Today Robert has left his office early, for home since he received his promotion letter for the position of Sales Director in his company. As per the letter he is requested to resume his duty within next one week. It is an extremely emotional moment for him, a new dream, new challenge and altogether new role. He would like to celebrate this achievement with all his family members today

 

Robert comes from an extremely poor and most backward family. In his villages even today there are no electricity, no drinking water and no transport facilities. One will have to walk at least 7-8 kilometer to reach his village. Robert happens to be the first person to complete secondary and college education from his community. Right from his childhood, he has struggled a lot for survival due to the sheer poverty. Despite that he came forward, completed his primary education from his neighboring village and then came to the city for livelihood. During this period, despite earning his livelihood as an office boy in a small company, he also pursued his graduate degree in a part time college. After graduation, he applied for the position of Sales Executive in many companies but he failed to receive any positive response for a long period of time. It was during this period, he approached his current employer for a job. This company was about to start its operation at that point of time. However due to the sheer interest showed by Robert, company had decided to offer him a job on purely probation basis. Robert happened to be the lowest paid  employee at that point of time. But he was satisfied enough. He was looking for a platform in order to demonstrate his capabilities and that he has received with this job in hand.

 

During last seven years, Robert has single handedly transformed this company into a two billion dollar international FMCG player right from the scratch with market leadership position in its product segment. He started his career in this company as a trainee sales executive, subsequently took over the responsibility of Sales officer, Area Sales Manager, Regional Sales Manager, Zonal Manager-Sales and today he received the promotion letter for Sales Director. With this promotion, Robert will be responsible for driving the entire Sales function of the company with the help of 350 member Sales force, across the country. During last seven years, Robert always surpassed the expectation of his superior, set toughest goal for him and his team, remained a consistent breakthrough performer, a Role Model and the biggest threat to the companies competitors. For the company he remained instrumental in aggressively opening new market, launching new products across the market, developed countrywide network of distributors, established and developed international best practices and most importantly developed and led a highly motivated Sales Team across the country. Today every individual in the company considers Robert as the Role Model. 

 

How and why Robert came to this level? Robert believes that, if there is one trait that virtually all-effective breakthrough performer have, it is motivation. They are driven to break the boundary of expectations – their own and everyone else’s.  The key word here is breakthrough performance. Today he comes across with plenty of people who are stimulated by external factors such as a big salary of the status that comes from having an impressive title or being part of a high profile company. By contrast, those with breakthrough potential is stimulated by a deeply embedded desire to perform for the sake of performance.

 

Few months back, in one of the social get together, an industry colleague asked Robert, if you are looking for high performer, how can you identify people who are stimulated by the drive to perform rather than by ext

ernal rewards? Robert replied, the first sign is a un-compromised passion for the work itself – such people seek out breakthrough challenges, love to learn, and take great pleasure and pride in a job well done. They also display an unflagging energy to demonstrate breakthrough performance. Employees with such energy often seem restless with the status quo. They are persistent with their questions about why things are done one way rather than another; they are anxious to explore new approaches to their job.

 

According to him there are two other factors responsible for breakthrough performers. They are forever raising the performance parameters, and they like to achieve the same. Take the performance parameter first. During performance appraisal, employee with high levels of achievement may asks to be stretched by their superiors. Of course, an employee who combines self-awareness with internal stimulation will recognize their limits but they will not settle for objectives that seem too easy to fulfill. And it follows naturally that employees who are driven to do better also want a way of tracking progress-their own, their teams and their companies. Whereas employees with low performance stimulation are often fuzzy about results. Those with high performance stimulation often keep score by tracking such hard measures as profitability or market share. Interestingly, employees with high stimulation remains optimistic even when the score is against them. In such cases, self-regulation combines with self-stimulation to overcome the frustration and depression that come after a setback or failure. If I promise to reward my Sales Manager financially or if I threaten to fire him should it fall, he will certainly be motivated to find solution. But this sort of motivation “makes” the Sales Manager does his job to get something desirable or avoids something painful.

 

He farther added that, the most common motivator manager’s use is money, which doesn’t necessarily stop employees from being innovative. But in many situations, it doesn’t help either, especially when it leads employees to think that they are being bribed or controlled. More importantly, money by itself doesn’t make employees passionate about their work. A cash reward cannot magically prompt employee to find their work interesting if in their hearts they feel it is dull. But passion and interest- an employee’s internal desire to do something are what inherent stimulation is all about. For instance, my Sales Manager would be inherently stimulated if his work on the specified project is made exciting through which he develops a personal sense of challenge, or a drive to crack a problem that no one else has been able to solve. When people are inherently stimulated, they engage in their work for the challenge and enjoyment of it. The work itself is challenging. Employees will be most innovative when they feel stimulated primarily be the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work-and not by external pressures.

 

According to Robert, executives trying to recognize high levels of performance in their employees can also look for few more factors: Commitment to the company. When employee love their assignment for the work itself, they often feel committed to the company that make that job possible. Committed employees are likely to stay with a company even when they are pursued by headhunters waving money. It’s not difficult to understand how and why a motivation to achieve translates into strong performance. If you set the performance bar high for yourself, you will do the same for the company when you are in a position to do so. Likewise, a drive to surpass goals and an interest in keeping score can be contagious. Employees  with these traits can often build a team of managers around them with the same traits. And of course, optimism and organizational commitments are fundamental to breakthrough performance – just try to imagine running a company without them.

 

Seven years back, who could imagine that an office boy of a small company will emerge out as Sales Director of a most prestigious international FMCG Company. Robert believes that today thousands of underprivileged poor children consider him as their Role Model. It is in this context he increasingly realizes that, he must be in a position to create thousands of Robert in tomorrow’s marketplace and if that happens, his dream will be fulfilled. For that he has to demonstrate right leadership to the right people at the right time.