The Performance Environment: How Leadership and Culture Drive Both Wellbeing and Results

https://vimeo.com/1208286000

Are you frustrated with inconsistent results and high workplace stress? What if the key to unlocking sustainable performance wasn't about pushing harder but about designing a better environment?

The reality is, most businesses don’t have a wellbeing problem: they have an environmental problem. When expectations are unclear, leadership is inconsistent and trust is low, performance drops and pressure increases.

In this session, Jacqui Barnes will help you explore how leaders and teams can create high-performance environments through clarity, consistency and trust.

Join us for this insightful webinar to learn how to improve results and reduce unnecessary workplace pressure.

Jacqui Barnes is Head of People & Growth at Laing+Simmons, responsible for driving performance, leadership capability and growth across the network. She works closely with business owners and teams to design environments that improve consistency, accountability and results. Jacqui is recognised for her clear, practical approach to leadership and performance in real estate.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• practical strategies to embed clarity in expectations and leadership

• methods for building consistent leadership and high-trust teams

• how to design environments that boost accountability and results

• ways to reduce unnecessary workplace pressure

By focusing on system design instead of individual effort, you can lift performance and mitigate unnecessary pressure.

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Jacqui Barnes, of Laing+Simmons, is talking to Kylie Davis, of the Rise Initiative.

Kylie:

Welcome, everyone. My name's Kylie Davis, I'm from the RISE Initiative. It's wonderful to see so many people joining the call, thank you.

I'm here today, with the wonderful Jacqui Barnes from Laing & Simmons. And look, just to, at the RISE Initiative, we absolutely recognise the importance of place and of belonging. And so, in the spirit of reconciliation, I would like to acknowledge the Wangal people. I'm here on Wangal land, on the edge of the Parramatta River in Sydney, part of the Eora Nation.

And we recognise the traditional custodians on the land, which we're gathering all around the country today. And we pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders joining us. Now, I'm excited about today. Jacqui's done an amazing job on some research, and she's going to touch on that a little bit, but we're going to be talking about the performance environment, and how leadership and culture drives both wellbeing and results.

And Jacqui is the head of people and growth at Laing & Simmons. She's responsible for driving performance, leadership capability, and growth across the network, and she works closely with business owners and teams to design environments that improve consistency, accountability, and results. And she's recognised for her clear and practical approach to leadership and performance in real estate. And this is something that is very dear to our hearts at Rise, because we're all about making that connection between thinking well and performing really strongly.

So, thank you for joining us, Jacqui, over to you.

Jacqui:

Thanks, Kylie. I'm just going to share my screen. Can you see that okay? I'm just…

Kylie:

Yep, and I'm just gonna drop off so that we can focus on you, but I'll be on chat.

Jacqui:

Thanks! Okay, I'll just move that out of the way so I can see.

So, thank you everyone for joining us today, and thank you, Kylie, for that. As Kylie mentioned, I'm Head of People and Growth at Laing & Simmons. Despite the youthful appearance, I've spent almost 30 years in the real estate industry, worn lots of different hats on the way, from sales, PM, leadership, operations, and more than 10 years in real estate recruitment, helping businesses attract, develop, and retain great people.

And today, I spend a lot of my time working with business owners and leaders, helping them build high-performing teams. Recently, as Kylie mentioned, I did some research, which was, the Women in Real Estate Insights report. It involved hundreds of conversations with people across the country about performance, leadership, and career progression.

And one of the things I learned through, or have learned through all of that experience, is that performance is rarely just about the individual. More often, it's shaped by the environment that they're working in, and so that's what today's session is really about. 

Before we get started, I do want to be careful and respectful about how we talk about wellbeing. When it comes to mental health and people's lived experience, it's not for leaders, you know, or for this webinar, or me to decide what anyone is personally going through, but what we can do is talk about something that's a bit more practical, and that's the workplace environment that leaders design, and how that environment shapes performance, sustainability, and workplace pressure.

So today's session is really all about a performance shift. So, instead of asking, how do we push harder, I want us to explore how we design the environment so performance improves without adding unnecessary pressure. And so, just, sorry, my… Things not working here.

So, one thing I do want to be clear about today is not about discussing bad leadership.

