So you want to build a high-performing, highly motivated sales team! But how do you build a team so gritty that it will make Angela Duckworth blush in disbelief?
The internet is filled with internet bloggers guest posting on Forbes who have never worked at a company a day in their lives talking about resiliency. And not to mention the HR gurus who wouldn't know real-life resiliency if it walked up and punched Josh Bersin in his mug...
But that said, whether you want to learn the fundamentals of resiliency though a Pubmed search or read that aforementioned Forbes article, it’s all out there. To cut through the noise, we made a short list of Playbooks — designed for managers who want to walk the walk when it comes to real performance management.
Job crafting is about taking proactive steps and actions to redesign what we do at work, essentially changing tasks, relationships, and perceptions of our jobs. The main premise is that we can stay in the same role, getting more meaning out of our jobs simply by changing what we do and the ‘whole point’ behind it.
So through the techniques and approaches that we'll look at in this Playbook, we ‘craft’ ourselves a job that we love. One where we still can satisfy and excel in our functions, but which is simultaneously more aligned with our strengths, motives, and passions (Wrześniewski et al., 2010).
Unsurprisingly, it has been linked to better performance (Caldwell & O’Reilly, 1990), intrinsic motivation, and employee engagement (Halbesleben, 2010; Dubbelt et al., 2019).
Set a time to sit down with your team, and allow them to build their own happy, little tree. Bob Ross would be proud.
Use this Playbook to understand how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance its connection to your core values.
The Ikea effect refers to valuing an object more because you had a hand in its creation. For instance, in one lab experiment, participants randomly assigned to build an IKEA storage box were subsequently willing to pay a 63% premium to take it home compared to those given the chance to buy an identical pre assembled box.
Use this Playbook to distribute out key portions of your position, and allow your people to take on a labor of love of a product or process they can call their own.
Google, for quite some time now, has encouraged employees to dedicate 20% of their time working on side projects. Many believe this is the very reason they've continued to kick-ass from an innovation standpoint for so long.
Some of the company’s biggest products (such as Google maps) were created as a direct result of this “side-hustling”.
Use this playbook to make the month ahead Innovation Month and borrow some sick ideas from the world's best innovators to make it a great month for you.
When leading NASA in the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy not only gave inspiring speeches about putting a man on the moon, he also connected his big, hairy goal (to put a man on the moon) to the lower-level, short-term goals (building circuit boards) that comprised employees’ day-to-day work.
Use this playbook to define goals and make a plan to measure them along the way. Setting OKRs propels your team to achieve more than you ever thought possible while continuously learning.
Keeping people's skills in sync with the constantly changing world of work is the biggest talent challenge of our time. To meet this challenge, companies need to continually upskill their people. And that means investing in all types of learning, identifying and filling skill gaps, and keeping people employable.
Use this Playbook to ask your team members all the different things they want to learn within your organization. And what skills they want to grow. Instead of trying to narrow their options, help them broaden their possibilities. From there, you can start upskilling your people in a more team focused way.
Spending time working and learning "in the trenches" is one of the defining characteristics of teams with a high level of grit. To succeed as a business you not only have to show up everyday, but you need to deeply understand your customers.
Often there can be gaps between ideas as imagined by the team and reality of executing those programs as they're actually implemented. By spending time executing alongside your team and managing challenges directly with customers or clients, you build resilience and strength across your team.
Use this Playbook to gain empathy and increase job satisfaction by talking to your customers.
The flow state is a mental state characterized by a sense of complete immersion and concentration on an activity, making the process satisfying and enjoyable. You may have noticed something like this feeling when time flies and you and your team are totally “in the zone” during work. However, flow theory suggests that flow isn’t just a spontaneous thing that happens: can actively create the perfect environment for achieving the flow state. Which is great news for time management, project management, team spirit, and just about everything you want to achieve in life.
What is the flow experience?
Flow was a name coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975 after he observed artists who were able to become so lost in their work that they were ignoring, or simply unaffected by, the need for food, drink or sleep. In a recent TED talk, Csikszentmihalyi went so far as to suggest that flow offers an “optimal experience” of whatever the task is at hand, leading to higher levels of satisfaction. It's considered a part of positive psychology, as an incredibly beneficial state of mind that positively impacts a human being’s entire state of being.
Use this playbook to get into flow state and increase your focus.
Choosing a Playbook to best support your team and knowing the right Playbook for the right team are two very different things. Luckily for you — LEON has taken employee well-being and performance to whole other level. Here’s a step-by-step on how to use Playbooks within LEON.
1. Get started with LEON and launch to your team - It's only $450 for an admin account, and $99 for each additional manager!
2. Gather the data - After you launch, LEON will roll our a series of "check-ins" with your team. This will give us the data insights we need to start providing you the manager with Playbook recommendations.
3. Check your Growth Windows - this is where the magic happens. Windows tells you the exact teams that need support or challenged. That way, each separate teams gets exactly what they need, when they need it.
4. Pick your Playbook - Our algorithm will recommend a series of Playbook based on data science. From there pick your Playbook, and send it out to your team! In one click you can start and invite your team directly through your dashboard.
5. Boom. We see a happier and healthier team of employees in your future.