Tag Archive for: growth mindset

Leadership Spotlight: Fueling Team Performance

/0 Comments/in , /by

We’re excited to announce that after appearing on Episode #25 of the Elevate Business Podcast, Sam Arseneau has been selected for the Intuity Performance Leadership Spotlight series.

Sam is the Founder & CEO at SupportMyMac. For the past 15 years, Sam and his team have been delivering drama-free Apple IT services to organizations across Southern Ontario and Montreal. Starting by servicing residential services, Sam quickly grew their company into the corporate world and was awarded the Fastest Growing Company by the Ottawa Business Journal in 2015.

Here are the top 3 insights Sam shared with the community.

1. What does Whole Person Performance mean to you, and how do you fuel that performance?

Performance for us can be summarized by three main principles: Accountability, a growth mindset and a positive attitude. It’s important to have a “getting things done mindset”, things don’t need to be perfect – perfect is the enemy of done.

We have a daily huddle, where we outline our three big rocks that need accomplished that day – the things that will move the business forward. It could be from the operation side, the sales side, or the accounting side. Everybody participates, and it gives a sense of accountability, and keeps everyone intune with the team touch points.

The other thing that aids performance is having the mindset of growth, always looking for opportunities, even when you’re busy, that activity brings activity. So that’s something we’ve always done, even through the pandemic. We are always looking for a new way, whether it’s improving our operations, launching a new service. Lastly, we believe that maintaining a positive mindset helps take performance to a whole other level.

Also, Seeing challenges as learning opportunities has been crucial in helping us identify what we can do differently. Asking ourselves: What can we learn from this? I think, has really fueled our performance and allowed us to reach new heights every year.

Also, going back to basics can be so important, for example: responding to people quickly. I feel that it’s basic things like this that people in the marketplace are just not respecting. Organizations want to have a shiny new service or product, but they have yet to master the basics. I think back to basics is a good place to start to reach top performance.

2. How do you ensure that there is alignment between your three main performance drivers in relation to workplace culture, and the behaviours and habits implemented within your team?

As a CEO, you need to set the company vision. Where are we going? What’s not allowed on the bus? We are talking about the non-negotiables. It’s important to define your culture points, and to make sure that you are bringing people on that are aligning with those culture points, and that these culture points are always reiterated through conversation. So as long as the right people are on the bus, and in the right seats, I think the three things I talked about align and happen naturally. I mean, you see quite quickly when you bring the wrong person on and they don’t align with your culture. They won’t respect our performance principals: getting things done, always growing, and having a positive mindset.

3. Have you faced challenges with growing your team in relation to culture points and the misalignment of new or existing employees?

Yeah, definitely, like every business, sometimes you hire people that you think are a good fit. Sometimes it’s a surprise, and they’re not. So I think the lesson is to hire slow, and fire fast. It’s important to realize quickly when something is not right, and to correct the issue, or to get the person off the bus. I know from experience, when you keep the wrong people on the bus too long, it can quickly affect workplace culture and team development. In some cases a coaching conversation can be had.

If you’re interested in learning more from our Spotlight Leadership, check out Jeff McCann’s post on The Key To Performance is Execution.

Leadership Spotlight: Facilitating Empowered Teams

/0 Comments/in , /by

In this episode, we chat with Dustin DeVries, the Co-Founder of Caffeine Interactive Technologies, about how leaders co-create success with their teams through EI-Q and strong communication.

Dustin is proud to work with some of the most talented business analysts and developers in the industry. He is a solopreneur and has grown his company based on a 100% remote team which has been thriving for the last eight years.

Communicating with Intention

Dustin DeVries: From a culture perspective, you know, I think we try to really over communicate on things to be very transparent. We have a lot of activities that go on, you know, on Slack, for example, it is our primary method of communication. We have, like, you know, photo Thursday. We all contribute and jump in and share photos of things we’re doing to learn more about each other, and like find out that we have team members who are big into hiking or running or whatever the case may be, and find out some things about their life that we wouldn’t otherwise just in a virtual workspace like Slack and just communicating about work all the time. So there are some things we do that I would say, try to be intentional about.

Leading with Transparency

Dustin DeVries: I’ll just be completely transparent on this. I’ve had some candid conversations with members of my team about the performance, about the expectations and we set up OKRs and things like that. This concern on their parts, like, well, I know I’m not hitting what I need to and I’m doing all these different things and I’m nervous for my job. And the fact that we have a culture that allows an employee to make those kinds of comments. It’s awesome. Right? Because I’m reassured, I’m like, here’s what I think we do need to improve this. I recognize it’s not all on you, it’s on me because I’m helping with a lot of strategy. You’re a marketing expert, but you don’t understand all the ins and outs of everything we do. You’re not a software developer. So I’ve got to draw that connection there so there’s a response on my side and also just reassuring them that we’re going to work through this, there’s a process and I’ll be transparent with you. If I feel like things are in jeopardy, I’m not going to blindside you with anything. Right. And I think that makes people feel that better.