It's not about pointing fingers, it's not about blaming business owners. In my experience, most leaders genuinely care. Most of them, I mean, none of you wake up in the morning thinking, how can I go and confuse my team today, or increase their stress, or make their job harder? No one does that.

And most leaders want, of course, exactly the opposite. You know, we all want better performance, stronger culture, accountability, engagement, retention, and we want our people to succeed. So the problem isn't usually our intention. The problem is that intention and experience are not actually the same thing. And that distinction matters more than most of us actually realize.

So this is the idea I want you to think about through today's session. So the gap, the gap between what leaders think they're providing and what people are actually experiencing, because those two things are not always the same. So, as an example, leaders think, my door's always open, and my team knows they can come to me, but employees think I don't feel comfortable bringing that up. Leaders think they know that I support them, but employees think I don't want to bother them.

And so here's the thing, none of that requires bad leadership or poor intentions, it just simply requires a gap. And the larger that gap becomes, the harder performance becomes. And it's not because people don't care, or because they're not trying, it's because they're operating in an environment that isn't supporting success as effectively as it could. So, we mentioned that I created the Women in Real Estate Insights report.

And in many ways, we've made enormous progress, but despite all of the progress we've had, women remain significantly underrepresented in sales, leadership, and business ownership. And I really wanted to understand why, not through making assumptions or anecdotes, but through actual evidence. So, I asked women across the industry to share their experiences, challenges, and career journeys, and what emerged wasn't just a conversation about women. It was a conversation about leadership, performance, and the environments that we create for people to succeed.

And so, while the report focused on women. So many of the insights that came through in this report just apply to everybody generally, no matter what the gender is. So what surprised me most was that I kept finding myself looking at leadership over and over, and the report explored things like confidence, performance, career progression, leadership aspirations, and retention. But underneath all of those things, there was another thing that's… it just… this factor just kept showing up repeatedly, and that's the environment.

So the conditions people are operating in, you know, the support around them, the leadership around them, the clarity around them, and the consistency that they experience. And it made me realize something. Many of the things that we describe as people problems are actually environmental problems. And we often talk about performance as though it's entirely individual.

They're motivated, they're not motivated, they're resilient or they're not resilient, they're confident or they're not confident, accountable or not accountable. And while, of course, those things matter, they're actually only part of the picture, because people don't perform in isolation. They perform inside environments. So, think about sport, schools, workplaces, think about families, and you can go and put the same person in two environments, or two different environments, and you can get two completely different outcomes.

The person hasn't changed, but the environment has. And yet, when performance isn't where we want it to be, our first instinct is usually to focus on the individual, train them more, coach them more, motivate them more, manage them more, and sometimes, of course, that's what's required. But sometimes the better question is, what is it about the environment that might be making success harder than it needs to be? Now, I want to be careful here, because I'm not a psychologist or a mental health professional, and I've had zero training in either, and I'm not suggesting that every challenge people experience can be solved by better leadership.

People bring their entire lives to work, and some challenges sit completely outside of our control. But there is one thing I do know. Leaders have enormous influence over the conditions people experience every single day at work. Sorry.

Often what we describe as stress isn't being caused by the workload itself. It's being caused by uncertainty. Unclear expectations, mixed messages, inconsistent leadership, poor communication, unresolved conflict. The market is stressful, particularly right now. Real estate is more demanding than ever.

There's ever-changing legislation and compliance, AML, none of this is going to change. But we can influence whether we're adding unnecessary pressure on top of all of these things. And that's where leadership becomes incredibly important. Now, there are 5 critical elements that shape almost every performance environment, not just in real estate, but almost everywhere, and I… they are clarity, capability, consistency, trust, and accountability.

When those 5 things are strong, people tend to perform better, they develop faster, they stay longer, and they experience less unnecessary pressure. And I think that's the critical thing, unnecessary pressure. When those things are weak, performance becomes harder than it needs to be. So let's start with what I believe is one of the biggest mistakes that human beings can make.

The belief that because we've said something, people automatically understand it. Now, if I'm honest, this is something that I've probably been guilty of myself. The myth is, I've told them. Every leader that is listening to this right now has said this at some point.

