Side Mirror: Fulfilling Performance 2 - Reflecting on your experience of Fulfilling Performance in your own career.

This episode is part of a series of Side Mirrors focusing on the origin story of Aquilae's vision of Fulfilling Performance. I share where the idea came from and how it informs Aquilae's mission of Enabling Fulfilling Performance. 

I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. 

This episode of CAREER-VIEW MIRROR is brought to you by Aquilae.  

Aquilae is a Performance Management consultancy in the auto finance and mobility industry. We use our proprietary performance management diagnostic to help you identify what steps you need to take to realise Fulfilling Performance in your business.  Contact me directly if you’d like to know more.   

For details of our forthcoming guests follow us on Instagram @careerviewmirror 

Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk 

 
Episode recorded on  23 April 2022 

Transcript

Ed Eppley: 0:00

I am sitting in lovely Siesta Key Florida.

Sherene Redelinghuys: 0:03

I'm coming from Bangkok in Thailand

Daniel van Treeck: 0:05

Prague in the Czech Republic,

Osman: 0:07

Cairo in Egypt,

Holger Drott: 0:08

Auckland, New Zealand

Shannon Faulkner: 0:09

London, England.

Andy: 0:10

Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host, Andy Follows Hello, listeners and welcome back. This is a short side mirror episode. It's the second in a series about the topic of Fulfilling Performance. If you haven't listened to the first one, I recommend you go back and listen to it first. You may also want to have something to write on as in a few minutes I'm going to ask you to reflect on some questions about your own career. In Career-view Mirror, we celebrate our guests' careers, we share their stories and we learn from their experiences. In this set of side mirror episodes, I'm sharing how my mission became Enabling Fulfilling Performance and some ideas for you to try yourself and with your teams. In the Eighth Habit, Stephen Covey shines a light on the fact that the majority of people in the workforce have more talent, intelligence capability and creativity than their roles require or even allow them to use. He also reminds us how we're constantly under pressure to produce more with less. Clayton Christensen, in How Will You Measure Your Life shares his vision for employees returning home with high self esteem after a fulfilling day at their jobs. Around 2012 I found myself at the intersection of these ideas. And I wanted to live my life deliberately and purposefully, I wanted to play to my strengths as much as possible. And in spite of having enjoyed incredible opportunities in the corporate world, I'd always had a dream of creating my own business. The fact that we're all pressured to deliver more with less, and yet the majority of us are not required or allowed to use all our talent, intelligence, capability and creativity seemed to me to be an intriguing problem, and the solution all wrapped up together. The thought of people finishing a day's work with high self esteem, feeling fulfilled and energised to be great partners, parents, and all round human beings felt just so right and puts a huge smile on my face. So the vision of Fulfilling Performance is it's about people unleashing all of their talent, intelligence, capability and creativity to perform at their highest possible level. And whilst doing so achieving a sense of fulfilment that powers them to be great partners, parents and all around human beings. It's it's ambitious. I admit that it's ambitious, but it's possible. And it's eminently worthwhile to strive for. And so our mission became To Enable Fulfilling Performance. Once I became aware of the gap between what people are already capable of, and what their workplaces allow them to contribute, once I became aware of that I couldn't unsee it, I imagined an office full of people and how helpful it would be, if over each of their heads, we could see a reading of what percentage of their current capability they were applying at that time. Some may be in the 90s, some in the 80s. And I suspect quite a few would be a lot lower. And we'd be able to quickly see where the gap was largest and seek to address it. And I imagined how valuable that would be to the CFOs amongst us how easy it will be to calculate the percentage of waste that was currently being allowed to go unchecked and the impact that that was having on profitability and shareholder value. Because whilst I don't think you should have to have a financial argument for enabling fulfilling performance, it just seems obvious to me that you'd want it but businesses always want to see a return on any investment. And whilst we're thinking about the financial waste of not enabling fulfilling performance, we might also consider the psychological impact of creating environments where people are obliged to perform at levels below what they're already capable of. I mentioned I have some questions for you. So let me give you those now. Think about a time in your career when you were performing at a high level, when you'd say you were able to bring a high proportion of your talent, intelligence, capability and creativity to your role. If that's now if that's what's happening now for you, congratulations. If it's some time in the past, then that's equally valid for this exercise. I'm going to ask you five questions and I'd like you to answer with a score out of 10 for each one. At the time, when you consider you were performing at a high level, how well equipped were you in terms of knowledge, skills, experience, mindset and resources to perform in your role? How well equipped were you in terms of knowledge, skills, experience, mindset, and resources to perform in your role? That's question one. How clear were you about what you were supposed to be doing? And how you were doing against that expectation? How clear were you about what you were supposed to be doing and how you were doing against that expectation? Third question, how was the behaviour of the people around you, at work and at home, supporting you to perform at a high level? How was the behaviour of the people around you, at work and at home, supporting you to perform at a higher level? And four, how much did it mean to you what you were doing? How much did it mean to you, what you were doing? And finally, question five, how fulfilled were you at that point in your life? How fulfilled were you at that point in your life, when you were performing at a high level? I'm going to guess that at the time you are performing at a higher level, you would have scored each of those questions quite highly. And where you didn't, you'd be able to see how changes in that area could have enabled you to perform at an even higher level. If you like, you can repeat the exercise. Go back answer the questions again, thinking about a time when you definitely weren't able to perform at a level that you know you were capable of at the time, and see what that brings up. Thank you for staying with me up until this point, I hope that this thinking resonates with you. And that these questions helped illustrate that there are several levers to Enabling Fulfilling Performance. Next time, we'll look at those levers in more detail and consider how we can adjust them to create environments that Enable Fulfilling Performance. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Episode 61 of Career-view Mirror with me, Andy Follows. This episode is part two in a series of side mirrors that explain the topic of Fulfilling Performance and my definition of Fulfilling Performance and how it came to represent the vision for Aquilae, leading to our mission of Enabling Fulfilling Performance. We publish these episodes to celebrate my guests careers, listen to their stories, and learn from their experiences. And on this occasion, I'm sharing some of my own story and hope that something in it may resonate with you. Our next episode will also be a side mirror like this, covering more on this topic and how you can use it, how you can use what we've put together, and then we'll get back to the regular Career-view Mirror interviews. This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by Aquilae. Aquilae is a Performance Management Consultancy in the Auto Finance and Mobility industry. We use our Proprietary Performance Management Diagnostic to help you identify what steps you need to take to realise Fulfilling Performance in your business. And contact me directly if you'd like to know more, my email is andy@aquilae.co.uk. And remember, folks, if you know people who would benefit from hearing these stories, please show them out find it. Thanks for listening.

Osman: 8:43

No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard working you are, you're never going to be able to do it on your own. It's just not possible.

Paul Harris: 8:50

You know, at the end of the day, you're steering your own destiny. So if it's not happening for you, and you're seeing what you want out there, then go out there and get it.

Sherene Redelinghuys: 8:59

Don't rely on others. You have to do it yourself. You have to take control.

Rupert Pontin: 9:05

If you've got an idea if you've got a thought about something that might be successful. If you've got a passion to do something yourself, but you just haven't quite got do it.

Tom Stepanchak: 9:15

Take a risk. Take a chance stick your neck out what's the worst that can happen? You fall down okay, you pick yourself up and you try again.