Does Your Work Environment Create Top Performers?

By Wayne H. Ottum

“Select a person, set expectations, motivate the person and develop the person… If a company’s managers are unable to play this role well, then no matter how sophisticated its systems or how inspirational its leaders, the company will slowly start to disintegrate.”
Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman in ”First, Break All the Rules” 1999.

The professional development aspect of the culture of an organization has an enormous impact on its ability to continually and effectively reach its strategic objectives. In order to create an environment that fosters top performance in the pursuit of these objectives, an organization must Lead from Strength™. In fact, the quote above is from the book that started the “strength” movement when the Gallop organization studied and reported on what makes a great manager in the book entitled, First, Break all the Rules. The result? Those great managers “broke all the rules” that focused on determining and “fixing” the weaknesses of their staff. Instead, these great managers discovered the particular strengths needed for the particular role, aligned staff’s strengths to those roles and then set expectations, motivated and developed those strengths.

To determine if you are creating an environment that fosters success now and in the future, we encourage you to ask your employees the following 10 questions routinely and continually: Read more