I've told them, I've explained it, we've had the conversation, they know what's expected. And yet somehow, 6 weeks later, we're having the exact same conversation again. Now, when that happens, most leaders end up reaching a similar conclusion, and it's usually, they weren't listening, they don't care, they're not taking ownership, or they're not interested in accountability. Maybe sometimes that could be true, but there's another possibility that's worth considering.

What if telling someone something and creating clarity aren't the same thing? Because clarity isn't measured by what was said, it's measured by what was understood. And those two things are very different. So, if you think about how often we use language that sounds really clear, but it actually isn't.

Customer service is important, communication is important, taking ownership, being proactive, following up quicker, improving your prospecting, being more accountable. They all sound clear. But if I ask 10 people in your business what those things actually mean, how many different answers would I get? So, let's take customer service for the example.

One person thinks that means returning a call within an hour. Another thinks the same day, another thinks within 24 hours. One person thinks after-hours responses are expected, another thinks business hours are fine. No one is intentionally doing the wrong thing. They're simply operating from different definitions.

And then, when this happens, we wonder why consistency can become difficult. One of the more common frustrations I hear from leaders is, I shouldn't have to keep telling people. And of course, I understand that, but the uncomfortable question is, have you actually told them? Or have you assumed they interpreted it the same way that you did?

Because there's a huge difference. One of the things that came through strongly in the Why report was the experience of people entering the industry. Many described their first one to two years as really challenging, completely overwhelming, and it wasn't because they didn't expect hard work. Most of them expected hard work, of course.

And it wasn't because they lacked ambition, most were highly driven, but it was because they described the environment as unclear, unstructured, and confusing. They didn't know what mattered most, they didn't know what good looked like, and they didn't know whether they were progressing. And when I read that, I found myself thinking, how many leaders genuinely believed that they were providing clarity during that same period? Probably most of them.

Again, intention and experience. The gap. So let's make this practical. Imagine someone starts in your business next Monday. By Friday afternoon, could they answer 4 questions?

What am I responsible for? What does good look like? What does… what matters most, and how will I be measured? Now, this isn't what you would like the answers to be, it's could they actually answer them?

Because if they can't, your environment isn't clear yet. I think one of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming clarity comes from communication, and I'm not actually sure that it does. I think clarity comes from repetition. Leaders often say something once, maybe twice, and then they move on.

But people are trying to absorb information while learning systems, meeting clients, understanding processes, and figuring out where they fit. So clarity isn't a single conversation, it's a series of conversations repeated consistently over time. Now, let's look at this with pressure, because remember, today isn't just about performance, it's about performance and wellbeing, and one of the biggest sources of unnecessary pressure isn't actually workload, it's uncertainty.

If you think about a time in your career when you weren't sure what success looked like, you weren't sure what the priority was, you weren't sure whether you were doing well, you weren't sure what your boss wanted, that is exhausting.

And it's not because the work is hard. It's because uncertainty consumes energy. And when people are constantly trying to work out what matters, they're using energy that could otherwise be directed towards performance. And here's the irony.

Most leaders think clarity is about helping people perform. Now, that's part of it, but it's also one of the simplest ways to reduce unnecessary workplace pressure. Because people can cope with high expectations. What people struggle with is unclear expectations.

So here's a practical challenge for you. Over the next week, choose one person in your business and ask them these four questions. What are you responsible for? What does success look like?

What matters most, and how are you measured? And then compare what they've responded with your own answers. Because I suspect the biggest opportunity isn't sitting inside your intentions, it's sitting inside that gap between your intention and their experience. And that's where the performance environment can begin.

Our second pillar is capability, and this is where I think a lot of leaders unintentionally hold people back, because we often wait for signs that someone's ready. We wait for confidence, we wait for certainty, we wait until someone's comfortable, or until they stop making mistakes.

And on the surface, it does sound reasonable, after all, no one wants to set someone up for failure, but I think there could be a flaw in that thinking, because confidence is often treated as though it's a prerequisite for success, when in reality, I think confidence is usually the result of success, and that's a very different conversation. So one of the findings that stood out most in the Wire report related to confidence.

87% of those that participated were not confident when they started their real estate career. Now, what I find is that's raised a really interesting question. Did confidence create their success? Or did success create their confidence?

