High-Performing Leader Standard Work

Are you living your best work life? A best high-performing work life does not simply happen; it involves following routines (aka standard work). This month we highlight high-performing leader* standard work. 

*Leader: Someone who directs and/or influences the work of others, regardless of title.

How do you spend your day? 

Prior to learning and applying leader standard work many leaders report spending more time fixing things with insufficient time with team members. If your team members are critical to success, why do we put off coaching and people development time?

How do you WANT to spend your day? 

Leaders seeking high-performance put their team members first; leader standard work helps leaders find time for this, resulting in improved team relations and output plus overall organization performance and results. Leader standard work = a set of standard behaviors and actions applied routinely, as part of daily work. These standard behaviors and actions provide the daily structure to lead others to high-performance. 

Some standard work found in high-performing leaders:

1. COACHING & DEVELOPMENT
   A majority of leader's time is spent helping their team members grow. More time is spent meeting the team where they are. Gemba walks are used to truly understand the needs and providing real time feedback, communication, and assistance. Leaders ask, "How can I help you?" and "What do you need to be more successful?" 
2. PROBLEM SOLVING, ELIMINATING BARRIERS
   The coaching kata method is used to help team members learn to evaluate and solve problems rather than feeling responsible to solve everyone's problems. Leaders regularly ask, "What is holding you back? What are your barriers? What would you change or improve?" and proceed to hold themself accountable to eliminate the barriers.
3. SETTING FOCUS & PRIORITIES
   Leader's time is spent reflecting on what has gone well, not so well, and how we can improve. Reflective learning and data (customer, employee, organization, & process) are used to guide decisions and priorities. Long-term and short-term priorities are written, shared, evaluated regularly, and cascaded into everyone's daily work (hoshin kanri).
4. EVALUATE PERFORMANCE & HOLD THEMSELVES + OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE
   Scorecards with performance measures are visual and used by all team members. Leaders regularly review performance to better understand, provide coaching, feedback, re-direction, and set expectation of performance.   

These four leader standard work and more can be learned in: 

Role based Education & Development

Leadership Skill Development

Supervisor Skill Development

Benefits of leader standard work: