Behavioral Performance at Work

In this episode of Leading Without the BS, Cathy and Ivan dig into what Behavioral Performance actually looks like in real life — not as theory, but as in-the-moment mindset, behaviors, and communication.

They explore how leaders and teams tend to slide into autopilot, especially at the end of the year or during fiscal crunch time, and how that leads to burnout, safety issues, mediocre meetings, and frantic “hair-on-fire” sprints. Through real stories from international teams and high-stakes planning sessions, they show how simple but deliberate shifts in behavior can transform performance, energize strategic conversations, and help teams finish 2025 strong while setting up a powerful start to 2026.

Whether you're tired of the “hamster wheel” cycle or gearing up for critical 2026 planning, this episode gives you practical ways to disrupt autopilot, strengthen your team’s behavioral performance system, and finish the year strong.

Call to Action

If you’re:

• Heading into a tough quarter or year-end crunch
• Kicking off major planning, strategy, or execution conversations
• Tired of “hamster wheel, hair-on-fire, crash, repeat”

👉 Reach out to Wingspan to explore how a behavioral performance system can help your team finish 2025 strong and start 2026 in shape — not scrambling.

At the very least:
 Disrupt autopilot. Don’t wait until something breaks to change how you and your team work.

4 Takeaways:

1. Explore Wingspan’s Leader Team Coaching & Advising — the proven path for leaders ready to multiply performance across their teams. Schedule a Clarity Call with one of our expert Advisors right now!
2. Subscribe to the Wingspan Newsletter — get practical leadership insights, podcast episode deep-dives, client spotlights, and weekly tools delivered straight to your inbox.
3. Check out our YouTube Channel for unfiltered clips on behavioral performance and leadership actions that actually work.
4. 📲 Text us for leadership performance advice — real answers for real leaders.

💥 Subscribe to Leading Without The BS now and share this episode with other leaders who want to stop spinning their wheels and start leading with intentional energy. Someone invested in you — now pass it forward.

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Transcript

Cathy 0:00

Behavioral performance is not theory. It is in the moment, mindset, behaviors, and communication. Welcome to Leading Without the BS. Unfiltered, unapologetic, unstoppable performance. I'm excited for our conversation today. It builds on the last couple of episodes as we take a closer look at what is behavioral performance?

Ivan 0:22

Yeah, it's something that a lot of folks probably hear and they're starting to get a better sense of what it looks like. What I'm also equally confident of is that people are going, what the heck does this look like? How do I how do I get my team over this hump of of starting to begin to go down this path?

Cathy 0:39

Yeah, for sure. And that's where it's always fun to show them how practical the system is as they're putting it into their real life at work and at home.

Ivan 0:52

Cool. Well, let's consider the fact that for a lot of businesses, this is a time of year as we head in towards the end of the calendar year where the crush starts to come in, the pressure starts to dial up sometimes a little more subtly, sometimes a little more strongly. And there's that we gotta get it done before the end of the year.

Cathy 1:14

Definitely. And actually, for some of our leaders in in their organizations, they're already saying happy new year because they have started their new fiscal year and they closed out their year. So they went through that crunch, though still coming into the end of the year, not just on the in the work setting, as they're looking to attain those goals and outcomes they set set out to do. I mean, how much more enjoyable would it be to come into the holidays uh feeling strong, proud of the work that you've done, ready to celebrate, versus what's the reality for a lot of the individuals we work with, which is coming into the holidays completely exhausted, depleted, irritable, and and their holidays with their families can already be stressful.

Ivan 2:07

Well, and sometimes for some organizations we work with, we've heard of leaders getting told, Oh yeah, you're going to get this day off, whichever particular holiday it is, and then you're going to be right back to work the next day when people were planning on, I'm sure, taking several days off to spend time with family, or they had people come in from out of town and they're probably going, Well crap, this isn't how I wanted to wrap up the year.

Cathy 2:29

For sure. And it's so let's start to paint a picture for people on what it can look like and and what they can what they can really create as they wrap up 2025 because now's the time so many teams are putting that focus uh already on a really strong 2026. So not just closing out 25, feeling great, feeling accomplished, uh really ready for that 2026 and taking full advantage of that uh that fresh uh fresh start energy at the beginning of the year.

