Driving actions not outcomes: Are your employees doing the right behaviours to build better performance and career development?

It's been nearly four months now since I joined the Sparta journey, launching the product and business in the UK, and it has certainly been an insightful experience for me.

Having been involved in sales and leadership positions for over 16 years, I have picked up a lot of knowledge during that time with many highs and lows. I’ve had good and not so good managers and leaders, been on numerous training courses, events and seminars, experienced how different international business cultures and industries behave and work, and of course learnt a lot through winning and losing customer pitches.

However throughout all that time the mention of ‘employee behaviours’ (from a positive development and performance point of view), has never really been an important subject, until now…….

I thought when doing my research on Sparta before joining, that it was about driving activities, performance and sales, mainly thinking around the standard KPI’s we as managers crack the whip on our staff to get the results the business craves. But now after four months I’ve realised it's far more than that.

The mention in the title of this piece is ‘Driving actions not outcomes’, basically driving our employees to be doing the right behaviours in their jobs to become successful. As leaders in our businesses, how much focus, time and importance do we put into this, and how do we go about implementing and measuring it? How much emphasis do we put on motivating our staff and then giving them the recognition and rewards they truly deserve? I’m guessing not as much as we should.

I’ve over the last few months been out speaking with about 25+ different types of organisations about this very subject. I’ve met with managing directors and business owners, sales and customer care leaders and HR directors. I can honestly say that not one has really got it consistently cracked when it comes down to it.

One of the questions is, what are the behaviours we should be driving our employees to be doing?

You can run competitions and incentive schemes, set KPI’s in one to one’s and do your yearly or bi-yearly appraisals where you hope your employee will increase performance and develop their own skill set and knowledge. But are you setting the right behaviours to get the outcomes you and them want, and are you doing regular catch up’s, feedback and checks to ensure progress is being made? The likelihood is that most objectives set are probably outcomes.

I shall be sharing with you all over the next few weeks some thoughts on the types of behaviours you could be encouraging your staff to be doing, across sales, customer services and the business as a whole. These are behaviours and activities I’ve learnt that work from my own working life experience, my conversations and feedback I have had over the past few months when talking to business leaders about this subject, and of course how Sparta customers have benefited from putting more focus into this area.

If you have got this far on reading this piece, I set you the challenge this week:

• Give praise/positive feedback to at least one colleague everyday
• Read at least one insightful piece of content about your industry and share it with your colleagues
• Engage in at least five business relevant conversations on social channels
• Sign up to at least one up and coming networking event
• Do one act which involves you going above and beyond in your role to the benefit of a colleague or the organisation.

These may seem small, but you really will notice the difference!