Tag Archive for: character as it relates to leadership

performance

Managing Employee Performance – Assessing Performance – Summary

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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 Part 2

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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 blog emphasized the importance of ongoing conversations. Managers of employee performance need to commit to providing meaningful and helpful feedback on a regular basis as opposed to a few times a yea or only during an annual meeting. This blog will continue the topic of how to assesses performance through ongoing conversations with a focus on how to structure feedback conversations. We will now explore how to assess performance and provide employees with meaningful information on how they are doing.

Employee Assessments

The previous blog provided compelling evidence to support the assertion that assessments of employee performance take place on a continuing basis. When the performance assessment takes place, it is important for an employee to know where they are relative to where they’re supposed to be. When the performance indicates that the employee is on target, the manager should provide positive reinforcement to ensure the behavior continues. If an assessment of performance indicates that the employee is not on target, the manager should provide corrective feedback to enable the employee to get back on course. Although performance assessments take place on a regular basis, most managers are not able to spend all of their time constantly sharing feedback. There needs to be a balance.

How Frequently Should Managers Have Feedback Conversations with Employees?

Ideally, conversations on performance should take place anytime there is a behavior action that has a significant impact on the individual or the organization.  This ensures that the positive “on target” behaviours that have a significant impact will continue and the “off target” behaviours that to not meet expectations are corrected.

What Approach Should You Take to Lead to Success?

Once the decision has been made to share performance feedback with an employee, the next question is “What approach should I take in order to effectively share my assessment with the employee so that it will lead to success?” (aka “How do I give them my feedback?”). This is where the correct mindset is critically important. When giving an employee feedback, managers often define a good conversation as one where they have told the employee what was wrong (or right) with their behaviour. This does not capture the real objective of the conversation. In order for feedback to truly be integrated with the overall objective of performance management (which is helping employees succeed), the goal of the conversation is not just about sending the message. The ultimate goal of the conversation is to “land the message”.

Red Auerbach was a very effective coach in the national basketball Association. He was once quoted as saying; “It’s not what you tell your players that counts. It’s what they hear.” (Red Auerbach, Leadership Wired, Mar. 12, 2004). I believe this is a profound insight. When talking with managers regarding the struggles they have with employees who don’t seem to respond to their feedback, I often hear the managers defend their actions by explaining to me how many times they spoke to the employee to tell them how to correct behavior. As a manager, rather than measuring how many times you said something to an employee, you should be measuring if the message was received and understood. This is where the term “landing the message” becomes critically important.

Landing the Message

“Landing the message” means that the employee has fully understood the message and the implications of taking action as a response to the message. When we accept that “landing the message” is the goal we are trying to achieve when sharing performance assessments, it can offer great insights into the type of approach needed to achieve this goal. When we are able to land the message, we are on the right path to help the employee achieve success. With this in mind, the next blog will provide a framework for giving feedback in a way that encourages dialogue and builds understanding on how 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 – Assessing Performance

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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

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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.
expectations

Managing Employee Performance – Setting Expectations

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expectations

This blog is the third in the series focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance” that encompasses the interactions and activities that take place between an employer and an employee. The interactions result in the achievement of goals and expectations. The first two blogs emphasized the need for organizations to choose the most appropriate focus for performance management: the development of a relationship and work environment that enables the employee to achieve success. Many organizations struggle with performance management because the primary emphasis is on other purposes such as tracking performance on forms or establishing compensation. While these can be important benefits of managing performance, the most important objective is employee success. Performance management is not an event, it is an ongoing process.

4 Requirements for Being a Great Manager

Research by the Gallup Organization presented in the book “First Break All the Rules:  What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently”, identified four core activities that are a necessary part of being a great manager:

  • Select a person
  • Set expectations
  • Motivate the person
  • Develop the person

Hiring the Right People

If we assume an employer has hired the right employee with the appropriate set of competencies, the next step is to set expectations. Fixing a hiring mistake should not be the primary focus of performance management. When we start with the assumption that we hired the right person, the process of setting expectations will concentrate on helping the employee succeed by meeting the employer’s expectations, while partnering with the employee to enable them to achieve their won goals. This blog will outline the important elements in developing a solid set of employee expectations.

Job Descriptions for Employee Tasks

Outlining employee expectations involves identifying the tasks that need to be completed in order to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization. These tasks and accountabilities are most often captured in a job description and should ideally answer the following questions:

  • What is expected and why it is important – an outline of duties and tasks
  • How to meet the expectations – key behaviours
  • Results/outcomes – how success is measured

When establishing job descriptions, organizations often make the mistake of placing too much emphasis on activities and not placing enough emphasis on results/outcomes or boundaries of control. For example, cashiers in a retail store might be given the following duties and tasks as a list of job expectations:

  • Quality customer service
  • Processing customer orders through the point-of-sale cash system
  • Providing refunds

These bullet points provide a good start however, they lack the level of detail and clarity required to help an employee really achieve success. For example, there is no indication of what decision-making authority the employee has with respect to providing refunds. If the employee encounters a situation where customer wants a refund without a receipt for an amount that is less than $10, the employee should be given some guidance as to whether they can make that decision on their own or if they need approval from a supervisor or manager.

