The four quadrants of behavioural standards – why ‘multipliers’ are the staff you need to attract and retain to create a high-performance company culture   

We need to be very clear about the behavioural standards we expect of everyone.  These behaviours form the DNA of your organization. They define what you expect everyone to do and how you expect them to do it.   

Think you’ve done this already?  Perhaps you have your values statements on the walls, mugs and lanyards.  That’s not going to do it.  For example, if one of your values is dedicated/committed/caring/etc. – great aspiration, but it doesn’t tell people what you how you need them to operate on a minute-by-minute basis so that the organization can truly describe itself as “dedicated.”  Or perhaps you have a hefty competency model that describes leadership skills and might even be broken down into the variances of these skills depending on what grade you are.  This isn’t going to do it either.  Because either a) they’re generic and don’t describe the specific behaviours needed in this specific organization at this specific point in time; and or b) they’re so complicated that no one reads them.   

The behavioural standards I’m talking about are those that describe how you expect people to perform in addition to the job description that tells them what to do.  It’s critical to recognize that by focussing on the ability to do the job you were hired to do, as well as the behaviours (how you go about doing it), you should be seeking to achieve the multiplier effect. 

Bottom-left quadrant: Dead Loss 

How would your people describe what it’s like to work with or for someone in the bottom-left quadrant? I imagine they’d say that it’s irritating, frustrating, makes their life harder, etc. And if they were to ask themselves what impact this person has on the performance of the organization, they’d be forced to conclude that, in a word, it’s ‘negative’. They don’t do their job properly and they get in the way of others doing their job properly. And if this is their boss, they and others in the team are probably having to do their job for them.  

Bottom-right quadrant: Cheerleaders 

What’s it like for your people to work with or for Cheerleaders? They might thoroughly enjoy their company but ultimately, the Cheerleaders are not performing. If your people work for them, they might think these people are great at first (particularly if they’ve just replaced someone who was horrible) but it won’t take long before they realize that because their task skills aren’t up to scratch, they can’t set direction, can’t challenge them, can’t answer their questions. They can’t learn from them, and they can’t create an aligned, cohesive, purposeful team. So, if you asked your people to describe the ultimate impact of Cheerleaders on performance, they’d have to say that at first it might be positive and then it will drift through neutral but end up being negative. 

Top-left quadrant: Brilliant Jerk 

This is the tricky one. Because you could argue that, because of their great technical skills, they’re actually adding something to the organization. Yes, they might add something… at first. But I believe – in fact, I know – that this is a short-term thing. It doesn’t take long for the impact of these people’s poor behaviour to start impacting other people’s ability to do their job. 

To what extent would your people tolerate Brilliant (or even ‘pretty good’) Jerks working in your organization if it were a privately owned business and they were the private owner?  I argue vociferously that no organization can tolerate the impact of these people on others’ performance. They might be very good at what they do, but a) they get in the way of others’ doing their job, and b) they’d do a significantly better job if they could forge strong working relationships with others. 

Many organizations have been enlightened enough to understand that some of these people are brilliant but just aren’t great with people. They’re not jerks. Sometimes it’s personality, sometimes it’s life experiences and sometimes it’s neurodivergence. These enlightened organizations have recognized that they want to retain these brilliant people by building career paths for them that don’t require people/team leadership.  

Top-right quadrant: Multipliers 

People operating in this quadrant are having a multiplier effect:  that means that they do their job brilliantly well, AND they enable everyone they work with to do their job brilliantly well.  Not just their teams. Not just their peers. Everyone. The other people in the meeting they’re in. The person from another department who needs some information. The junior person who’s learning how to do their job. The project team whose project is going to heavily impact their department. Everyone. 

It can be useful to think about what a multiplier looks like by thinking about what the opposite of a multiplier would say and do. For example, they find the negatives rather than the positives in someone’s argument; they don’t do what they said they’d do; they do the bare minimum; they don’t engage with their teams; they can be arrogant; they can be weak and timid; they don’t challenge; they don’t support.  

I worked with an organization recently to define these critical multiplier behaviours that they expected of everyone: 

1. No Drips 
   The ‘plumbing’ for decision making should be joined-up, flow rapidly and have no leaks 

2. Don’t Walk Past Litter  
   If you see something that doesn’t work as well as it could, fix it. 

3. Be helpful 
   Anticipate what others will need from you and provide it before you’re asked 

Note that a) they’re written in everyday/not corporate speak; b) there’s only three; and c) there’s no complex competency models.  Before long everyone was holding each other to account for these behaviours.  Why?  Because they could immediately see the difference it made.  That’s how you drive a high-performance culture.   

Andrew Saffron Andrew Saffron is a world-leading culture change expert, the author of Better Culture, Faster and the director of Innermost Consulting.

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