Because if confidence comes first, then leaders should wait until people feel ready. But if confidence comes after success, then leaders have a responsibility to create environments where people can succeed before they feel completely ready, and I think that's much closer to the reality. When I look back at my own career. There's probably only a few opportunities that I really felt completely ready for.

And if we're honest, most leadership positions are accepted before people feel fully prepared. Most business owners start before they're completely ready. Most salespeople take their first listing before they feel completely ready. Most PMs manage their first difficult situation before they feel completely ready.

Confidence often arrives after the experience, not before it. And when I think about it, every growth leap in my career happened before I really was confident, but my leader had the confidence in me. But sometimes as leaders, we accidentally create an environment where people believe they need the confidence before they can take the next step. We wait for them to volunteer, we wait for them to put their hand up, we wait for them to ask, or we wait for them to show us that they're ready.

And the problem is that many highly capable people won't actually do that, particularly earlier on in their career. And it's not because they lack ambition, and it's not because they lack ability, it's just because they haven't built the confidence yet. One of the things that really challenged my thinking during the report research was the distinction between confidence and ambition. And I think leaders often mistake personal drive and ambition for confidence.

Someone isn't putting themselves forward, so maybe they don't want it. Or someone isn't speaking up, they mustn't be interested. Someone isn't asking for more responsibility, they mustn't be ambitious. But what if we're confusing confidence with capability?

What if the person sitting quietly in the corner has enormous potential, but they don't yet have the confidence to articulate it? What opportunities are we missing? Because we're looking for confidence rather than capability. And this matters because capability isn't just about skill.

It's also about development. It's support, coaching, exposure, opportunity. Capability grows when people are given the chance to stretch, and not when they're protected from every challenge. Now, I want to be clear, I'm not suggesting we throw people into situations that they're completely unprepared for.

That's not development, that's abandonment, and that's… there's a big difference. Development happens when challenge and support exist together. Too much challenge without support creates stress. Too much support without challenge creates dependency.

Great leaders can find the balance. They stretch people while making sure they don't feel alone. Now, many of you probably know that I work for one of the industry's most respected leaders, Leanne Pilkington, and I was once asked to describe what her leadership style's like. The word that often comes up when I get asked that question is empowering.

If I'm honest, I always struggle with leadership words like empowering, because they sound good, but nobody really knows what that means in practice. So when I think about Leanne's leadership, I have used the example of a life preserver. So every significant growth leap in my career happened probably before I was confident. And every time, it feels a little bit like heading into deeper water, but the difference was I was never left there alone.

That life preserve is always there. If I genuinely need it, she'll throw it away. But most of the time, first, she would ask a different question. Do I actually need it?

Usually, the answer is no. I was uncomfortable, and stretched, and maybe uncertain, but I wasn't drowning, and she knew that I had that capability before I did. And because she knew it, she didn't rescue me from growth, she supported me through it. And looking back, that is probably the best example of leadership development that I can think of.

Support without rescue. Most leaders know how to rescue, but great leaders know when rescuing is actually getting in the way of development. And this is where I think many leaders underestimate their influence. Because capability isn't just something people bring to work.

It's something that can be developed at work. Every conversation, every coaching moment, every opportunity, every piece of feedback, every bit of encouragement, every time someone is trusted with a challenge slightly beyond their comfort zone, those moments compound over time, and that's why leadership matters so much, because capability doesn't appear overnight. It's built gradually, conversation by conversation, opportunity by opportunity, challenge by challenge. And of course, the other reason this matters is that capability has a direct impact on pressure.

So think about how stressful something feels when you don't know how to do it. Think about how that same task will feel 6 months later. The task hasn't changed, but your capability has. Capability reduces uncertainty, it reduces hesitation, it reduces the mental load that's required to perform.

Which means developing capability isn't just good for performance, it's also one of the most effective ways to reduce unnecessary workplace pressure. So here's a question I'd encourage you to think about. Who in your business has more potential than confidence? Who is capable of more than they're currently demonstrating.

Who are you waiting to put their hand up? And what might happen if instead of waiting for confidence, you started creating opportunities for confidence to develop? Because some of the best people in your business may never tell you that they're ready. And leadership is seeing the potential before they do.

