relationships with families?
• What tools and strategies help leaders increase family engagement and confidence?

Recommended Resources:  The Four Most Important Questions to Ask When Rounding, Building the Conditions for a Learning Culture, Find Harmony Between Prioritizing People and Organizational Outcomes & Build Stakeholder Trust in Uncharted Times
Recommended Podcasts: What Do Employees Need from Leaders?, What Questions Should I Be Asking Employees?, Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance, Connecting Operations to Student Success & Simple Strategies for Classroom Improvement

Leaders want employees who are happy,  productive and invested in the organization's future. However, retaining these people requires leaders to become aware of what it takes to meet employee's needs in the workplace. Hear about those needs and the fundamentals we use to support confident and engaged employees from Leader Coach and employee engagement expert, Dr. KK Owen. Today, KK and Janet discuss what leaders can do to increase confidence and engagement on their team - and what we might be doing that causes employee engagement to decrease.

This episode answers questions such as:

• Why is it essential for a high-performing, successful organization to increase employee confidence?
• How are low performers demotivating high-performing employees?
• What tools and strategies help leaders increase employee engagement and confidence?
• What undermines employee confidence and engagement in our organizations?

Recommended Resources:  The Four Most Important Questions to Ask When Rounding, Boost the Employee Experience & The Keys to Employee Engagement
Recommended Podcasts: What Questions Should I Be Asking Employees?, Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance, Connecting Operations to Student Success & Simple Strategies for Classroom Improvement

What can we do when an individual hoards conversation time, constantly interrupts, provides unsolicited advice and puts others down? These behaviors can be interpreted as manipulative and can damage individuals on our teams and organizations. To maintain working relationships, and be authentic to ourselves and those we lead, we have to firmly and diplomatically say no to manipulators. Today Janet shares examples of how to take control when working with a manipulator.

This episode answers questions such as:

• How can we deal with manipulators in the workplace?
• What "I" and "it" statements can help stop manipulators?
• How do we firmly say 'no' to manipulators?

Recommended Resources: How to Spot and Stop Manipulators, Deal with Problems, Tips for Documenting Poor Performance and Non-Compliance, & Eliminate We/They
Recommended Podcasts: Dealing with Manipulators, What Makes an Employee a Productive One?, That's the Way it is, Handling Executive Leader Sabotage & Stop the Subconscious Behavior Infecting Your Organization 

As educators, it's our goal to help students progress, achieve, and build confidence in themselves and their learning. We are witnessing schools do so by using simple continuous improvement strategies in the classroom. To share what this looks like, we've interviewed Leader Coach, Dr. Kathleen Orapollo, an expert in designing unique adult and student learning experiences. Today, Kathy and Janet discuss why classroom improvement is critical for students and staff, simple strategies to implement, and how a middle school is actively using improvement cycles.

This episode answers questions such as:

• How does continuous improvement build the fundamentals of organizational excellence?
• What tools and strategies help teachers and students understand and implement classroom improvement?
• Why is it critical for success to keep data visible?

Recommended Resources:  Improvement Cycles to Sustain Progress, Move Students Forward with a Focus on Strengths, Building the Conditions for a Learning Culture & Plus/Delta in Action
Recommended Podcasts: Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance & Connecting Operations to Student Success

Within our organizations, there are people who will do whatever it takes to be successful. Sometimes people who we believe are high performers are actually lethal employees and manipulators. To gain power, people hoard information, shut others down, avoid seeking input and insist on always having control. Saving employees from manipulators in our organizations is one of the most difficult aspects of being a leader - especially if the manipulator is an executive leader. Today, Janet shares 8 tips for dealing with manipulators on our teams.

This episode answers questions such as:

• How can we handle executive leaders who are barriers to teams?
• Why do people manipulate others?
• What actions can we take to cause manipulators to back off?