Ivan 3:08

It's funny, it reminds me of a team I'm already working with who the site manager admitted that at the end of the last quarter, her manager was stepping in and being a bit directive, really providing a lot of guidance, and that she found that she wasn't really operating at her normal role, she was just running around doing what this person said to do. And she said, This isn't how I want to show up. This isn't an effective way for me to run my team and my part of the organization. And that's where a lot of times when the pressure cranks up or the the um expectations seem like they're gonna be really hard to achieve, people will revert to old practices of step in and just do it, or command and control, or I'm going to tell you how to knock this out.

Cathy 3:57

Yeah .

Ivan 3:58

What do you see? What have you seen on that front?

Cathy 4:00

That crunch, it's still surprising how many teams, just like you said, fall back into that real tactical get into the weeds, into the details, and their team members are like, get out of my shorts, dude, giving like this isn't helpful.

Ivan 4:23

Yeah.

Cathy 4:23

If you're intending to be supportive as we're closing the end of the quarter even the end of the month, this is not the way to do it.

Ivan 4:34

It's a great reminder that a lot of times people don't want to say anything though, because they do recognize, geez, we're we are in this pinch point. And if my manager is stepping in, well, they must have a good reason. And well, they're my manager. I can't tell them what what I want or what I don't want. And in actuality, it's that is part of leaders' responsibilities, is to decide how to work better with those teams.

Cathy 4:56

For sure. And it's the sliding back into autopilot as people are wrapping the quarter or wrapping the year, and when they start to over-index again on the technical side of their performance, and it's so counterproductive because they stop focusing on behavioral performance. And of course, what you and I have seen and we've helped a lot of teams with is when it's crunch time, then that's when it becomes apparent how strong are your leader behavior systems. How consistent and how disciplined is the team working that behavioral performance and relying on it, leaning, even doubling down, on the behavioral performance versus falling back into the technical performance, into the details, the weeds, and then they're actually creating a bunch of other problems.

Ivan 5:59

And it's a great reminder for everyone who's listening or watching to remember that there are times where a leader will look at a team or a team will look at itself and say, oh geez, we're not doing this or we're not doing that, and they're not sure how to, okay, well, how do we jump over where we are now and how do we get started doing something different? And that's where we've we've worked with so many teams to help them with that. And so, an example, a couple of examples come to mind for me just within the past year or so. I've worked with a team, I've worked with several teams who have said, hey, we're going to have this big off-site meeting, we're going to have prep for a really strategic conversation, and we recognize that if we show up the way we always show up to these kinds of exchanges, we're unlikely to get as far as we really want to get, or that we're required to get because of how important this exchange is.

Cathy 6:50

How how long were you working with, I'll say the decision maker, so the senior most leader, how long were you working with them? Actually, I want to say something first. The reason I'm asking this is the fact that it's a team that is aware enough to say, if we go into this the way we have the past several, it it's you know, same shit, different day. And that's what it caught my attention because not many teams show that level of not only awareness, also that level of ownership, uh, owning up to hey, we've we've been an autopilot. So how long was that the the senior most leader working with you that that prompted this?

Ivan 7:37

Great observation and good question. And I've got a little confession to make, so we'll go into this. For most of the teams, been several years. And in at least one of those cases, this is the confession part. I jumpstarted that part of the conversation by saying, How big of a deal is this? How helpful is it going to be if your team comes into this conversation the same way they come into their regular Monday morning manager's discussion? I said, How much do you want those behaviors to show up with this really strategic and really critical exchange? And the senior executive I was talking to said, Oh, hell no, that's not going to work. Like this is going to require a whole other way of everyone showing up, including me.

Cathy 8:22

That when we're first starting with a leader or team, and we do the performance mapping where leaders, not only on an individual basis, also on the team level, identify when and how they're an autopilot, the performance zone, and in the stress zone, how many of them, and what comments do you hear about when they're an autopilot?

Ivan 8:53

I'm going to plead the fifth on behalf of many of the people I know and love and respect. At the same time, it's a lot. A lot of times it's the oh, I'm an autopilot when we get to this, to get to the staff meeting, I'm an autopilot when we have our manager's meeting, I'm in autopilot when we have the strategic discussion that we schedule once a month to see how we're hitting our longer-term objectives. And on one hand, it's totally understandable because when people come into the same thing and I'm to going say this and Bill's gonna say that, and Maria's gonna talk about such and such, it's understandable that people can start to slip an autopilot. This is also, by definition, one of the most critical exchanges this team is having on a routine basis to chart their direction. And so showing up the same way you've always showed up means you're gonna create the same kind of results you've always showed up, which is usually this repeat hockey stick of we plotter along, plot along, and then we bust our asses and really pull a miracle out.

