Leading Performance Facilitation
There are three habits people with leadership titles need. This is doubly true if their success involves creating transformative services and solutions. I regularly coach these innovation leadership habits during my client projects because I have to. Because without them, the new thing we are creating together will not survive and thrive.
When I say people with leadership titles, I mean performance facilitators like the president, team lead, vice president, director, etc. They are charged with achieving big goals, meeting challenging metrics, and, sometimes, orchestrating action pursuant to a strategy. To succeed, they must facilitate the performance of the talented people fueling everything.
To facilitate transformative performance, three kinds of connections must exist. Here are the three habits that build those connections.
Three Habits
20 X 4 X 12 — Know the people your performance facilitation serves — employees, contractors, partners, and volunteers. Find 20 minutes to spend chatting with one of the people you serve. You could drop into an office, go for a walk, do a zoom call outside, have a phone call from your treadmill, etc. Script: “How are you doing? What are you working on these days?” Then spend 85% of the time listening and asking them to tell you more. At the end, ask if there’s anything you can do to support their work. Then, say this, “Thank you.” Do this 4 times every month.
The quality of exchange relationships between leaders and team members significantly predicts job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and reduced turnover intentions (Banks et al., 2014). When supervisors invest in high-quality relationships with employees rather than focusing solely on bottom-line outcomes, employees demonstrate significantly higher performance (Quade et al., 2019).
Thank You X Infinity — Thank people for everything. I can’t believe I’m typing this. Just say thank you. Thank people more than once. It costs you nothing. Every thank you adds to a person’s sense of belonging and feeling that their work matters. Script: “Thank you for [thing they did]. It really [why it mattered].” If it’s true, add: “The way you [aspect of what they did] meant a lot to me.” Who did you forget to thank this week? It’s rarely too late to say thank you.
Fehr and colleagues’ (2017) multilevel model of gratitude in organizations, published in the Academy of Management Review, establishes that workplace gratitude operates at individual, dyadic, and collective levels to enhance prosocial behavior, strengthen relationships, and build organizational social capital. Received gratitude directly increases employees’ autonomous motivation through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Nicuță et al., 2023). A study of 25,285 employees found that recognition significantly boosts employee engagement (Jo & Shin, 2025). Team-based recognition—consisting simply of thank-you cards and token gifts—positively mediated the relationship between recognition and employee effort through engagement (Presslee et al., 2023). Additionally, peer recognition systems have been shown to satisfy employees’ need for appreciation and enhance both engagement and retention (Rusin & Szandała, 2024).
Change X Shelter — Protect your people. Protect people when there is too much work. Protect them when life happens. Protect them when they choose to leave. Protect them when you ask them to leave. Protect them when you struggle to lead and when you fail. Protect them when they take on the risk and change excellence requires. Make your protection visible and public. Strive for a world where none of the people you serve can honestly say you didn’t have their back.
Edmondson’s (1999) foundational research on psychological safety—now cited over 9,000 times—demonstrates that team psychological safety, defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, is essential for learning behavior and performance in work teams. Her subsequent book The Fearless Organization (Edmondson, 2018) synthesizes two decades of research showing that when leaders create environments where people feel safe to take interpersonal risks, innovation and learning flourish. Recent empirical work confirms these findings: Jin and Peng (2024) demonstrated that team psychological safety significantly enhances employee innovative performance through improved communication behaviors.
Three Habits = Three Human Connections
20 X 4 X 12 = My excellence is valuable here.
Thank You X Infinity = I’m part of something where my excellence matters.
Change + Shelter = We take care of each other. This is a place where I can experiment in pursuit of deeper excellence.
The weaker these connections are, the harder it is for organizations to create the new and transformative while delivering consistent excellent performance.
During my client engagements, when these connections are weak, I invite people with leadership titles into these three innovation leadership habits, and I build the three habits into the workshops and interactions I create. But all I can do is create space for, and receptiveness to, the innovation leadership habits. People who were given leadership titles must choose, every day, to act, create and decide in ways that earn everything that flows into the word “leader.”
Resources
Explore more on leadership and design thinking from the Design Thinking 101 Podcast:
- UX + Navigating Rough Design Waters + Design Leadership with Dennis Lenard — DT101 E82 – Building strong teams and creating safe spaces for working through difficult moments
- Humble Design Leadership with Aleksandra Melnikova — DT101 E33 – Fostering a culture of not being afraid to ask questions
- Design Thinking + Learning Science with Adam Royalty — DT101 E18 – Connecting design thinking to change management and change leadership
