What do business transformation teams and sports teams have in common? They are more alike than we think. Both teams working toward a common goal and under huge pressure to deliver strong results within tight timeframes can face intense scrutiny when things go wrong, and have their success measured against a defined set of metrics. Both teams’ performance can be highly influenced by emotions.
We’ve all seen instances in sports when emotions have positively and negatively impacted team performance. In the context of transformation programs, the same principles apply. I know from my own experience that leaders of transformations who make their teams feel confident and empowered perform better than those where feelings of anger, anxiety, and frustration exist.
So, how can leaders read and understand people’s emotions to help deliver a successful transformation?
Until recently, leaders have typically been measured on—and have therefore heavily focused on—conventional key performance indicators (KPIs) and scorecards. As a result, human emotions, and dynamics have tended to go overlooked.
Research conducted by the EY organization and Saïd Business School, at the University of Oxford, found that three-quarters of leaders and workers believe that emotional support is often missed during planning and executing a major transformation. Additionally, 72% of leaders admit they find it difficult to spot warning signals. This is often due to the pressure to “get to green” and leaders trusting that their people feel safer to speak up than they are. For example, the research found that nearly a third (32%) of transformation team members were concerned that they would not be taken seriously if they flagged an issue to leadership.
Significantly, the research also found that in 96% of all transformation programs, there is a critical turning point where the transformation already has or is about to go off course, and leadership needs to intervene. Most turning points (75%) occur early in a program, during planning or the initial implementation phase. The research highlighted that human behavior can be a predictive marker that all is not well with a team’s emotions before KPIs start to slip. For example, a change in energy—such as a quieter team or a slowing in forward momentum—can indicate that an issue is on the horizon.
As leaders, we must be able to pick up on the warning signs to detect early issues with a transformation. Paying closer attention to how your people act and feel is the best way to spot the early signs that something’s amiss, long before the numbers give anything away.
The case for key behavioral indicators
An over-reliance on KPIs is not helpful to transformation leaders who need to predict or respond to a critical moment or turning point as it happens. While KPIs are important, they are lag indicators. In other words, they only indicate problems with a program after these issues have already occurred. Since transformations are dynamic, real-time events, KPIs can only ever show a snapshot or part of the picture of what’s really been happening on the ground.
This is where key behavioral indicators (KBIs) become so important. KBIs relate to emotional and behavioral competencies in communication, creativity, flexibility, problem-solving, teamwork, and time management. As forward-looking, predictive indicators, they can help leaders develop a good understanding of their transformation teams’ behavior and emotional energy so that they can intervene in the right way, at the right moment, to manage issues that could potentially precipitate turning points.
The subjective and variable nature of KBIs makes them harder to monitor than KPIs, however, and most transformations are not set up to capture them. Often the only way that leaders can capture KBIs is by actively listening to their teams (in meetings and workshops) and spending time talking with people.
It is also worth noting that positive behaviors and emotions within a team don’t just “happen.” Instead, it is the leader’s job to bring them about through the six key drivers for a successful transformation program. These drivers are a purposeful vision, supported by the right technologies to bring the transformation program to life; an adaptive leadership style where the leader focuses on psychological safety; freedom to experiment (within guardrails); and collaboration that fosters new ways of working, taking into account the leader’s leadership style and limitations.
The research found that leaders who understood human behaviors and emotions, prioritizing people over dashboards, were better able to predict the changes needed to keep a transformation program on track compared with those who didn’t. Notably, the research also highlighted that by taking a people-focused approach, leaders could achieve a 12-fold increase in the value of their transformations.
The power of people
Successful transformation comes down to people—not budgets, milestones, or processes. You are only as good as the people around you. Transformation leaders must recognize the extent to which human emotions and behaviors drive results. I encourage them to acknowledge the importance of emotion in transformation, listen carefully to their people, and act in ways that sustain energy levels. By taking this approach, they will be able to channel the emotional energy of their team to effectively navigate turning points and deliver a successful transformation.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.