Cathy 9:59

They're here to help.

Ivan 10:02

Light a fire under all of our butts.

Cathy 10:04

Which is again not helpful.

Ivan 10:06

Yeah.

Cathy 10:07

In fact, that's one thing leaders will consistently say, we don't do we don't do a lot of quote-unquote workshops. And not standalone at least. Well, that's just it. That's another reason it caught my attention, is because those high-stakes work sessions really are what we're doing. It they're more than a workshop. This is part of that in the wild work that we do. Really, there's some overlap because we because we don't spend our time on the generic kumbaya, let's all get together and smile and hold hands and all.

Ivan 10:50

Do trust falls.

Cathy 10:51

And all be cooperative. That's for any of you who are considering bringing us in for a workshop, only do it when you're really ready to do some of that high-stakes work.

Ivan 11:07

And one really simple example I want to I want to use as a case study for everyone to be aware of, and not to give away the whole thing, just a little bit though, with a team I went to go see, a big international team. They came together last year, and they were doing some really important planning were going to affect the entirety of their global And at first when I spoke with the leader, he said, Yeah, I want to do, I want to do something with you. Let's do it at the end of the week. And I said, what do you what are you wanting to have come out of this? And he said, Well, I want them to think about how to work, how to work differently. And I want you to challenge them on how they can work differently for the rest of the year. And I said, Well, how about we flip that sucker to the front of the agenda, and then that way people get to practice literally that whole week. And that way, not only is that conversation going to be better, they've literally had reps getting this new way of working in before they take off, go home, and go back their to their normal work, hopefully bringing this with them.

Cathy 12:10

Exactly. That's because behavioral performance is not , it is in the moment, mindset, behaviors, and communication. And when teams are wanting a change, then uh making sure that we're pulling, helping them pull all the levers possible where people are out of autopilot and starting to think differently and develop their critical and creative , and they're, like you said, making critical, far-reaching decisions. And again, how they're coming together as a team in the process, not out of autopilot, uh asking each other the same old crappy questions, or even if they are asking questions. Um a lot of times teams quickly get into autopilot. There's a there's a lot of um you know, huffing and puffing around the forming, storming, norming, and performing. Well, we teams will put themselves in autopilot very quickly, especially when the team members are high performing. Yeah, and so again, for good reason, um high performers will put themselves in autopilot faster and more often. And that's because of their successful experience. And the the problem is though, that they're continuing, the business is continuing to attack new challenges, they're continuing to grow and drive the business that requires everyone to keep raising their game.

Ivan 13:43

What's interesting, I like it what you said about the way people are normally showing up and that autopilot, and how that's really diverging from what's necessary. One of the things that you and I both do, and for everyone who hasn't had the benefit of seeing this in the flesh, I'll tell you what it looks like. One of the ways we that all I started that particular conversation with that international team was I picked up my phone and I said, Hey, everybody, go ahead and grab your phone, turn it either off or to silent mode, and then please tuck it in your bag or put it in your pocket. Don't have it on the table. And it was amazing to watch around the room. And probably 90% of the people did exactly as I asked. They took them, and they stuck it in their pocket or popped it in their bag. And a handful of people gone, uh-huh. And they turned it off and then they stuck it right down on the table in front of them.

Cathy 14:34

Just like their little security blanket.

Ivan 14:37

Like a pure autopilot. And so it's so funny to just walk up and say gently, hey, go ahead and put that in your bag or in your pocket, please. And then people all of a sudden, it's like this, oh crap, he actually meant that. And I said, Yeah. So after everyone did it, I said, here's a deal we're going to strike today. We're all going to be 100% focused on this exchange. People aren't going to be texting, they're not going to be emailing something else, they're going to be checking on whatever else they could be getting distracted by, because that's how you all accidentally are contributing to lower effective or uh lower value exchanges and lower effective meetings.

Cathy 15:18

That's how they create mediocre performance. And because they're half-assing it here, they're half-assing it on their phone, half-assing it on their laptop, all the notifications, and so yeah, that's a powerful and effective way to disrupt the autopilot. And that's coming back to what is behavioral performance, and we call the Wingspan system a system for many reasons. It is a system with frameworks, processes, tools, and leaders don't want to spend their time managing. And they don't leaders don't want to spend their time managing people or managing performance. And no shocker, team members don't want to be managed. And so when a team can rely on a system instead of the hierarchy, that's when their the not only the results, their relationships just go to the next level. Because there's so much well, there's so much bullshit in operating out of permission and up one channel and over across and down the other side and all the BS that comes along when people are over-indexing on the hierarchy.