So, our third pillar is consistency. And if clarity is about helping people understand what's expected, consistency is about helping people understand what to expect. And I think consistency is one of the most underrated leadership skills. And it's not because it's exciting, and it's not because people talk about it a lot, but it's because it has such a significant impact on both performance and pressure.

So, let me ask you a question. Have you ever worked for someone who was unpredictable? You never quite knew what version of them you were going to get. Some days they were approachable, some days they weren't, some days they were really calm, some days they were really reactive.

Some days they wanted you to take initiative, and other days you had to ask for permission. Some days, something's really important, and the next week, it's all forgotten about. Most people have experienced that at some point, and if you have, you'll probably remember how utterly exhausting it is. And it's not because the person was necessarily bad.

It's because unpredictability creates uncertainty, and uncertainty creates pressure. I think one of the biggest assumptions leaders make is believing that people experience them the same way they experience themselves, but rarely is that actually true. We judge ourselves by our intention, but other people judge us by our behaviour, and those are not always the same thing. A leader might think, I'm passionate.

But the team experiences inconsistency. A leader might think, I'm flexible, but the team experiences changing standards. You know, a leader thinks, I like to move quickly, but the team gets confused. Again, there's a gap.

Intention versus experience. One of the things I often ask leaders is, would your team describe you as predictable? Not boring, but predictable. Would they know how you will respond if they make a mistake?

Do they know how you'll respond if they bring you bad news? Would they know what standards matter most? Would they know where they stand? Because high-performing environments are surprisingly predictable.

People know what's important, they know what good looks like, they know how decisions are made, they know what behaviors are rewarded, and they know what behaviours aren't. And that consistency allows people to focus their energy on performance, rather than interpretation. Think about how much time people spend trying to read the room, trying to work out what matters today, trying to work out whether conversation is going to go well, whether something's important or not, whether standards are actually standards or just suggestions. That is all mental energy, and every bit of energy spent interpreting the environment is energy that isn't being spent on performing.

So, one of the things I see is how leaders then unintentionally create inconsistency through good intentions. So, for example. A leader holds one team member accountable, but then they give the next team member a pass. And it's not because they're playing favourites, it's because they know the circumstances.

They know one person might be having a tough time, and that the other person is usually really reliable. Their intention is kindness. But the team's experience is inconsistent, and now suddenly people then start asking questions. Why is that person being held accountable, and that person isn't?

Why are the standards different? Why does one person get away with things that others don't? Again, it's not bad leadership, but it's potentially an unintended consequence. So this is where I think consistency and trust become really closely connected, because trust isn't built when everything is going well.

Trust is built when people know what to expect when things aren't going well. Can I bring a mistake to you? Can I raise an issue? Can I tell you when something has gone wrong?

Can I disagree with you? Can I ask for help? And if people don't know how you'll respond, they just won't take the risk. And when that happens, problems stay hidden longer than they should.

Now, consider how that impacts pressure. Consistency is one of the simplest ways leaders can reduce unnecessary workplace pressure. People can handle high expectations, they can handle accountability, they can handle difficult conversations. What people struggle with is unpredictability, not knowing what matters, not knowing where they stand, not knowing what response they're going to get.

And that's what creates tension, anxiety, and hesitation. So here's a question I'd encourage you to think about. If I was to go and interview any of your team tomorrow, what words would they use to describe your leadership? Would consistent be one of them?

Would predictable be one? Would fair be one? Because consistency isn't about, you know, striving for perfection. It's about reliability.

It's about creating an environment where people know what to expect. And when people know what to expect, performance becomes much easier. Not because the work changes, but because the environment becomes much easier to navigate. The fourth pillar is trust.

And if I'm honest, I think trust is one of the most misunderstood concepts in leadership. Because when people hear the word trust, they often just default thinking to relationships, getting along, being supportive, being approachable. And while those things matter, I don't think that's actually where trust is built at all. Trust is built in small moments, consistent moments, particularly when things aren't going well.

So think about, in the professional setting, the people that you trust most. Why do you trust them? Is it because they're always nice? Probably not.

Is it because they never challenge you? Definitely not. In many cases, the people we trust most are also the people who are willing to have difficult conversations with us. The difference is that we trust their intent, we trust their consistency, we trust their character, we trust that they're trying to help us rather than harm.

