Tag Archive for: business character competencies

performance

Managing Employee Performance – Assessing Performance – Summary

/0 Comments/in /by

performance

This blog is part of a series of blogs focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance”. Managing employee performance in the workplace is comprised of all of the interactions and activities that take place between an employer and an employee. These interactions and activities result in the achievement of goals and expectations. More importantly, they result in employee success and organizational success.

The previous three blogs overviewed the importance of ongoing conversations. They also outlined an approach to take when providing feedback. This feeback focuses on “landing” the message vs. just “sending the message”. Leaders, managers, supervisors, team leads and anyone else who oversees or manages the work of others need to commit to providing meaningful and helpful feedback on a regular basis that is authentic and clear. This blog will summarize the key concepts that must be employed to effectively manage the assessment and feedback stage of the process of managing employee performance.

The Fundamental Purpose of Feedback

There are two basic reasons that managers assess and discuss with an employee the actions/behaviours or outcomes that the employees demonstrate relating to the job performance that was expected. The feedback (a better word would be performance conversation because it should be a two-way dialogue) is given to:

  1. Reinforce a desired action/behaviour/outcome so the employee will know to do it again; or
  2. Correct an undesired action/behaviour/outcome.

Actions/behaviours/outcomes that are considered “desirable” is based on an expectation setting process. This process outlines what the organization wants from the employee and how they partner to give the employee value in return. Ideally, the performance leads to success for both the organization and the employee.  Times are changing. The idea that employee performance is only about the organization is gone or is soon to go. So, with mutual success in mind, we engage in conversation to reinforce and correct action/behaviour/outcome that needs to be modified or changed.

Key Principles

Research has demonstrated that conversations focused on sharing insights into the employee’s progress should be prioritized. It should no longer be considered by managers as something to get to “when I have time” or ”when I’m finished my real work”. Managers should share with employees what they do and don’t do well. There should be regular conversations (progress updates) with a focus on actions/behaviours/outcomes that have a significant impact on organizational success and/or employee success. Every conversation should focus on ensuring that the employee understands the message and the choices that they have to respond to the situation. The manager’s mindset needs to be on “landing” the message, not just “sending” the message.

Framework for the Conversation

Managers can employ a process that FEEDs the employee. This is part of ensuring that the message “lands” and that organizational and employee success is achieved. A little bit of forethought using a four-step process, will dramatically increase the effectiveness of the conversation. FEED stands for:

1 – Facts, Focus and Framing – What happened, what message should “land” & what context is important

2 – Expectations – How what happened compares to what was expected.

3 – Effect – What impact did the action/behaviour/outcome have on the employee and or organization

4 – Dialogue – What is the other person’s perspective

Managers who consider the purpose of feedback, embrace the key principles and employ the FEED framework will undoubtedly see greater success. This success will benefit the employee, the team, the organization and their own leadership. In the next blog, we will tackle how to have a difficult conversation in situations involving disagreement or conflict.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback. You can connect with me via email or telephone or leave a comment right here on the site.

Until next time,

Dave

David Town, CHRL, ACC is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effectively managing conversations involving confrontation or conflict. As well, he provides insights and assessment strategies for integrating character competencies into leadership skills resulting in increased trust and reduced risk for leaders. David is a member of the International Coaching Federation and is President of Your Leadership Matters Inc.

Managing Employee Performance – Assessing Performance

/0 Comments/in /by

This blog is part of a series of blogs focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance”. Managing employee performance in the workplace is comprised of all of the interactions and activities that take place between an employer and an employee. These interactions and activities result in the achievement of goals and expectations, and more importantly, employee success and organizational success. The previous two blogs offered insights into how to set expectations. This blog will continue the topic of how to set expectations with a review of goal setting. We will now explore how to assess performance and provide employees with meaningful information on how they are doing.

Giving an Employee Feedback

The foundational purpose of feedback is to help modify a future action. In the case of employee performance in an organization, feedback is given to help a person succeed. This is accomplished by:

a) letting the employee know that they should continue a specific behavior. Doing so will enable them to continue meeting expectations (succeed). This can be called reinforcing feedback.

b) letting the employee know that a specific behavior is not meeting expectations. Dialogue with the employee to enable them to alter or modify future actions in order to meet expectations (succeed).