Ivan 16:52

Yeah.

Cathy 16:53

And so the Wingspan behavioral performance system is built and designed. As leaders are learning and putting it into practice with themselves, like here in this workshop, for many of them, that that was their first exposure to Wingspan. That's the place where they're learning, they're putting it into practice. Really, what's happening is that the teams are building leader behavior systems within their team, within their company. And that's when they start to rely on leader behavior systems, that the results just skyrocket.

Ivan 17:29

To build on what you just shared in in that example with that team, that implementation or that application of the system was the team members were fully paying attention. They weren't letting themselves get distracted. They were actually dialed in. And when I when I asked that team leader at the end of the conversation, the VP, I said, Hey, different was this? I even asked the team, I said, How different was this than most of your meetings? People were immediately, oh my gosh, this was totally different. So much more, so much more interaction, so much more back and forth, so many more questions, people were bringing up so many more good points. And I said, Awesome. I said, Well, how much do you want to keep this going? And they looked and I said, I'm going to challenge you all to do this the entire day of the week.

Cathy 18:19

Yes.

Ivan 18:20

And they did, they absolutely did. And I talked to the vice president after I'd flown home, I was texting him, was so excited to hear how it went. And he said, It was nuts. He said they really made a point to stay on track with this, and he said the results in those conversations were just so much different than what they normally do because people weren't distracted, they were totally dialed into that exchange.

Cathy 18:40

I remember when you came back because you were in the UK for that one. I remember when you came back and you were excited because they had made comments that that was the absolute strategic planning session that they had. That's the exciting stuff is to see what team members are able to create with one another. . Again, not just for the business, for themselves personally, where they feel proud about that.

Ivan 19:12

Yeah.

Cathy 19:12

When you're in the workshop, I'm going to call it the workshop environment with Wingspan, that's where it's this live environment. They're like you really challenged them and supported them. They were not in autopilot, regurgitating the same old shit, same old thinking, same old speaking, same old statements. They were up in their performance zone. And it's in a live environment where they were exercising uh that openness and curiosity, and they were experimenting and testing some things with each other. And I'm certain, well, it's it sounds like it, stimulating new thought, new solutions, as well as just the difference in how those individuals felt.

Ivan 19:55

Yeah.

Cathy 19:56

Which is like we said, coming, coming as coming into wrapping up 2025, how leaders are feeling coming into the end of the year really matters.

Ivan 20:08

Yeah, it matters on a couple of fronts. One is I certainly haven't enjoyed, and I'm sure lots of other people listening will recognize they haven't enjoyed that sometimes maniacal breakneck pace that takes place, and that just frantic level of activity at the end of a month or end of the quarter, end of the year, whatever it is, that that begins to come down. And then they probably don't like that feeling afterwards of oh my god, I am exhausted, I'm freaking spent, I just I don't I want to do anything other than go back to work or to think about this project because it they've got this recent experience in the rearview mirror that was just not enjoyable. And so bringing all these concepts together, this is where for anyone listening, as you're thinking about how to support your team, these are the kinds of ways to shift performance and turn it into a while, you're using a workshop to get something up and rolling, you're using this activity to get things different, that's also a great way to help this become a norm. This is how we're always going to work. And so, you can start to flatten out some of these spikes and valleys and get it to be more consistent, more normal, and it's going to feel better, it's going to be easier for the people on the team.

Cathy 21:24

Because that staying in shape. So the end of the year is the time when we find out how strong and healthy is our behavior system. Individually, as a team, even on the home front. How strong is that? It's like when we were training this morning with Cody, I saw they have a holiday hustle or something. It's like a 60-day challenge, I didn't see the details of it. And I immediately thought about this and behavioral performance and how it's so much more powerful to stay in shape. Because most people, and I know I've certainly done this in the past: I'm starting to creep toward Halloween, I'm starting to get toward Thanksgiving, my absolute favorite meal of the entire year. And then I'm like, fuck it. I'm just eating, I'm eating the whatever, the sugar cookies, the cakes, the, you know, all this good stuff coming into the holidays.

Ivan 22:30

And then come in January.

Cathy 22:32

Yeah. Like, oh no! 10 pounds heavier and not you, couldn't happen.