Maintaining Self-awareness

Dustin DeVries: The things that I do well I always want to be checking myself to make sure I still do them well. We get over confident and we start making mistakes. We get sloppy. But on the flip side of the things we don’t do well, that doesn’t mean well, I can’t you know, like I used to say, I used to make this excuse all the time. I’m the primary person running sales within our company. So when it comes to sales calls and things like that, I thought to myself, I’m not good at sales. I’m a computer programmer by trade. I would use this as my cop out. I don’t have to do marketing sales well. I can’t do marketing sales. It’s just that it may not come naturally. So I have to train myself more. I have to be more intentional and empathetic about things. You find yourself constantly, like, thinking, wow, I completely ignore the fact that this team member had, like, a family crisis. I didn’t even really say anything to them other than, you improve your PTO and maybe I should have done more. Well, that’s when you start setting up systems and processes to try to account for those blind spots.

Identifying and Overcoming Blind Spots

Ange Maccabe: You know, we can’t utilize our blind spots as crutches or weaknesses as crutches. We need to put an SOP or system in place. Where my head goes is more to the human side of things and I like how you’re thinking about this but injecting also what resources are you utilizing to ensure that you’re understanding your blind spots and therefore being able to move to action? So things like different types of training that’s available online or in person or a coach specifically can help you go from that knowledge-to action place and can be kind of your champion when it comes to your blind spots. So I can really appreciate where you’re thinking from a place of a growth mindset. So everything is solvable especially when it comes to emotional intelligence pieces or our soft skills. And so what are we doing? A to understand them within ourselves and then b what are we going to do by way of actions to drive it?

If you’re interested in learning more from our Spotlight Leaders check Dianna Butler’s Leadership Spotlight on: Difficult Conversations

Make sure to follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode! New episodes of The Human Side of Business Podcast airs bi-weekly on Mondays at 1 pm ET.

How Perfectionism Impacts Performance

/0 Comments/in /by

Have you ever wondered the impact of your perfectionism on performance?

I’d like to tell you about my ‘Why’ in becoming so passionate about helping professionals elevate their performance.

The world has a funny way of pushing you into paths. I won a Facebook contest and could choose a 1/2-day group session or a one on one coaching session. I choose the one on one session as I am conditioned for coaching. My intention was to grow from coaching, but I had no idea what I was about to discover. And (know now) subconsciously believed I could breeze through it.

For the coaching session all I needed to do is show up, be honest and vulnerable, discover and choose how I will move forward. EASY I thought.

WRONG! What came out of this session with Ricky Goodall was a flood (I mean literally a flood) of emotion that my perfectionism was a result of feeling like I am not enough. I am not smart enough, experienced enough or brave enough.

Let me back up. Throughout my career I’ve always done well, finding ways to make it to the next corporate step but feeling small along the way. I’d do one of two things: 1) avoid and delegate; or 2) often time take personal time to perfect the report, the program or strategy.

I’d go out of my way to help other leader’s successes instead of focusing on my own success.

After self discovery, and responding to some really hard questions: it boils down to; am I enough and what does that have to do with performance, you ask?

EVERYTHING! Working through my career, I was sarcastic (which many found funny), and wore a corporate veneer while letting others take the limelight because I always told myself it wasn’t important to me. But that was a fib. It was a defense mechanism to navigate through corporate worlds from fabulous bosses to the bosses that shouldn’t be bosses.

It gave me an out from things that may intimidate me or challenge me in a good way.

As an entrepreneur, now, those defense mechanisms are stunting me, come to find out. I’ve read so many books and articles and follow the Gary Vee’s, Simon Serik’s, etc. that you do not have to be perfect but you do have to put yourself out there.

My gap was always things like: someone else has talked about it, someone else is the subject matter expert or someone else says it so much better.

My own realization: You do not have to be perfect and you do not have to be the first to the mark, because no one will say it how you do. Perfectionism and avoidance are red flags sometimes disguised as being too busy.

My defense mechanisms are what drive my passion to help others grow their performance. Now, however, I have a different lens, a developing lens that says I can play ‘big’ AND help others.

I do not have to downplay myself to help lift others. I can sit with them, in their communication language and help them elevate their performance from within.

I’d enjoy sharing more of my learning opportunities with you! Feel free to subscribe to Intuity Performance for more great performance, coaching and facilitation moments!

Contact us for your complimentary consultation.