This concept seems straightforward. However, throughout my career I’ve encountered many managers who believe that if an employee is doing the job correctly there is no need to speak with them about their good performance because that’s what’s expected. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking can result in lowering the level of employee engagement and productivity.

What is the Value of Ongoing Progress Reports?

In their book “The Progress Principle”, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer1 share research into the value of giving ongoing progress reports (a.k.a. feedback) to employees. In the research, they reviewed the interactions that managers had with employees. They sorted the managers into two categories – those that provided ongoing progress reports and those that provided infrequent progress reports. The research results provided clear evidence that employees who reported to managers that provided regular progress reports experienced much higher levels of engagement and productivity. For the managers who chose not to provide regular progress reports, the levels of employee engagement and productivity were much lower. This research validates our intuitive assumption that employees have a desire to know how they are doing and would like to get feedback on how they’re doing on a regular basis.

Maintaining Dialogue

Many organizations seem to misunderstand the primary focus of managing employee performance. At the heart of this misunderstanding is the idea that the most important event in the performance management process is an annual meeting. This is where the manager spends most of the time talking about the past with supporting documentation to “fix” the person. In some cases the documents are sparse on facts and details. In some cases, there is back-and-forth dialogue. However, many employees experience a situation where the manager has already determined the employee’s rating.

The perception that can be created in this situation is that the employee’s point of view has little value in determining the overall outcome of how the employee is “rated”. In cases where there is significant underperformance, the organization introduces performance improvement plans (commonly referred to as PIPs) that are administered by the HR department. The lack of involvement and engagement with the employee’s perspective impedes the goal of achieving employee success and organizational success.

The most important event in assessing employee performance is the regular conversations you have when you observe their performance. This should be more of the primary focus than annual meetings where the emphasis is on tracking past performance.

The ongoing dialogue is the best way to help an employee succeed. Have intermittent meetings to review the conversations that have taken place in the past quarter or the past year. Developing a mindset and a system to manage employee performance that focuses on authentic, robust and helpful conversations will create better value for the organization. This is more beneficial than getting together once a year and filling out forms for the HR department.

Review

In summary, the first step in effectively managing employee performance is the process of setting expectations. Both the ongoing job accountabilities as well as the time framed goals. The second step is to assess employee performance. Subsequent blogs will offer insights on how to effectively manage conversations where the goal is to provide feedback to the employee that “lands”. We will also examine the importance of creating a motivating environment in order to help an employee succeed as part of an effective program for managing employee performance. As always, I welcome your feedback. You can connect with me via email or telephone or leave a comment right here on the site.

Until next time,

Dave

David Town, CHRL, ACC is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effectively managing conversations involving confrontation or conflict. As well, he provides insights and assessment strategies for integrating character competencies into leadership skills resulting in increased trust and reduced risk for leaders. David is a member of the International Coaching Federation and is President of Your Leadership Matters Inc.
SMART goals

Managing Employee Performance – Setting Expectations Part 2

/0 Comments/in , /by

SMART goals

This blog is part of a series of blogs focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance”. Managing employee performance in the workplace is comprised of all of the interactions and activities that take place between an employer and an employee. These interactions and activities result in the achievement of goals and expectations. The previous blog offered a few insights into how to set expectations. This blog will continue the topic of how to set expectations with a review of goal setting.

Motivating Employees Through Goal Setting

It is commonplace for organizations to use the goal setting process. They do this as a means to motivate employees toward the achievement of organizational objectives. However, the process of setting goals must be managed effectively in order for it to be valuable. In a study of organizational behavior theory on goal setting, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the motivational value of goal-setting depends on two things:

  1. Whether the employer has set a goal that is realistically achievable
  2. Whether the employee receives feedback with respect to their progress in achieving the goal.

I will address the second point in a future blog on creating a motivation environment.

