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Key Driver of Employee Performance
Communicating the Required Standard
The Leadership Skill
Ensure all of your employees clearly understand the required performance standard. Communicate the standard regularly and have candid discussions with your employees citing where their performance exceeds, meets or fall short of the standard.
Imagine how an employee would feel if, after working hard to achieve their performance goals, they find out that they had not fully understood the expected standard and, as a result, they had not met the required level of performance.
This management training will help you to avoid this scenario
Motivation, Clarity and Employee Performance
Mixed in the maze of motivational theories is the concept that an employee will only put in discretionary effort to achieve a goal if, the employee believes that in doing so they will get a promised reward. (A good performance rating maybe the employees promised reward).
Being unclear about the goals will reduce an employee’s belief that they will get a good performance rating, potentially reducing their willingness to put in additional discretionary effort.
Read on to discover how great leaders achieve results with clarity.
Clarity of Communication & Performance Management
As a good leader you will create an environment where your employees have the best chance of meeting or exceeding the required performance standard. You set them up for success!
To meet or exceed the required performance standard your people will need to fully understand your expectations.
For your people to understand your expectations, as a leader, you will need to do more than simply telling your people what your expectations are. To drive employee performance you will need to be persistent with your communication ensuring each employee has a clear understanding of the required standard.
The biggest barrier to communicating the required performance standard is the leader’s willingness to put in the effort. Leaders who are willing to do the work will reap the rewards. Apply this management training and you will be successful.
Your challenge:
To ensure your employees have a thorough understanding of your expectations.
Simply telling your employees what the required standard is will not allow you to meet this challenge.
Why not?
Your employee’s understanding will evolve over time. Their initial awareness will be gained by obtaining a descriptive view of your expectations. However, a deep understanding will only develop by “experiencing the standards” first hand.
Continue your Management Training.
How to Guide: Providing a Descriptive View
To provide a descriptive view you may like to tailor the following example.
To make a great start, get your team together and have a communication or training session where you can provide a detailed overview of your expectations.
However, your people will only recall about 30% of the information that was communicated in this initial session.
A good leader will follow through with several additional communications using all forms of communication.
For example
Have a group training/communication session
Pass out a handout
Post handout on the employee notice board(s)
Email the communication to your people
Have a follow up quiz
Check communication in your management by walking around
Discuss the performance standards in your one-on-ones with your people
Follow up communication with your people who need further communication
Ask for feedback in team meetings
Check communication in your management by walking around
(It is a good idea if you can get your manager or a peer to check your communication by doing some management by walking around in your area, they can reinforce the communication and identify issues for you to resolve)
Management communication (or leadership communication) requires repetition through regular reinforcement.
Note: Be aware of any privacy or confidentiality issues before broadcasting individual performance expectations, public discussion is best used where all employees have the same goals.
Management Tip: Try questioning your employees, you will be surprised at what your people did not understand or misunderstood from your communication of key messages.
Experiencing The Standards
No standards are as straight forward in application as they are on paper. Your employees may only gain a full understanding after several months of experiencing your expectations.
To clarify your expectations you will need to be candid about where your employee’s performance meets, exceeds or falls short of the required standard.
If an employee does not meet the required standard and you do not talk to them about the “performance gap” then it would be fair for the employee to assume that not meeting the required standard is acceptable.
In essence, through in action, you will communicate that your expectations are lower than the documented standard.
If you only take only one thing from this management training, make it this.
“The standards that you uphold in your employee feedback sessions becomes the standard expected by your employees, the documented standard will become irrelevant, in the minds of your employees, when there are inconsistencies”
However, many managers will “ambush their people” by referring back to the documented standard during an annual performance review citing gaps in performance that have existed for the best part of a year.
Often the manager has, through in action, accepted, the lower standard; this will only frustrate your employees.
An employee may have a sound understanding of the standards when they first start work, after a few months they may become confused about expectations. Some common causes of confusion are
Not getting candid feedback on performance
Exception scenarios where the standards don’t seem to apply
Concessions being made for some or all employees
Lower performance standards seemingly being accepted
Master all eight key drivers of employee performance and take your career to new heights.
Bookmark this management training material and refer back to it frequently, or take the lead and commence the next module.
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