Dr. Rob McKenna
Founder + CEO, WiLD Leaders Inc.
Every person you know has a story occurring at the center of their identity and their progress that is too often expressed as an unanswered question: How do I connect my driving purpose to what I am doing every day? We ask it in different ways, but at the core of who we are as human beings is the question that connects the invisible pieces of our hearts with the visible pieces of our actions.
It’s that often shapeless and less navigated space between our human being and human doing that leaves us wanting more. It’s the space between our hearts and our business, our performance and our well-being, and the builder and the gardener in us that knows are designed to do something - to build, and to carefully cultivate and tend the delicate garden of relationships that allow us to build together. It is the WiLD story. That is our WiLD mission. The unique WiLD proposition we are fighting for in the life of leaders, teams and organizations - to connect the systems of organizations with the hearts and minds of the men and women who serve in every organization we serve. Accomplished strategically through existing systems and the hearts of human beings - the succession systems, the coaching conversations, the leader development programs, the performance plans, the operational core - those systems that have historically been so far from the hearts of those who use them and are supposed to benefit from them. We will fight for that reality in the life of the one and the systems of the many, and build the bridge of trust that connects them together. That is what we do. That is why we are here for you.
The Power of Performance
The culture around us, especially in America, tells us that we should take risks, try new things, and take advantage of opportunities, but leaves no room for failure. It is irresponsible to encourage defining ourselves by our risks without leaving room for failure to be not only acceptable, but expected. And it is reckless to dismiss any responsibility for our actions, even though our inherent value is not connected to our performance.
The whole reality is that our actions, our progress, and our performance are crucially important on so many levels. Within us, every action, accomplishment and failure creates markers - scars and gold star rewards that tell us something about who we are. Those markers give us information about who we can become and how we will serve others, and they change how we see ourselves. They impact our efficacy and confidence, our realizations of our limitations and possibilities, and change our self perception. Every person in every organization and every family is deeply impacted by their ability to perform, to accomplish, to see progress. Our actions do not define our ultimate value, but those markers give us a sense of the realities of what is possible through us, and of what is not.
Performance is the process of completing a task or fulfilling a role with excellence, learning, and engagement.
When our performance comes into direct contact with the performance of another person, and then another, and another, we begin to see the irresistible reality of the importance of people working together. As we grow, ourselves or our organizations, we realize that we must grow together if we are to accomplish the grand plan and goals that have been placed before us or that we have put in place. We call that a team, and a team’s performance together is the culmination of all those individual performances serving toward a shared mission. As I once heard it said, “Practice is where I learn my part, and rehearsal is where I learn everyone else's". We are wired to perform, excel, make progress and build, and most of us are either wired to do that together or soon realize that we won't survive long if we don’t.
Performance is a critical part of the human experience of work and of life, but it is never enough to answer our deeper questions of why we are here.
The Well-Being of the One and the Many
Performance will never be enough. Too many of us have experienced the emptiness of accomplishment alone and felt the vacuum of identity and purpose that follows. Why was it not enough to get that job, achieve the big paycheck, build that product, or get that degree? The achievements and our performance create the markers and belief that we could do it again and do it better, but it will never be enough. Every person in our organization either is hanging onto the lie that performances will be enough, or they are fully aware that it’s not and they are repeatedly striving for a purpose without a map toward it. And, too many feel only a small dose of treatment in the form of a quiet desperation that is screaming out inside of them. Well-being is a place within each of us that knows there is more, but is less like a push out and more like a dive within. Well-being is a whole picture of who we are, why we are, how we are doing, who we love and why we love them, and our inherent value.
Well-being is the whole state of human being and human doing that connects productivity to the heart, fulfillment to our spirits, and clarity to our wide open learning - a whole state that will never separate our physical, emotional, and relational health.
As long as our organizations are full of human beings doing, working, and learning together, the tension between our well-being and our performance will always be inseparable. To be well is to be progressing, scaling, and growing while learning - leading to the often invisible question of purpose and worth within each of us. However, instead of fighting for both our performance and well-being, we too often have overpivoted toward one or the other - creating one more near miss in our attempts to both scale well and invest in people well. When we over-pivot to the health and identity of the individual over the needs of the organization or the many, we miss the reality that building and growing together is a part of our created way as human beings. And, when we turn all of our attention to the industrialization and scaling and growth of our organization, the value perceived by our stakeholders or investors, or even our exit strategy, we not only lose long term value, but we lose our souls in the process.
Building a Bridge of Trust
Too often we try to solve the performance and well-being problems of our organizations separately, treating them as battles we must win and overcome one at a time. This is why so many development programs, team building sessions, or organizational interventions fail. They do not directly link performance to the motivational and personal journey every person is working through. It’s also why operational systems, pro-formas, or sales training programs will never create the long term and sustaining value we are seeking without linking the thinking, feeling, and driving forces within a person. The visible and invisible parts of organizing are already connected within each of us, so approaches that assume they are parallel and not intersecting will miss what’s really happening.
What is the bridge between them? How do we unlock the human and organizational potential that exists within and between us? That bridge between our human being and our human doing is trust - trust within each of us, trust between us, and trust among us. Trust causes me to push my team into moments of change, fully trusting they can handle it. Trust is what allows me to delegate effectively and do my own job as I live into the possibility and confidence that my team members will have my back both professionally and personally. Trust is what allows us to lean into our operational systems and use them well. Trust is what connects the promise of a salesperson to the solution provided to a customer through our products. Trust is what says, I’m going to work with you instead of someone else. Trust means you know me and I know you. It does not mean that we are perfect or will fulfill the promise to each other perfectly, but that we will work at it. Trust requires us to know ourselves and to share that knowledge with each other.
Trust is your belief in my integrity, my ability, my reliability, my strength, and that I am telling you the truth when any of those things are lacking. And, it is my belief in the same in you.
Yes, trust is multi-faceted and requires all of those things to be built. Each piece of the trust puzzle is necessary but not sufficient on its own. Integrity is me doing what you need and want to be done, Ability is your belief that I can do it. Reliability is whether I will do it consistently. Strength is whether or not you believe I will do it well, and truth is your belief that I will be honest with you when any of those things are lacking.
Trust is belief, but with teeth. If I believe in you, I will believe that you will catch me if I fall. If I have trust in you, I will take the risk of actually falling. We require it every day to make anything in our world work. Without trust, no fine-tuned operational system will be effective for long, and my team members won’t take action. Without trust, we will avoid risks because the possibility of failing before we even get off the ground is too strong. Without trust, I will spend most of my time on working and maintaining relationships over making progress. Trust is so necessary, but to understand trust we must focus our attention on some fundamentals that change everything.
Building an organization where people thrive and the organization performs is within reach, but it requires a reformation in how we think about developing leaders, investing in our employees, setting up operational systems, and how we build deep and sustaining trust. It’s not a revolution, but a reformation - an application of what most already know to be true that is supported by decades of research. it will require a willingness to allow people to tell their whole story more accurately, or discover it more truthfully. That is the WiLD mindset and the foundation behind our methodology and every assessment and technology that is building long term value and inspiration for our partners - as they intentionally connect performance, well-being and trust.
About the author
Dr. Rob McKenna
Founder + CEO, WiLD Leaders Inc.
Named among the top 30 most influential I-O Psychologists, and featured in Forbes, Dr. Rob McKenna is the founder of WiLD Leaders, Inc. and creator of the WiLD Trust Platform. His recent TEDx Becoming a Whole Leader in a Broken World is a manifesto on the critical role that developing whole and intentional leaders will play in our future. Dr. McKenna has devoted his life to developing leaders and building trust in our organizations.
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