More Answers... (07.06.26): Pacing Your Performance

Hi Everyone, 

Here are More Answers... to help you head into the work week. Remember, you can see previous newsletters at askchrista.com/MoreAnswers.

Today's topic: pacing your performance

Whether you're an overachiever, a "perfectly fine" achiever, or a "maybe tomorrow" achiever, I urge you to think about your performance as an action rather than a descriptor of how you do your work.

Here's what I mean.

Performance In a Team Is About Delivery

Over the last 30 years, we've created all kinds of descriptions for qualifying and quantifying people workplace performance, and it's almost always an adjective, an adverb, or plain-old description of doing really good work: "She's a high achiever." "He's a solid performer." "That team delivers."

Oooooh, I like that last one. The first two? Meh. Tired phrases, not a lot attached to what it actually means to perform, which is what you do to contribute your best to a team and deliver results as a team.

There's so much emphasis placed on the individual, and rightly so: the individual gets the paycheck, the individual delivers + or - in a team, and the individual knows (or not) what they can offer to the team each day, so I'm NOT knocking the value of measuring performance and talking about recognition and promotion at the individual level. After all, we've been in situations where we're the one (the individual) doing the work as the team gets the credit, and that's no fun.

But when you focus on the delivery of a team, while still recognizing individual contributions that require a review (both for fair compensation practices and appropriate talent mix regarding how resources are used and leveraged), you offer the team as a collection of individuals to think about their pace in a new way.

Of course, you then have to talk to them about how to be strategic about their pace, and not all teams are capable of or mature enough to understand what “pace” means in a team environment. For this post, I’m talking about identifying and then communicating and planning for what you can give each day: what your “best” looks like every day.

The Pace of Delivery Must Match the Team’s Ability to Deliver

There are two major dynamics in a team: the team and the individuals that make up a team. I’ll spare everyone the deep research on what it takes to have high functioning, high performing teams (beyond the easy answer of trust, respect, alignment toward a goal, knowledge of resources and constraints…), but FOR SURE, the real place to start in my expertise and practice and before you even think about trust and respect is understanding how the team as individuals think about being in a team of individuals (vs working on their own).

The pace of a team is faster than the pace of an individual when there is alignment and a well-designed operation. Think of the best quick-food restaurant you’ve ever experienced: 

• It’s properly resourced. 
• Everyone’s humming. 
• There are multiple people doing specific and discreet jobs, often with only 1-2 tasks for that job. 
• They all understand what they have to do, the tools to get it done, and what their goals are. 

One of the most impressive quick-food operation I’ve observed is Chick-fil-A's drive through, and if anyone has a teenager and a Chick-fil-A nearby, you know what I'm talking about (and maybe the one I went to is different, but... I doubt it):

• Two drive through lanes, but it's not just about doubling-up the ordering pace (like some restaurants do...). There were ALSO four people taking orders with tablets, all outside able to walk up to the next car. 
• Their tablets take the payment also; no additional place to pay.
• You pull up to the window to get your order, surprisingly ready when you arrive OR if they’re very busy, they have runners bringing your order to you. as soon as your order is done while everyone else gets THEIR order as it's done.
• They know your car and your name. 

(and that’s just the mechanics of the operation; they all ALSO do this in an incredibly polite, calm, easy, super-respectful way, with a smile on their face.)

There’s so much right with this operation (shout out to Chick-fil-A in Woburn, MA!).

But also: the way they work isn’t by accident, and the way their customers experience the drive through—so COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than ANY OTHER DRIVE THROUGH—also isn’t by accident. That's the result of various operational studies that led to important decisions with a commitment to customer service and operational excellence... and all those studies included what it takes for their employees to thrive in what is otherwise an hourly (and elsewise minimum wage) job. 

I love me a good business case, and Chick-Fil-A's drive through sets the bar for pacing work alongside high performers. The two dynamics of team and individual are covered AND the pace matches what’s needed for customers to have a great experience. Not once did I see one employee taking care of way more work than they should’ve been managing. Not once did I see an operation that was overcome by orders and unprepared to keep the pace going. Not once did I see or experience a major issue with quality.

The pace of expected delivery was matched to who did the delivery and how.

When the Pace of Delivery Falls on the High Performers

But in an office environment, and certainly in other quick-food and retail environments, the pace of delivery often falls to and on the shoulders of the high performers: the ones who are conscientious and want the customer to get what they paid for in all the best ways, the one who doesn’t want to feel they didn’t do their best that day, the one who can’t see a team mate fail because of lower skills or an inability to keep up.

(OK, yes, sometimes the high performers are also the ones keeping an eye on a promotion, ready to leave the team behind at the first chance so they can upgrade their work, but in the end, it’s the same: the high performer will carry the team, even when it means the high performer sets and keeps the pace going)

But if you work in a mediocre environment (and let’s face it, many do), I want you to reevaluate your pace—not the quality of your work or whether you will do your best each day—just the pace.

If you go faster, does that make your output better? (not more, but better) If you slow down, will that hurt the quality of your output? (not less of output, but the quality)

Many times performance is conflated with pace, and those two aren’t tied together. However, many people conflate the two: they think that going faster means your performance is higher, and that’s just not true. You may produce more, but that doesn’t mean your performance is better (Meijman & Mulder, 1998).

In fact, many times if you’re producing more and your resources aren’t leveled to produce more, your performance will decline, often quicker than we’d want. This is either from burn out or simply by the fact that producing more at a higher pace typically means lower performance Research on sustainable performance has found that as workload outpaces an individual's capacity to recover, productivity, decision quality, and engagement begin to deteriorate despite greater effort (Spreitzer & Porath, 2012; Maslach & Leiter, 2016).

So Pace Your Performance

So pace your performance. Research consistently shows that sustained high workloads without adequate recovery eventually reduce productivity, increase errors, and contribute to burnout, all of which undermine the very performance people are trying to preserve (Spreitzer & Porath, 2012; Maslach & Leiter, 2016).

And so, I want to provide a permission structure for all you high achievers out there—all you who believe your performance is your identity (instead of one of many descriptors)—that you will do better, and likely feel better and produce better, if you pace your performance.

Booster for the Week!

No booster this week; I just offered a dense post, so I'll spare you :)

With kindness,

Christa

(Helpful? Interesting? Please feel free to forward and invite others to subscribe at askchrista.com/newsletter.)

References

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Burnout. In G. Fink (Ed.), Stress: Concepts, cognition, emotion, and behavior (pp. 351-357). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800951-2.00044-3

Meijman, T. F., & Mulder, G. (1998). Psychological aspects of workload. In P. J. D. Drenth, H. Thierry, & C. J. de Wolff (Eds.), Handbook of Work and Organizational Psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 5–33). Psychology Press.

Spreitzer, G. M., & Porath, C. (2012). Creating sustainable performance. Harvard Business Review, 90(1-2), 92-99.

(remember: most public libraries in the USA offer access to academic papers; however, if yours does not, then Google these papers or chapters to see where they are listed, how you can learn more about them, and how you can find similar papers to learn more about this topic)