This is an important question as it defines the quality of service that the customer will experience. If the employee has to go get approval and delays the customer, this could be viewed as a negative experience. It would not be in line with the expectations of the first bullet point – providing quality customer service. Organizations need to be diligent in providing not only the duties and tasks of the job. They need to include other expectations such as decision-making authority and expected outcomes.

Maintain Your Expectations

It is also important to ensure that there is alignment of expectations at three key points of interaction with employees. The expectations that are outlined in a job posting that was used during the hiring process should be exactly the same as the expectations used during the on-boarding and orientation. They should be exactly the same as the expectations used during ongoing performance discussions and annual performance review meetings. Although this sounds like common sense, there is often a substantial disconnect between these three processes. This can result in significant misunderstanding with respect to what the employee thinks that the employer expects from them. This ambiguity with respect expectations does not help the employee succeed by meeting the employer’s expectations.

The next blog will continue the dialogue on building clear expectations by addressing the issues of how organization’s goal setting processes intersect with their permanent job descriptions and how they are used 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.
References:
First Break All the Rules: Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster 1999 Page 59.

Managing Employee Performance – Mindset & Ownership

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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.

Managing Employee Performance – Assessing Performance Part 4

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This blog is part of a series 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 that result in the achievement of goals and expectations.

Previous blogs in this series answered questions about assessing performance and offered feedback principles that will enable the person sharing a performance assessment to “land” the message.  This blog will provide insights into the concept of “framing” a conversation and how it relates to landing the message.

Planning for a Performance Conversation

Planning for a performance conversation can dramatically improve the outcome of the conversation.  Recalling some of the principles from recent blogs in this series, a manager needs to use the FEED framework in their conversation planning.  FEED stands for:

  • Facts – start with facts
  • Expectations – review what is expected
  • Effect – outline the impact or “effects” of the actions taken
  • Dialogue – invite the other person to share their perspective

Determining the Theme of the Message

Either reinforcement of a desired behaviour or correction of an undesired behaviour, determining the theme of the message an important part of the planning process.  By establishing the theme of the message you want to “land”, you help keep things on track as the conversation evolves and create a way to measure if the conversation was successful.

Framing the Conversation

When you have outlined the FEED approach and established the message theme, you are ready to start the conversation.  You know what you want to say and why you want to say it, but the other person may be entering the conversation with little or no knowledge of your purpose and intent for the conversation.  This is where the concept of “framing” comes in.  When you provide a “frame” for the conversation, you provide context to the receiver that contains insights into your purpose and intentions.  Let’s look at an example of two different approaches a manager could take to invite an employee into a performance conversation.

Situation:

Judy, a good performer on your team has been leading a project and things have been going well.  At a meeting this morning, Judy made a mistake in the way she handled a situation and the outcome of the meeting was not what it could have been.  Judy did not make a career altering mistake, however the behaviour has enough impact that it warrants having a performance conversation with her to ensure that the undesired behaviour is corrected.  You have thought through the FEED framework and the message theme and have decided to give Judy a call to set up a meeting with her later today (if she is available).  Below are two different approaches to invite her into the conversation.

Approach #1

“Judy, this morning things didn’t go as planned in the meeting. Please meet me in my office at 3pm today to discuss the situation.”

Approach #2

“Judy, I know you have been working hard on the project and things have been going well.  At this morning’s meeting, there was a situation that seemed to not go as well as it might have.  I am committed to helping you achieve the success you are striving for in managing the project, so I thought we should meet later today to talk about what happened.  Are you available at 3pm today?  We could meet in my office to discuss the situation”.

Approach #1 does not offer much in the way of a frame for the conversation.  The challenge with this approach is that the employee could easily interpret the invitation in a negative context and could attend the meeting with a healthy degree of fear that is less likely to help them in their development in managing projects.

Approach #2 provides insight into the intentions of Judy’s manager and the desire to help them as a frame for the conversation.  This approach is much more likely to put Judy in the right frame of mind to be open to improvements when her manager goes to “land” their message and offer corrective feedback.

In summary, good planning can help with performance conversations.  Effective feedback requires you to develop a framework for delivering the message, identify the theme for the conversation and provide context – a frame – for the message to ensure your good intentions are clear.

The next blogs in this series will offer insights into how to deal with performance gaps and the prospect of confronting an employee with difficult feedback.

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, 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 – Courage

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Courage sign with road background

This blog is part of a series focusing on the attributes that lead to a positive assessment of a leader’s character.  Each of the positive character attributes contribute in their own way to the ability of the leader to make good, character-based decisions with respect to the actions they take as a leader.  The focus for this blog is on courage. Read more

Leadership & Character – Self-Control

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Control your emotions text concept

Over the past few months, I have offered insights into the various attributes possessed by leaders who act with character.  Each of these character attributes contributes to the leader’s ability to make positive, character-based decisions.  One attribute I have not yet explored is self-control.  After reviewing various dictionary definitions I’ve landed on the following themes that express the meaning of self-control:  the ability to resist or delay an impulse; the ability to control oneself – particularly emotions and desires; and the ability to stop yourself from doing something you want to do, but may not be in your best interests. Read more

Leadership & Character – Vision & Meaning

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Vision concept with hand pressing a button

The ability to make good decisions is an important skill for leaders. In order to be able to make good decisions, leaders must have a clear focus. This focus can come from the vision that the leader is trying to achieve and the underlying purpose or meaning that is served by the vision. So, let’s take a look at the importance of vision and meaning in character-based leadership. Read more