Now, this is a conversation that I actually had, last year. I was at a retreat with some business owners, and one of them made a comment that I think probably a lot of people can relate to, particularly in small business. And she said something along the lines of, I like my team, but at the end of the day, they're employees, they will never care about the business the way that I do because they don't own it. And I remember thinking, I don't agree with that, and I voiced my thoughts on it, and when I think about it in my own role at Laing & Simmons, I don't own the business, but I care deeply about it.

I care about the people, I care about the outcomes, I care about protecting and growing what we've built, and I trust the people around me completely. So, after I sort of shared my feedback and thoughts, Leanne also was part of the conversation, and she said something that I've remembered ever since. She said, “I know without question that Jacqui has my back, and she knows I have hers.” Now, that's not because we always agree, I promise you we don't.

And it's not because accountability doesn't exist, it does. We challenge each other, we can have difficult conversations, and we can hold each other accountable, but underneath all of that is trust. And our whole team is like that. And I think that's a really important distinction, because trust isn't about ownership.

Trust is about commitment. Trust is about knowing that someone will do the right thing, even when you're not the one in the room. So, trust comes down to one simple question. Can people predict your intentions? When something goes wrong, what do they expect from you? When a mistake is made, what do they expect? When performance drops, what do they expect? When bad news arrives, what do they expect? Because if people don't know how you're going to respond, trust becomes really difficult. So, let me give you an example. Imagine a team member makes a mistake. Not a catastrophic one, but a genuine mistake.

Something most people would make at some point. What happens next? Do they bring it to you immediately? Do they spend 3 days hoping nobody notices?

That answer will tell you a lot about the trust in your team, because where trust exists, problems come to the surface very quickly. Where trust doesn't exist, problems often stay hidden until they become much bigger, and therefore costly. So, one of the things I find interesting is when leaders say, my team should come to me, they're right, of course, the team should come to you. But whether they do or not really depends on their previous experience.

If every difficult conversation becomes a negative experience, people learn something. If every mistake is met with frustration, people learn something. If every problem creates blame, people learn something. They may still bring issues forward eventually, but they'll bring them forward later, and later is always more expensive.

This is why I think trust has such a significant impact on performance, because trust speeds everything up. Communication speeds up, problem solving speeds up, feedback speeds up, learning speeds up, decisions speed up. People spend way less time protecting themselves, and more time focusing on the work. Now, I want to challenge another assumption.

I don't think trust means that people always agree. In fact, some of the highest trust teams I've seen disagree regularly. They challenge each other, they debate ideas, they ask difficult questions, and they hold each other accountable. And so, trust isn't the absence of disagreement.

Trust is the confidence that disagreement won't damage the relationship, and that's a very different thing. One of the findings in the Wire report that stayed with me wasn't actually a statistic, it was the experience behind the stats. So the reality is that people often make decisions based on how safe they feel. It's not just physically safe, it's professionally safe, emotionally safe, psychologically safe, for want of a better description.

Do I feel comfortable speaking up? Do I feel comfortable asking questions? Do I feel comfortable admitting I don't know something? Do I feel comfortable challenging an idea?

Because if the answer is no to any of that, people start protecting themselves, and self-protection is rarely good for performance. Look at how trust can affect pressure.

Because trust is one of the most effective pressure reduction tools available to leaders. Not because trust removes challenges, it doesn't.

And it's not because trust removes accountability, and it shouldn't. Trust reduces pressure created by uncertainty. When people trust their leader, they know where they stand, they don't spend time guessing motives, and they don't spend time managing perceptions. They can just focus on the work.

And I think this is where trust becomes a leadership responsibility. Not because leaders are responsible for making everyone happy, that's impossible, but because leaders are responsible for creating environments where people can communicate honestly, where issues can be raised early, and where mistakes can become learning opportunities, and where feedback can happen without fear. So here's the question I'd ask you to consider. If something went wrong in your business tomorrow, who would tell you first, and how quickly would they tell you?

Because I think the answer to that question reveals more about trust than any kind of employee engagement survey ever could. Our final pillar is accountability. I think this is probably the one leaders talk about the most. Almost every performance conversation eventually ends up here.