SMART Goals

A widely used acronym for setting goals is “SMART”. In order to make expectations clear, the goal should be:

Specific – clear articulation of expectations

Measurable – a means to assess achievement of the goals

Achievable – challenging but not so difficult that they can’t be achieved

Relevant – contributes to the achievement of a department/organisational goal

Time-framed – there is a clear date of completion (milestones can help as well)

An example of a goal that is not SMART would be saying, “let’s reduce costs”. This can be improved by instead saying, “let’s examine the top twelve areas of spending in the operations budget for our departments over the next three months with the goal of reducing year-over-year spending by 5%. This way we can meet the organizations objective of re-directing spending to an increased investment in research and development”.

The “A” in SMART stands for Achievable. Organizations risk undermining the motivation of their employees if the goals they set for employees are not achievable. They also risk other forms of bad behaviour.  Stephen Covey, a noted author on the topic of principled leadership, was quoted as saying “There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.”   

Setting Achievable Goals

So, how does an organization ensure that the goals they set for employees are achievable? I believe that there are two important strategies that organizations should employ in order to develop goals that are achievable.

Involve the Employees in the Process

Managers must strategize to ensure that they involve employees in the goal setting process. Management can start with macro goals and a plan of action for each department; however, they must involve the employees in order to get the employee’s commitment to the goal and to identify any barriers to the achievement of the goals that management may not be fully aware of. Also, having the employee participate in the goal-setting process will give them a much stronger sense of accountability for the goals because they help develop them.

Integrate a Job Duty Review

The second strategy needed for developing achievable goals is to integrate a review of the job duties into the goal-setting process. Organizations should review the expectations outlined in a job description at the same time as a review of time-framed goals. When it comes to thinking about managing employee performance and expectations, the only real difference between a job description and the annual goal-setting exercise is the timeframe.

A job description typically has an indefinite time frame. The expectations outlined in the job description remain in place until there is a significant shift in organizational structure or a change in the employee’s designated role. The expectations outlined in a goal-setting process typically have a start date and an end date. However, they take time to accomplish and should be integrated into the outlined job description of the employee.

Employers should provide an estimate of time time required to complete the goals outlined in the goal setting process. There should also be an acknowledgment of how the time required to achieve the goals will be integrated with the time required to achieve the ongoing expectations of the job. Employers should also acknowledge the time required to achieve the goals Failure to do this can lead to issue such as employee burnout or employees who pursue achievement of short-term goals at the expense of important ongoing job expectations.

Conclusion…

In summary, the first step in effectively managing employee performance is the process of setting expectations. This includes both the ongoing job accountabilities and the time framed goals.

The next few blogs will offer insights on the importance of sharing feedback on the employee’s performance in a manner that has the best chance of being embraced by the employee so that they are able to achieve success.

As always, I welcome your feedback. You can connect with me via email or telephone or leave a comment right here on the site.

Until next time,

Dave

David Town, CHRL, ACC is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effectively managing conversations involving confrontation or conflict. As well, he provides insights and assessment strategies for integrating character competencies into leadership skills resulting in increased trust and reduced risk for leaders. David is a member of the International Coaching Federation and is President of Your Leadership Matters Inc.

Managing Employee Performance – Mindset & Ownership

/0 Comments/in /by

This blog is the second in a series focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance”. This blog will explore the question of “who owns the management of employee performance” in an organization. It will also explore how this drives the mindset required to be more effective at the management of employee performance.

Ownership of Employee Performance Management

Throughout my career, I’ve had many conversations with managers about who owns the management of employee performance. I can recall a specific conversation I had with the Vice President in a division. I was the senior HR leader and had been recently promoted to the role. Within the first week, a fellow member of the executive team dropped into my office to tell me how happy he was that I was there.  He wanted me to make sure that all his managers completed and submitted their forms from the annual meeting.

The look on his face was priceless when I told him that the management of employee performance was not my responsibility. Rather, it was his. I suggested that he was responsible for ensuring that every employee received feedback.  It was also his responsibility to ensure that the managers reporting to him who had employees reporting to them were also having ongoing dialogue and completed an annual review with their direct reports.

Of course, my remarks were followed by an assurance that I was happy to help support him and his staff in any way I could in the achievement of fulfilling their responsibility to assess the performance of the employees who reported to them. This conversation ended with his assertion that I was responsible for making sure that the forms were collected and that the interviews took place. The Vice President then left my office so that he could speak to the head of the division to straighten things out.

