Tag Archive for: management coaching

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.
expectations

Managing Employee Performance – Setting Expectations

/0 Comments/in /by

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

/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.
employee performance evaluation

Managing Employee Performance – It’s Not About the Forms

/0 Comments/in , /by

employee performance evaluation

This blog is the first in a series focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance”. This is a hot topic with many organizations because for many organizations, the process often creates more problems than it solves.

Research indicates that many organizations have chosen to abandon what they describe as the “annual performance appraisal” process because of the problems it seems to create. This blog will address some of the key challenges faced by organizations in managing employee performance.

Understand the purpose of managing employee performance

The first step in organization’s need to better manage employee performance is to understand the purpose of the process. The primary purpose should not be focused on filling out forms or creating a perception that a documented, numerical rating is the main driver of compensation. Rather, it should be focused on helping employees succeed in delivering on accountabilities that are aligned with organizational objectives. When the process focuses on the completion of forms, it becomes a paper chase where managers often do not feel responsible or accountable for the process and the potential value it can bring.

Similarly, if the process focuses on compensation, it often devolves into a focus on the “annual performance appraisal” meeting. This is where managers and employees seem to debate a performance rating because it is so closely connected to how much of a pay increase an employee will receive. Even the language of describing the annual meeting as a “performance appraisal” is problematic because managers should not be “appraising” performance on an annual basis. They should be appraising performance on an ongoing basis – every day or at least every week. To get the most value out of a performance management process, organizations need to ensure that it’s not about the forms, it’s about the conversations that help an employee succeed.

Employee Success

The entire performance management process should be focused on helping employees succeed. The definition of employee success combines achievement of the organization’s expectations that have been communicated to them as well as the achievement of the goals and expectations that employees have set for themselves. It is important to note that documentation of performance is important and there is nothing wrong with connecting pay with performance. Having said that, the key is to focus on conversations that help success.

The documentation and compensation are by-products of quality conversations and quality performance assessments as opposed to being the main focus. A key opportunity for many organizations is to shift the internal mindset and the focus of the system and language relating to managing employee performance. For some organizations, the first step in shifting the mindset may be as simple as changing their language from “annual performance appraisals” to “annual performance reviews”. This ensures that managers understand that feedback is an ongoing process and the annual meeting is a review – sort of like a highlight reel – that focuses on performance feedback that has already been shared with the employee.

These review meetings can take place more frequently than once a year, however the purpose is still to review the collective dialogue that is taken place during the performance review period.

It’s Not About the Forms

If an organization focuses its attention on equipping managers to engage in regular dialogue with employees, they will be much more likely to achieve the objective of helping employees succeed. Also, by focusing on regular dialogue, the organization will reinforce that the process is not about the forms.

The forms that organizations use as part of their employee performance management process should assist the manager in capturing an overview of the ongoing performance feedback discussions that the manager has had with the employee. These discussions will focus on the employee achieving their full potential by offering reinforcement of desired behaviours and constructive analysis of what needs to be corrected. The forms can offer a process for capturing performance feedback throughout the year in order to avoid issues such as the recency bias. The forms can also be used to hold managers accountable for their performance assessments in order to reduce or eliminate other forms of rater bias.

Once the organization has embraced that the purpose of managing employee performance is to help employees succeed in meeting their accountabilities, the execution of the process will improve. Subsequent blogs will address each of the component parts 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, 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

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

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.

Managing Employee Performance – Assessing Performance

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

41108649 - landing

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.

This blog is part of a series focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance”.  The last blog offered insights into how to assess performance and provide employees with meaningful information on how they are doing.  This blog will continue to explore the process of giving meaningful performance feedback. Read more

Managing Employee Performance – Setting Expectations Part 2

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

48938495_s

This blog is the third in 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.   The previous blog offered insights into how to set expectations.  Context, clarity and degrees of freedom are key elements in the development of clear expectations.   This blog will continue the topic of how to set expectations with a review of goal-setting. Read more

Leadership & Character – Patience

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Politician with clapsed hands sitting behind desk.

There are many attributes that contribute to a positive assessment of the character of a leader.  Each of the positive character attributes contributes in its own way to the ability of the leader to make good, character-based decisions with respect to the actions they take as a leader.  My most recent blog explored the importance of self-control.  The focus for this blog is on a similar attribute – patience.

Like self-control, patience is about exercising restraint.  It is the ability to tolerate or endure situations involving delay, annoyance, trouble or misfortune without getting upset or angry.   High levels of patience are often demonstrated by a remarkable lack of complaining, irritation or loss of temper.  Like self-control, patience is important because it can dramatically impact relationships with others as well as our ability to make good decisions. Read more

Leadership & Character – Vision & Meaning

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

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