In any team, there are members who perform consistently better and ones who struggle to keep up. But as a leader, you want your entire team to consist of people who perform on a higher level. So, what sets high performers apart from low performers, and how can you help everyone rise to that level? The answer lies in understanding the habits of high performers and creating a standardized framework for success.
The first step is to focus on what you can control.
You can’t control an individual’s internal factors, like how they feel about their work and how much effort they want to put into it. But you can dictate their actions and control how much clarity and structure you provide for them.
Look at your low-performing team members:
Do they know exactly what’s expected of them?
Have they received the proper training and development to do their jobs?
Do they understand what success looks like in their role?
Clarity provides direction and sets the standard everyone can follow. Its absence causes chaos, lack of professional direction, mismanagement, and yes, lower performance.
Here’s the truth: your highest performers did not start out as high performers. You’re comparing your weakest team members to how your star players perform now, but the chances are your star players have spent years working with you to become the best. They learned through experience, osmosis, and trial and error.
Best performers’ success is often accumulated knowledge. Lower-performing team members may have simply not had the same time and opportunities to grow.
So, if you want to close the gap between the two, you should standardize training and development, then look to your highest performers and use their habits, experience, and training as a model for success at your company.
First, look at your company, as a whole.
Do you provide everyone with clear expectations and goals specific to their roles? Do you have training programs that ensure everyone is equipped with the tools necessary to succeed at their job? Do you continuously create opportunities for skill development for your employees?
If not, you can start by tackling some of these issues. Standardizing access to tools and learning opportunities will set your whole team up for success.
Then, look at your star players and analyze their performance. What makes them excel? More often than not, the difference comes down to their workflow, priorities, and daily habits.
How do your high performers structure their day? What activities do they prioritize that let them constantly hit their performance goals?
High performers have spent years in the field and have figured out how to maximize their efficiency and output, so by observing their habits, you can create a “cheat sheet” others can follow.
After gathering all this data, you can use it to increase the efficiency of your whole team. You could ask high performers to host workshops, for instance, to share their secrets with the rest of their team. Or pair the top performers with lower performers for mentorship opportunities.
As philosopher Will Durant once wrote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The gap between high and low performers often boils down to differences in knowledge, experience, training, and habits. By making everyone understand and adopt high performers’ habits, behaviors, and training, excellence will become the norm rather than the exception.
Leadership isn’t about dragging high performers down to meet the average — it’s about lifting everyone else up to meet the standard of excellence. When you focus on what you can control and create an environment where success is accessible to all, you won’t just improve individual performance — you’ll drive the entire company forward.
