Upgrading performance and resetting personal readiness for the new now

The com­pa­nies that suc­ceed in the future of work will be those that upgrade their per­for­mance cul­ture and equip teams with the tools to tack­le dai­ly chal­lenges. In this tough busi­ness envi­ron­ment, only employ­ees with a new lev­el of per­son­al readi­ness can suc­ceed and cre­ate the mas­sive pos­i­tive impact required.

There is no doubt the shift to remote work­ing has been a long time com­ing, but the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic accel­er­at­ed it in a brute-force way that exposed the cracks in the sys­tem. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in many com­pa­nies may have increased, yet forced remote work­ing has revealed cul­tur­al and col­lab­o­ra­tive weak­ness­es with­in teams and placed new kinds of strains on our lives. 

When the pan­dem­ic first sent coun­tries into lock­down, ener­gy lev­els went up, accord­ing to analy­sis by inter­na­tion­al human per­for­mance firm TIGNUM. How­ev­er, it soon became appar­ent that peo­ple were run­ning on adren­a­line, buoyed by the nat­ur­al ener­gis­ing effect caused by ral­ly­ing around a com­mon cri­sis.

After the long-term real­i­ty of the pan­dem­ic hit home, TIGNUM found fatigue start­ed accu­mu­lat­ing. Although peo­ple were not trav­el­ling, had no jet lag, slept in their own beds and for an aver­age of 45 min­utes more each day, they felt exhaust­ed and more fatigued. 

“We have seen a huge redis­tri­b­u­tion of fatigue from most­ly phys­i­cal to pre­dom­i­nant­ly emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive,” says Scott Peltin, founder and chief per­for­mance offi­cer at TIGNUM. “Peo­ple have been deal­ing with uncer­tain­ty and fear. They are try­ing to be per­fect at both home and work, while forced to be only at home and ful­ly on at all times, trans­fixed to their cam­era in video con­fer­ence meet­ings. All of this while try­ing to be col­lab­o­ra­tive, empa­thet­ic, cre­ative prob­lem-solvers.”

From a brain sci­ence per­spec­tive, the shift has had a huge toll on per­for­mance. Fatigue has caused peo­ple to dou­ble down on their bias­es, seek quick fix­es to com­plex prob­lems and default back to some of the most dis­rup­tive parts of their behav­iour­al style. Com­pet­i­tive peo­ple become pushy, extro­vert­ed peo­ple become over­ly chat­ty and ana­lyt­i­cal peo­ple become paral­ysed with­out data, accord­ing to TIGNUM.

In a remote envi­ron­ment, it is more dif­fi­cult for lead­ers to show they authen­ti­cal­ly care for their teams. Ini­tial­ly, this was done through vir­tu­al cof­fee breaks, an onslaught of video meet­ings and emo­tion­al micro-man­ag­ing. Though a well-intend­ed nat­ur­al response by lead­ers, it con­tributed to the already high lev­els of cog­ni­tive fatigue, feel­ings of guilt for not being per­fect and a sense of unfair­ness due to dis­crep­an­cies around how the pan­dem­ic has impact­ed peo­ple. 

From 15 years of work­ing with promi­nent C‑suite and oth­er lead­er­ship teams, TIGNUM has devel­oped a unique under­stand­ing of the busi­ness professional’s body and brain. “Great lead­ers, great teams and great com­pa­nies know great work requires ener­gy, men­tal agili­ty, resilience and adapt­abil­i­ty. Our research indi­cates these crit­i­cal ele­ments are defi­cient in too many teams,” says Peltin. 

TIGNUM’s data points to the need for dif­fer­ent types of mind­set and recov­ery strate­gies at dif­fer­ent times to match the spe­cif­ic dai­ly demands. To pre­pare clients for their dif­fer­ent chal­lenges, TIGNUM built TIGNUM X, an effec­tive and cut­ting-edge Sus­tain­able Human Per­for­mance Tool­Box. With more than 55 sci­ence-based strate­gies, TIGNUM X shifts lead­ers and their teams from being exhaust­ed to ener­gised, over­whelmed to in con­trol, and frag­ile to resilient. 

The pace at which com­pa­nies need to adapt to chal­lenges will not slow down in the years ahead, ampli­fy­ing the need for sus­tain­able human per­for­mance. If the future of work is hybrid, as many com­pa­nies are plan­ning for, an agile tool­box is essen­tial. 

“We’re liv­ing in a world of con­stant change, high load and extreme uncer­tain­ty,” says Peltin. “With­out the right tools, it’s easy to feel out of con­trol, over­whelmed, fatigued, scat­tered and brain fogged. Peo­ple can come out of this cri­sis stronger, more skilled and bet­ter tooled to deal with com­plex­i­ty and chal­lenges.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it tignum.com

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