At Maximus, our business aligned to a set of tightly held truths. One of those truths is what we call being “all in”. To us, being all in is about being purposeful, immersed and great at delivering on promises.

We exist to move minds, transform businesses and leave a legacy that we are immensely proud of. To do this, we have to be immersed in our clients world, bringing valuable leadership perspectives to the things that will make a big difference in their organisations. Whatever the solution, we have to work with our clients to build conviction around the path forward.

In my experience, many people say that they’re all in but only few are really willing to back themselves and give everything they have. There are many reasons for this, including fear of failure, lack of focus and poor judgment, among others. The difference between being all in and saying you’re all in usually comes down to two things: your conviction and actions.

WHAT IT MEANS TO GO ALL IN

If you have strong conviction around where you’re going, you bring a different level of focus and energy to the journey. At some point, every person is tested by challenges and roadblocks. I always pay attention to how people face these tests. Do they follow through on commitments and stay the course? Do they lose perspective and get lost in the noise? I look for this strength of commitment as a signal of the character people have.

Creating an all in company-wide mentality starts with selecting the top team to role model what that actually looks like. Three things we look for when hiring people at Maximus are ambition, strong judgment and conscientiousness. These are three attributes that can’t really be developed and that have a profound impact on performance in any environment.

ENAGAGING PEOPLE’S HEARTS AND MINDS

Hiring the right people into your team is only the beginning. The real job starts as you engage their hearts and minds into your culture. By no means have we got this to a perfect science. It’s an evolving effort. One of the strategies we are working on at Maximus is around building heightened levels of authenticity into our team. That is, encouraging our people to focus on their purpose and bring their authentic selves to work each day.

We believe that bringing real passion and one’s whole self into the workplace builds better conviction, trust and respect between employees and managers. It fosters a humanistic nature between manager and employee, which leads to symmetrical relationships and better organisational commitment from both sides. This helps develop that all in mentality.

Do you know your people well enough to know if you’re getting their all?