Performance & Care – Sustainable performance for leaders

A performance-driven culture is critical for companies in today’s competitive world.  With it, stress is increasing, employee engagement is decreasing, and there is a fight for talent.

It’s clear that organizations need to attract and retain talent, and it’s clear that leaders and teams are most engaged when a passion for performance is matched with care, and a connection to purpose in their work.

For many organizations, however, this appears a dilemma: the simultaneous integration  of performance and care.

More balance between care and performance through leadership training

Rituals and regular leadership habits provide structure and shape organisational culture. However, most organizations primarily use classic performance rituals and habits, supported by KPIs. This is important, but when not in balance with rituals and habits of care, can lead to a lack of engagement, increased friction, or even burnout.

Performance and Care

Performance & Care is a program that helps leaders develop a balanced yet effective way of leading. In our studies, we have found that true excellence in leadership is not based on performance mindset or a focus on numbers alone, but the right balance of performance,with focus on resilience, a growth mindset, and empathy towards employees and oneself.

To build a culture of performance and care, we need to change mindsets and habits and cultivate new skills and leadership qualities. A new way of looking at the world – and new habits are conducive to this.

Our program does just that. It helps leaders cultivate and unite around a culture of care and performance for their teams and themselves.

This inclusive culture requires specific leadership skills that can be trained:

These skills enable leaders to learn about and regulate their inner world and use it as a resource to become even more effective externally by developing the integration of a high performing and caring culture.

Cultivate leadership qualities

Cultivating the skills listed above requires certain leadership- or mindqualities, such as courage,clarity, or kindness, which, once internalized, infuse and strengthen leadership skills.

Courage opens new horizons for innovation, compassion strengthens interpersonal relationships, clarity builds performance and orientation, and kindness promotes a friendly work climate as well as self-care. By cultivating these inner leadership qualities, leaders not only develop outstanding professional competencies, but also shape a culture of growth, empowerment and sustainable performance.

In our Performance & Care program, we help leaders explore and integrate these qualities of mind into their leadership practice as well as the aforementioned skills, creating a lasting impact on employees and the organization.

“Performance & Care”: what Leaders will learn

Leaders will:

• gain a new understanding of the integration of performance AND care
• learn to abandon outdated performance myths (e.g. three myths in the box???) that stand in the way of modern learning teams and well-being
• perceive their own patterns that hinder either performance or care, or both.
• begin to share their experiences and shift habits that are hindering them,
• learn to embody a growth and people-oriented mindset versus a rigid and purely economic mindset
• learn to translate the new experiences into their way of leading
• learn to cultivate psychological safety, and with it, deep trust, establishing a platform for innovation and change
• strengthen self-care and care for their teams within a performance environment
• practice optimizing cognitive resources for self-reflection, critical thinking, perspective shifting and decision making, building positive relationships through connectedness, appreciation, psychological safety, (self-)compassion and empathy

The structure of “Performance & Care”

• Modular structure (6 modules online or face-to-face) – over a 3 month period.
• Self-directed learning phases between the modules, supported by a social learning platform and App
• Buddy groups for intensive exchange
• Individual coaching sessions to specifically address the needs of managers

The “Performance & Care” methods and tools

• Scientific input: neuroscientific findings on the topic of care and performance.
• Experiential exercises, discussions, and transfer-commitments to anchor what is learned in daily leadership practice.
• Evidence- and mindfulness-based practices that both strengthen resilience and enable integration between “performance & care”. 
• Micropractices (new habits for everyday leadership) and learning nuggets that are used via an app
• Specific Leadership practices to strengthen sustainable performance
• Best practice habits and rituals, i.e., cultural habits that can be embedded in their own team and departments
• Pre- and post-assessments to mirror the effectiveness of the training and to demonstrate individual learning outcomes
• Support for self-directed learning through the Awaris app and an extensive online platform for self-study.

Significant Changes Through Leadership Development*

*Based on 21 companies, 84 trainings and more than 800 participants. All assessments are statistically significant and rigorous pre- and post-assessments at individual level using validated measurement scales.