Ivan 22:39

Couldn't happen.

Cathy 22:41

And this is this is no different. How are leaders making sure that they and their teams are leaning on their behavior systems and leaning on that consistency, um, not only leaning on it, leveraging it for themselves.

Ivan 23:01

Also creating some excitement around it so it doesn't, to your point, feel like this fat-thin, fat-thin cycle, which is exhausting because it's such a heavy involvement, or it's taking your foot off the gas. And that just that's just that's just it's exhausting. It's tiring much more than, hey, let's have a steady-ish state that we can work with. We can anticipate more fully, we're not surprised by things, and it's much easier for folks to get their heads wrapped around.

Cathy 23:28

One of the other places that you just prompted me for some reason is that staying in that steady state and getting out of the spikes. Also, the coming into the end of the year, it It's almost like it's 50-50. People either come into the end of the year around some things, they're dropping into autopilot, or they just went through that crunch. I've got lots of leaders who are already starting off 2026 in their minds because it's fiscal year 26. And that's when the other half goes into autopilot, and where that really comes into play, a serious place that it comes into play is around safety.

Ivan 24:18

Yeah.

Cathy 24:19

And, behavioral-based safety. And as soon as we're going into the teams are going into autopilot, it becomes a real literally a safety issue for team members on sites and in their workday.

Ivan 24:34

And it probably hits on the safety side, which is most concerning for the individuals on the team. It probably also hits on production numbers, which are probably below or maybe just barely meeting, I'd be more on the below side, uh, just barely meeting the quotas or the requirements. And then what happens is the more that that goes on, the more that is just gonna flip to the other end of the month or the quarter to say, oh my gosh, we're gonna be making that up, which means we're gonna be now an autopilot another way, which is going 100 miles an hour, not really thinking about how we're working.

Cathy 25:07

In that stress autopilot overlap.

Ivan 25:10 Cathy 25:10

Where, like you said, it gets maniacal and frantic, which actually is not an exaggeration for some of the leaders.

Ivan 25:18

No, not at all.

Cathy 25:19

Yeah, they're and they get very stressed out. So that's I'm that's one place where leaders are reaching out. Some of those, some of those strong leaders, they've seen it before, they've been there, they're tired. I'll say they're sick and tired of the exhausting roller coaster, and so they're pulling us in so that they can really wrap up the years, wrap up 2025 strong. And that's and that that consistency is I'm that it's tough. I'm thinking too about us at Wingspan and starting to feel we've had a lot of stuff going on within the team, and I've been internally, I've been struggling. Where do I put my time and attention? There is everything's a priority. Everything's important. If I'm not really it feels like it, yeah. And you know, this what's happening with this team member is important, what's happening with this part of the business is important, what's happening with, you know, our little chili girl is recovering from her knee surgery. Again. I it's it is a challenge, um, a very real challenge to keep that consistency and relying on relying on the behavioral performance.

Ivan 26:48

So as we're as we're wrapping this up, speaking of wrapping things up, the if you're listening to this and you're saying, yeah, I'm seeing where my team is about to jump into a challenging part of the year, we're getting ready to kick off some critical conversations, planning conversations, execution conversations, whatever those are, and you're saying it's time for us to do something different. You realize jumping on the hamster wheel and then running your asses off and then hair on fire. Yeah, hair on fire, and then setting it out for 30 seconds to recover, and then you go, oh no, now I'm behind again. If you're tired of that cycle, this is a great spot to reach out to us. So you can go straight to our website, book a consultation, and we can absolutely figure out what's gonna make sense for your team.

Cathy 27:34

Or at a minimum, take a page out of Ivan's book, and if you're pulling as you are, not if, as you are pulling your team together, coming into wrapping up 2025, coming into 26, at a minimum, disrupt, be creative and disrupt the autopilot. Because if you and your team stay in autopilot, then some something's going to be broken. And if you wait until then to take some action around it, there's for me, there's almost nothing worse than feeling like I am so far behind the eight ball, and that is worth the time and energy to attack it on the offense right now.

Ivan 28:24

Yeah, and this also isn't a huge investment. This can be very a very realistic number for most organizations to pull from the cooler. So give us a call. Put some of these pieces in a concept. We encourage everyone to really look at how you and your team are working and decide which one to do differently for next year.

Cathy 28:43

Absolutely. All right, we'll see you next time.

Ivan 28:45

Take care.