Six Conditions of High Performance in the Workplace

Research suggests these six psychological conditions help employees and teams to perform at their best.

Connect to Perform empowers managers and employees to have conversations throughout the year to help foster these conditions. 

Purpose

There are different kinds of purpose:

  • Task Purpose: Knowing our work counts so our efforts aren’t wasted or excessive.
  • Collective Purpose: Seeing how our work combines with others to create something none of us could achieve alone.
  • Social Purpose: Recognizing that our work makes a worthwhile contribution beyond the success of our organization.

Challenge

The greatest challenges are:

  • Just out of Reach: If your goal is just out of reach and you're not sure how you are going to achieve it, then you probably have an appropriate stretch goal.
  • Aligned: Consider how your individual goals are aligned to your personal strengths and motivations, as well as the organizational strategy and the goals of your team, department and Faculty/Unit.
  • Always up for Review: The world around us is constantly changing which means that our goals should be reviewed and possibly updated throughout the year.

Growth

We grow faster when we have:

  • A Growth Mindset: We believe that we can get better and believe the same of our colleagues.
  • A Role Plays to our Strengths: We are doing work that aligns to our aptitudes and uses our skills.
  • Slight of Better Prospects: We can see that by getting better now, we’re more likely to attain something that matters to us in the future. 

Choice

We keep our performance high when we choose to:

  • Create social support: Build a strong network of technical, emotional and practical support.
  • Adopt an optimistic outlook; Interpret challenges as short-term, and a source of insight.
  • Focus on what’s in our control: Draw on inner strength and grit to maintain effort and interest over time to sustain performance in spite of setbacks.

Recognition

We feel most appreciated when recognition is:

  • Fair: Above all, recognition is based on clear criteria and applied consistently across my peers.
  • About me: Recognition is about me and what I did to contribute, not about the person giving it, the mood they happen to be in, or the kind of people they like.
  • Differentiated: The difference between recognizing above-and-beyond performance and day-to-day work is proportional.

Attention

Feedback, positive or constructive, that makes the biggest difference includes the following:

  • Situation: Context is provided and includes specific details such as when and where the event occurred.
  • Behaviour: Describe the behaviour objectively. Say what was observed.
  • Impact: Relate how the behaviour impacted you or others. Why does it matter? Who did it affect?