Drive People Crazy with Impossibly High Standards

“When you low­er the def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess to such a lev­el that any per­son can reach it, you don’t teach peo­ple to have big dreams; instead you inspir­it medi­oc­rity and nur­ture people’s inad­e­qua­cies.” — Shan­non Lee, mar­tial artist/​daughter of Bruce Lee

Recent­ly, I had the great for­tune to kick off a lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gram for one of my client com­pa­nies. We start­ed by talk­ing about the dis­tinc­tion between lead­ers and man­agers and I asked them to think about a leader who’d had a mas­sive impact on their growth.

As they talked about their exam­ples, all those lead­ers had belief in them, had pushed and chal­lenged them, made time for them, lis­tened to and sup­port­ed them and, in the end, made them bet­ter and stronger.

But one par­tic­i­pant had an exam­ple that real­ly struck a chord, with the group, when he described how his old­er broth­er made the great­est impact, ear­li­er in this life. He had led by exam­ple and set expec­ta­tions for him that were incred­i­bly high — very tough for him to achieve — and reg­u­lar­ly called him out when he didn’t live up to them. You could see in his eyes that the expe­ri­ence wasn’t always pleas­ant or appre­ci­at­ed, but it had real­ly lift­ed him to a much high­er lev­el of per­for­mance and achievement.

While this is one of the most pow­er­ful things that great lead­ers do, many aren’t able to mas­ter this skill because hold­ing peo­ple to an impos­si­bly high stan­dard — and call­ing them out when they don’t reach it — cre­ates a lot of ten­sion and frus­tra­tion and emo­tion. Most peo­ple find that excep­tion­al­ly difficult.

But it’s that kind of ten­sion that forces and helps peo­ple to real­ly grow – espe­cial­ly when they know you believe in them and sup­port them. The key is stay­ing true to those high stan­dards and con­stant­ly try­ing to push peo­ple to achieve for themselves.

I talk about this a lot in my book in Chap­ter 13 — Teach Peo­ple to Meet Your Stan­dards — but I love the twist that not only man­agers and co-work­ers can hold peo­ple to this very high bar — it can, like this exam­ple, be a fam­i­ly member.

In anoth­er recent meet­ing with a client, I saw one of the CEO’s direct reports almost dou­ble their per­for­mance in a six-month peri­od — and I have to say I was hum­bled and awed. This exec­u­tive had been work­ing there for about three years and doing a good job, but with the addi­tion of set­ting crys­tal-clear goals and 360 feed­back every six months, the per­son rose to the chal­lenge, and the results were unbelievable!

As a leader you owe it to peo­ple to set the bar high, with tan­gi­ble goals and feed­back (the most pow­er­ful feed­back isn’t always just from you) — to give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to step up to what’s pos­si­ble for them — and treat them like they can. You nev­er know who’s going to rise up, until you try.

The Chal­lenge

1. Think about peo­ple in your life: Who are you not hold­ing to a high-enough stan­dard when you know there’s a chance they can do it?
2. In what area are you not hold­ing your­self up to a high­er stan­dard, and who might help you to get there?