any more. They hold back. They’re too worried ’bout something bad might happen, or they’re in too much of a hurry. Or they think they have too many answers already and they’re not curious anymore, so they miss their big chance. Every time you’re with a person, you’ve got a big chance. I say, don’t miss it. Don’t worry about putting out the fire before you strike the match. I always strike the match. I want to find that spark in a person, you get what I mean?”
“I sure do. But how do you do it?” I asked, knowing that this was the crux of my book. Maybe Dr. Shine could sum it up for me. And he did.
“Just keep fishin’. I only get a few minutes, you know, so I gotta get right to it. Everybody’s got that spark in them, somewhere.”
Dr. Shine, you are so right, I said to myself. Everybody’s got it in them somewhere. But far from everybody finds their spark and makes the most of what they’ve got. How come? That’s what this book is about: helping managers help people find their spark and make the most out of what they’ve got.
“What about the grumpy people you meet?” I asked. “What about the people who don’t even see you as a person? Working here, you must get a lot of those.”
“Oh, sure, but I understand them. You gotta remember, everybody has their bad days. I never know what somebody who sits up there is up against, what problems they got, what’s working on them. So I treat them good, no matter how they treat me. If you don’t like people, you better not be shining shoes. I have multiple sclerosis, and my doctor says I better get ready to slow down, but I tell him my work is my best therapy. I love what I do, and my customers need me.”
“You have MS? How do you keep doing this?” I asked.
“I talk to you!” Dr. Shine replied. “When someone is sitting up in that chair, all I think about is what he needs and that gives me my energy. If I can’t forget about me and think about you, then I have no business shining shoes.”
“You’re pretty amazing. Where does your drive come from?” I asked.
“From people. I love to find that spark. That’s it.” A little time passed in silence while I watched Dr. Shine tend to my shoes with the sort of devotion you always see in people who care about what they do. “And you know what? People want what I do. They come from different terminals all over this place just to get a shine from me! I’m known all over Logan Airport.”
“Do you work for yourself?” I asked.
“I work for you!” he immediately replied.
Like Dr. Shine, great managers serve others; they develop the shine in their people. I marveled at Dr. Shine. Here was a man with MS, working at Logan Airport, who embodied what I’ve discovered are the most critical elements that lead to achievement at the highest levels, no matter what the endeavor. In fact, without knowing it, Dr. Shine implemented a five-step process for managing high performance that I have come to call the Cycle of Excellence. It is a process managers everywhere can use.
Finding the Shine: Five Steps to Igniting
Peak Performance
Life has changed radically from a generation ago. A manager’s job is getting harder and harder to do. Some experts even say that managers are becoming obsolete, while others say managers are more important than ever.1. Whatever the truth may be, the fact remains that managers work hard in pressure-packed, confusing, unsettled times.
The central question for all managers is how to draw the most from their talent. What do you do when your most talented people fall short of their full potential, or worse, fall off their game altogether? How do you find the spark that Dr. Shine always looked for?
Finding the shine in someone, helping all your people perform at their highest levels, isn’t rocket science. It’s actually more complex, mysterious, and important than rocket science. It’s brain science, but it has yet to be codified into a simple and reliable process that all managers can use. In this book, I formulate such a code, the Cycle of Excellence. It is a process that I have created and honed over the past twenty-five years as a doctor, practicing psychiatrist, author, consultant, and instructor at the Harvard Medical School. Much as Daniel Goleman used brain science over a decade ago to shed light on emotional intelligence and show the business world how critical that is to success, I similarly draw upon brain science to explain peak performance and provide managers with a practical plan to bring the best from the people who work for them.
Rather than touting a single key idea for peak performance, the process I describe here incorporates many ideas while drawing upon the latest research from diverse disciplines. The five steps in the Cycle of Excellence, and what they will teach you, are as follows:
1. Select: How to put people into the right jobs so that their brains light up
2. Connect: How to overcome the potent forces that disconnect people in the workplace both from each other and from the mission of the organization, and how to restore the force of positive connection which is the most powerful fuel for peak performance
3. Play: Why play—imaginative engagement—catalyzes advanced work, and how managers can help people tap into this phenomenally productive yet undervalued activity of the mind
4. Grapple and grow: How managers can create conditions where people want to work hard, and why making progress at a task that is challenging and important turns ordinary performers into superstars
5. Shine: Why doing well—shining—feels so good, why giving recognition and noticing when a person shines is so critical, and why a culture that helps people shine inevitably becomes a culture of self-perpetuating excellence
Each step is critical in its own right and translates into actions a manager or worker can do and do now. Each step builds upon the other. The most common mistake managers make is to jump in at step 4 and ask people to work harder, without first having created the conditions that will lead workers to want to work harder. There is no point in challenging employees to exceed their personal best if they haven’t first been placed in the right job, found a safe and connected atmosphere within which to work, and been given a chance to imaginatively engage and contribute to the design of the task. But if you follow the steps you can create the conditions that will lead to hard work and peak performance.
This plan works because it brings together the empirical evidence on peak performance into one integrated series of steps—that create the ideal conditions, the perfect tension in the violin string, for managers to propel their people to excellence.
The Evolution of This Plan
While the Cycle of Excellence is based on the latest neuroscience, it has deep roots. It has evolved in my mind over 30 years during my practice as a psychiatrist. I developed the bare bones of the plan when I was a resident in training three decades ago to help my patients who were underachieving. I knew these individuals were talented, but they were unable to work at their full potentials. Some had the trait we now call attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), while others struggled for different reasons. But they all shared the problem of not making the most of their talents.
Their managers assumed that they simply were not trying hard enough. But I could see sometimes they simply were in the wrong job. That’s when I began to understand the practical importance of selection in achieving peak performance. In other cases, I could see they were shutting down because of a toxic culture in the workplace. That’s when I grasped the importance of positive connection as a key to peak performance. In still other cases, my patients’ talents were being wasted because managers were not challenging them or asking them to use their creative talents. Time after time, I saw that what appeared to be a failure to work hard enough actually grew from a frustrated desire to work hard. That’s when I concluded that almost everyone wants to work hard, if they see they can succeed and grow.
I learned that all people want to work hard and