People aren't accountable. Standards aren't being met, things aren't getting done, expectations aren't being followed. And while accountability, it absolutely matters, I think it's one of the most misunderstood concepts in leadership. Because most people think accountability starts when something starts to go wrong.

I don't think it does. I think it starts much earlier. It starts when expectations are set, it starts when standards are defined, it starts when priorities are made clear, and it starts when success is agreed upon. So, in other words, accountability starts long before performance becomes an actual problem.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is leaders… They assume accountability is something they do to people, and that's not actually true. Accountability is something that exists within an environment. You can't hold people accountable for expectations they don't understand. And you can't hold people accountable for standards you've never clearly defined, or for goals they've never actually agreed to.

Which brings us right back to the beginning. Clarity, consistency, and trust. All of those things influence accountability. This is where a lot of accountability conversations go wrong.

The leader becomes frustrated, performance isn't where they want it to be. The issue has existed for weeks, sometimes months, and eventually the leader sits down to have the conversation. But the conversation isn't really about accountability anymore. It's about accumulated frustration.

The employee's hearing it for the first time. But the leader has been thinking about it for 6 months, and both people leave that conversation frustrated. Now, I want to challenge another assumption. And this is one that came through very strongly in the Wire report.

The assumption is that we always know what good performance looks like. But do we? Or do we sometimes measure what's easiest for us to see? One of the most interesting findings related to business generation.

So, the majority of participants told us that most of their business came from referrals and repeat clients and relationship-based prospecting. Not cold calls, not door knocking, not socials, but relationships. Now, that doesn't mean prospecting isn't important, because it absolutely is, but it does raise an interesting question. If relationships are creating results, are we measuring the things that actually create performance, or are we measuring the things that are easiest to track?

Because what often happens in business is that activity is what's visible. Relationships aren't visible. I can see calls, and I can see appointments, I can see meetings, I can see prospecting numbers, but what I can't always see is trust, reputation, relationship equity and depth, the conversations that happen over years, and referrals that come from exceptional service. the goodwill that somebody's built in their local community.

Those things are really much harder to measure, but they're often the things that create the result. And so that's where accountability becomes a little bit more complicated than, I think, what we realize. Because accountability isn't just asking, did you do the activity? It's considering if we are holding people accountable for the right things by measuring what actually creates success.

Now, before you all panic, I'm not suggesting we throw away KPIs, you know, I'm not suggesting activity doesn't matter. Of course, it absolutely matters. What I'm suggesting is that activity and outcomes aren't always the same thing. And I think as leaders, we need to understand that difference, because when we focus exclusively on visible activity, we can sometimes miss the behaviors that are actually creating long-term performance.

So consider the pressure, because accountability done poorly creates enormous pressure. People feel micromanaged and scrutinized, they feel like they can just never do enough, and people feel like they're being measured on things that don't actually reflect success. So that's not accountability, that's surveillance, and there is a difference. Accountability done well feels very different.

People know what's expected, people know how they're being measured, people know what success looks like, people receive feedback early, they receive support when they need it, they understand the purpose behind all of the measures. That is accountability. And when accountability exists in an environment built on clarity, consistency, and trust, something interesting happens. People stop feeling controlled.

And they start feeling responsible. I think that's one of the biggest shifts that leaders can make, moving from control to responsibility. Because high-performing environments don't rely on constant supervision at all. They rely on ownership.

And ownership grows when people understand what matters and why it matters. So here's the question I'd leave you with. When you think about accountability in your business, what are you actually measuring? And if you removed every KPI tomorrow, would the things that genuinely create success still be happening?

Because great accountability isn't about counting everything, it's about understanding what counts. And that's where performance environments can become truly powerful. Not when people are forced to perform, but when they're enabled to perform. So, today we've explored these five different elements of a performance environment, and at this point, most leaders are probably doing what leaders always do, mentally assessing your business, thinking, yeah, pretty good at that, not great at that, maybe that's an issue, we should work on that one, let's make it practical.

And I want you to score your business out of 5 in each area. Not the business you want, not the business you describe, but the business people actually experience. Would your team describe expectations as clear? Are people genuinely being developed, or are they expected to work it out?