Recommended Resources: How to Spot and Stop Manipulators, Deal with Problems, Tips for Documenting Poor Performance and Non-Compliance, & Eliminate We/They
Recommended Podcasts: What Makes an Employee a Productive One?, That's the Way it is, Handling Executive Leader Sabotage & Stop the Subconscious Behavior Infecting Your Organization 

What does it mean to be a high performing employee? What if we all had an athlete’s mindset at work? Today Janet closes this series about defining high performance by discussing the final 8 personality traits of high-performing athletes from the Sports Management Degree Guide. Ultimately, it takes hard work and commitment to grow ourselves to be the best we can be. Do you see that commitment on your team?

This episode answers questions such as:

• What can athletes teach us about productivity?
• Why is a strong sense of focus necessary for high performance?
• What factor is usually the difference between winning and losing?

Recommended Resources: 20 Distinguishing Personality Traits of High Performing Athletes, The Power of Perspective, Recognizing Low Will & Spotting High Performers
Recommended Podcasts: The Winning Trait Behind Underdog Teams, What Makes an Employee a Productive One?, Be Dedicated to Being the Best & Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance 

Accelerate Your Performance will return with new episodes on July 19, 2021.

We all want to attain excellence - some of us are just more systematic and focused on how to get there. Today's guest, Dr. JoAnn Sternke cautions, "You'll never achieve excellence if you don't have purpose, focus and alignment." In this episode, Janet and JoAnn discuss how to better align operational leaders and teams to realize their impacts in academic organizations. When we bring operational and department leaders together with school and classroom leaders, good things happen.

This episode answers questions such as:

• What obstacles stop operational leaders from getting on board with continuous improvement?
• How can we help operations employees recognize they are doing meaningful work?
• What can we do to best support department leaders in implementing cycles of improvement?

Download JoAnn's Communication Toolkit: Communicate with Greater Clarity: Leveraging the Execution Triangle

Recommended Resources: Collect the Right Data to Reflect: Results from High Performing Operations Leaders, How Well Does Your Team Focus?, Bobsled Alignment & Short Cycle Planning: 8 Tips to Help You Better Plan for the Year Ahead 
Recommended Podcasts: Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance, Words Have Power, Who Hears What When? & To Innovate Focus on Value

What if we all had an athlete’s mindset at work? What would that look like? Today Janet discusses 6 more personality traits of high-performing athletes from the Sports Management Degree Guide. The best teams provide opportunities for people to feel connected to the work and each other to achieve results. It’s the responsibility of every team member to ensure that no one feels alone when we are working as a team.

This episode answers questions such as:

• What can athletes teach us about productivity?
• Why is a shared sense of belonging essential for improving employee engagement and performance?
• How can we avoid hindering our team from achieving results?

Recommended Resources: 20 Distinguishing Personality Traits of High Performing Athletes, The Power of Perspective, Recognizing Low Will & Spotting High Performers
Recommended Podcasts: What Makes an Employee a Productive One?, Be Dedicated to Being the Best & Strong Teams Don't Happen by Chance 

How can we really make improvement work across an organization? What enables people to solve problems and make the best decisions at every level? We begin by helping people understand improvement is a connected, system-wide process deeply rooted in the capabilities of the people within the organization.  Today, we hear from an award-winning Superintendent, and our Director of Thought Leadership, Dr. Pat Greco, who has supported an organization through hardwiring improvement from the boardroom to the classroom. Listen as Pat and Janet discuss the fundamentals of classroom improvement and the problem with viewing people as job titles in our organizations.

This episode answers questions such as:

• What obstacles stop people from getting on board with continuous improvement in classrooms?
• Why do improvement processes benefit all people in organizations?
• What are the fundamentals of improvement and why are they so important?

Read Pat's article: Learning From Wicked Challenges

Recommended Resources: Building the Conditions for a Learning Culture, The Key to Success: Continuous Leader Development, Strong Leaders Manage Change Effectively & Onboard Beyond the First Day
Recommended Podcasts: Measures that Matter and Decision Rules, Listen to People to Continuously Improve, Creating a Culture of Shared Leadership & Becoming an Improvement Organization