It’s Simple: Ownership of Employee Performance Management Belongs to the Manager(s) Who the Employees Report to

My suspicions are that the conversation he had with the head of the division surprised him. I had already had a conversation with the head of the division regarding who owns performance management and our conversation confirmed that we agreed ownership of employee performance management belongs to the managers who the employees report to. He explained to the Vice President that what I had told him was correct. The Vice President returned to my office and asked “what do I do now?”

We had a really good conversation about the role of human resources management and how they are responsible for owning the administration of a performance process and for helping managers with performance management by coaching them on how to have good conversations with the employees regarding their performance.

My intention was to land a key message which is that people who manage the performance of others own the relationship between the manager and the employee. They are responsible for helping the employee succeed. It would be a mistake for the human resources practitioner to try to take over ownership of that relationship and responsibility for making it work. Certainly there is a responsibility for the HR practitioner to train and/or coach managers to assist them with the management of those relationships. However, the manager is responsible for making the relationship work and providing ongoing feedback to the employee.

Two Important Mindsets

Managers who understand that they own the relationship with employees who report to them and that they are responsible for helping the employees succeed are motivated to make the process work because of the benefits you can provide to the employee, to them as the manager, and to the whole team and organization. Managers who believe that this is a paper chase often don’t commit to the process because they don’t believe that they own it and/or they don’t see the benefits of doing it well.

As the first blog in the series states, the entire performance management process should be focused on helping employees succeed. So, when it comes to managing employee performance, managers that adopt an “ownership” mindset will be more committed to the process of setting expectations, observing performance/outcomes, providing regular, timely feedback and building the employee’s competence and confidence.

A second important mindset is to embrace the concept that people make their own choices. In order to maximize employee success, you need to tap into intrinsic motivation. This inspires great performance as opposed to relying solely on external motivation. Performance is better when people act out of inspiration versus responding to consequences. As a manager, you want to light the fire inside as opposed to light the fire behind. Employees will achieve greater success where there is commitment as opposed to compliance. We will tackle this topic further in future blogs.

As always, I welcome your feedback. You can connect with me via email or telephone or leave a comment right here on the site.

Until next time,

Dave

David Town, CHRL, ACC is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effectively managing conversations involving confrontation or conflict. As well, he provides insights and assessment strategies for integrating character competencies into leadership skills resulting in increased trust and reduced risk for leaders. David is a member of the International Coaching Federation and is President of Your Leadership Matters Inc.

Leadership & Character – Reacting to Setbacks

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

leadership and character in business

Many years ago when I was working for Loblaw companies, I remember attending a management conference where a remarkable individual by the name of W. Mitchell did the keynote address. He was a perfect example of an individual with great leadership and character; someone who reacted positively to the setbacks he had encountered in his life. The title of his keynote address was “It’s Not What Happens To You, It’s What You Do About It™ “. Mr. Mitchell had also written a book with the same title. His talk was fairly straightforward and yet incredibly powerful. In a nutshell, he talked about his belief that even in the most difficult circumstances, you have a choice with respect to how you respond to what has happened to you – you can either play the role of a victim and wallow in self-pity, or you can choose to move forward in as positive a manner as possible. What made his message so powerful were his own life circumstances and the degree to which he had followed his own advice. In 1971, at the age of 28, W. Mitchell was involved in a horrific motorcycle accident where he sustained burns to 65% of his body. Four months in hospital gave him the opportunity to think deeply about how to deal with the situation. He embraced a philosophy/theology/ concept called “Morehouse” that advocates taking responsibility for your actions no matter what happens to you. Read more

Leaders Embracing Change

/0 Comments/in , , /by

change managmentChange is an everyday occurrence. You’ll find well-rounded leaders embracing change and having the ability to recognize the opportunities that change can bring and to “Realign Rigorously”. In order to do this, the leader needs to become a pro at innovation. And, that means never start with “it can’t be done.” What is needed, is the ability to create new mindsets, break the mold, think outside of the box and innovate. ‘Success comes in cans’ is a great play on words that contains profound truth.

People have many reasons for resisting change including: Read more