Two Qualities Every High Performer Should Have

As I get older and progress through my career, I find that there are two qualities that all high performers exhibit on a daily basis. Before I dive in, think about someone at your current or previous job that you admired or was the “go-to individual” to accomplish a task. I can almost guarantee you that they had two very important qualities. Those qualities are Accountability and the Ability to Execute.

Accountability is to be responsible for something while being fully able to justify any actions or decisions made. The ability to execute is to see something through to completion. 

These qualities individually are important, but will not make a high performer if you only exhibit one of the two. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples below to showcase this:

Someone that is accountable, but does not execute, will be the kind of person that will be able to push things to 80% completion but often gets stuck in a “rabbit hole” as they try and chase down every outlier to come to a complete answer. They tend to stumble through the last 20% because they have no sense of materiality or decision-making ability. At some point, decisions need to be made on the final product and often, perfection ends up being the enemy of progress in this case. This leads to deliverables that are often late and incomplete.

Someone who can execute, but is not accountable, is so focused on getting the project done, that they will often forego the appropriate due diligence to ensure the deliverable is not just done, but done right. This leads to deliverables that require rework or have inaccurate results.

The perfect balance is when someone is both accountable and able to execute. Qualities of high performers include:

• Asking the hard questions knowing that it might cause additional work.

• Not accepting something as is, or as it’s been done before. Fully understanding what is asked of them and providing their insight on how to make the process better.

• Continuing to track down the appropriate parties needed to see something through to completion.

• Reviewing their work to ensure that rework or inaccurate results are held at a minimum.

The good news is that these qualities are not genetic! It takes patience and practice. You can learn to become more accountable by:

• Trying to anticipate what the end deliverable will look like from the perspective of the recipient. If the recipient is your manager, try and design a spreadsheet that’s easy to follow and doesn’t require a computer science degree to navigate.

• Challenging the status quo. Don’t do something just because it’s the way it’s been done, that’s never the right answer. Recognize the intention of the deliverable and think about ways you can improve it throughout the process.

You can also learn to improve your execution skills by:

• By staying organized and focused. A to-do list, Gantt chart or flow chart can be helpful to ensure that everything is moving along. 

• Understanding the dependencies of some tasks will ensure that you continue to track down tasks that are holding up other tasks, ensuring you’re meeting a deadline. 

• Setting realistic expectations and pushing back when unrealistic expectations are set on you.  An example of this is understanding what your current priorities are. If your manager is constantly throwing things at you, a reasonable question to ask them is something like, “You’ve given me these three tasks, to ensure that I meet your standards, how would you prioritize these tasks?”  I might even take it one step further and prioritize them and ask if they agree.

At the end of the day, we’re human, but knowing how to harness and leverage these two qualities will continue to set you apart from the rest.

What do you think of these qualities? Do you have another key quality you would add? Tell me below!