Would your team describe leadership as predictable? Would people bring you bad news quickly? Do people understand what success looks like, and are standards consistently upheld, even when you're not there? Because that's really what this is all about, is that gap.

The gap between leadership intention and employee experience. The gap between what we think we're creating and what people actually experience. And I suspect most businesses don't actually need to improve on all five areas. Most businesses just have one or two that are holding everything else back.

When we started today, I asked you to think about someone who maybe hasn't been performing the way you hoped, someone with potential, or capable of more, or someone who frustrated you, and I wonder whether you're still thinking about that person now. Because perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned through leadership and working with business owners and through the Y report research is this. Performance rarely exists in isolation. It exists inside an environment.

Most leaders do not need to care more. They already care. Most leaders don't need better intentions, they already have great intentions. What many of us need is a better understanding of the environment that we're creating, because whether we realize it or not, every leader creates an environment through what we reward.

Through what we tolerate, through what we celebrate, through what we ignore, through what we make clear, and through what we leave unclear. And so, if you're looking to improve performance and reduce unnecessary pressure, don't start by asking what's wrong with the people. Start by asking, what is it about the environment we've created that is helping people succeed, or making success harder than it needs to be?

Because the highest performing businesses aren't built because every individual is exceptional.

They're built because leaders create environments where ordinary people can consistently do exceptional things. Thank you so much, everyone, for investing the time to be here today. I know it's a tricky time of year with the end of financial year and AML and all of those things, but I really also just wanted to, to touch on the rise up. But I hope today's given you a few ideas, a few questions, and maybe a different way of thinking about performance.

So I'd encourage you to take a look at those 5 areas we… I talked about, and identified where the biggest opportunity might exist in your own business. And if anybody wants, wants any of the scorecards on there, let me know, I can flick them through to you. So the QR code is up there for the Real Care app, and it is something that we at Laing & Simmons, we encourage all of our team members to download and use. an endless resource and incredible tool.

So, thank you again to the RISE team and Kylie for having me today, and for all of you for joining us.

Kylie:

Thank you so much, Jacqui, that was awesome. I love that! I think you've really identified, like, a… a missing piece in that thing around the environment and the role that… because one of the conversations that comes up, I think, or the underlying conversations that comes up around this whole leadership thing is, “Oh my god, do I have to… do I have to personally, physically do more?”

Jacqui:

Oh, we hear it all the time, and you know, I'm guilty of it as well, right?

Kylie:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jacqui:

It's about creating the environment where people can thrive, and I'm a firm believer that great leaders have great businesses, and great businesses have great teams. And it's just one little cycle that just keeps going around.

Kylie:

Yeah, yeah, but I think, too, it also makes it feel a lot more… I think the way that you frame the whole framework that you've got there actually makes it feel a lot really practical as a leader, so it's like, I actually don't have to work on you know, I am a good person with good intentions, and actually… but I don't… and so I don't need to, sort of, try to be or do more there. I actually just have to, you know, clean up the… do some housekeeping, maybe, around the stuff that's going on.

Jacqui:

Usually, it's always the simple stuff. People can cope with big things, it's always the small stuff that breaks.

Kylie:

Yeah, awesome. Awesome, thank you. Well, look, if anyone's got any questions that you want to pop into the chat, please pop them in, right now, but otherwise, I know it is a really busy time of the year. I know everyone's, sort of adopting new tech and trying to get their brains around AML, as well as sort of breathe.

Take a moment to breathe after the end of the financial year. But thank you so much, Jacqui, that was absolutely awesome. And yeah, I really love that framework. It was… that's super helpful. We're gonna incorporate some of that into the RISE lexicon, I reckon.

on the, on the research. So, what we're going to do is after we send out a copy of this, of the video to everybody, we'll also put a link in so that you can download the fabulous, wire research that Jacqui did as well. Thank you. Awesome.

So, thank you again to our partners, MRI Software, for making our wellness webinars possible. I hope everyone has an awesome day. Remember, you've all just come through a really big sprint, so, get that stuff just tied up with a bow, and then a little bit of self-care time is probably what everyone deserves, so thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate you coming along. Thanks, Jacqui.

Jacqui:

Thanks, Kylie!