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Thank you for choosing whatmakesagoodleader.com as your free online provider of performance management training.
Enjoy the benefits of world class content including practical advice on how you can attain a new level of performance in your team.
You can complete this performance management training session as session one of a six week management and leadership skill development program or it can also be completed as a standalone leadership skill training session.
Good luck with your development! And let me know how you go
What is Performance Management?
Traditionally performance management has been viewed as the actions a manager takes in response to something an employee has done, which includes recognition or punishment.
Employee Action à Management Response
A more progressive or contemporary view it that performance management is the fashioning of an environment where employees are empowered to achieve more than they previously thought they were capable of achieving.
Good leaders spend 90% of their effort creating an environment where good or great performance is more likely and 10% or less managing poor performance. This time spilt is achieved by prioritizing the activities that are proven to drive employee performance.
Management Action à Employee Response
People Leadership is about increasing the probability that any given employee will be a high performer.
Do you have this leadership skill? are you a great people leader?
If not, read on for 5 minutes and discover the secret to great people leadership!
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The link
Leadership Skill and Employee Performance
Employees who achieve amazing results work for leaders who create the right environment, an environment that fosters excellence and encourages or expects continuous improvement from all employees.
A team with a good leader can achieve up to 40% more than the same team with an average leader, ultimately you do not really know what a team is capable of achieving until they have a good leader.
If you embrace the eight keys to driving employee performance, you remain persistent and passionate about people and people leadership you will be surprised if not amazed by what your team can achieve.
Management Tip:
Employee performance tends to mirror leadership skill; even a great performance management system in the hands of poorly skilled leader is not going to deliver any results. High performance mandates a high level of leadership skill; you can enhance your leadership skills by adopting the eight key drivers of employee performance.
Please enjoy the rest of this management and leadership training course.
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Eight key drivers of Employee Performance
If you research the field of management for long enough you will generate a list of over 100 things a good leader, who seeks to motivate improved employee performance, must do.
Like all busy leaders, you will not have the time to do everything on your list. So let’s prioritize and focus your leadership skill development on those things that will deliver the greatest value to your team.
The eight key drivers of employee performance are, (in order of importance)
- Provide regular informal performance feedback to all of your employees and ensure your feedback is both fair and accurate.
- Encourage all of your employees to take reasonable and calculated risks. Be there to support your employees who have taken risks when things do not turn out as you would have liked. (Try lots of things & keep those that work).
Extra Details Free – Click to Find out How to Encourage Risk Taking
- Provide regular formal performance reviews and in these reviews place considerable emphasis on the employees performance strengths.
For More Details – Click or Wait for Week 3 – One on Ones
- Ensure all employees are clear about the required performance standard, communicate this standard regularly and have candid discussions with your employees on where their performance exceeds, meets or fall short of the standard.
Check it out – Free Management Training
Click to Find out How to Communicate your Expectations
- Provide far more internal communication that you believe is required for the job that your employees are doing. Always exceed the minimum required level of communication by a huge margin.
- As a leader be knowledgeable about your employee performance, find ways to have up to date information on your employees performance and share your knowledge with your employees.
- Provide your employees with the opportunity to work on the things that they do best, this might mean you have to change some jobs a little or you have to give people additional tasks beyond their normal role to work on. If your people have a passion for a task and they are good at the task then assign the task to them as often as possible.
- Provide feedback to your employees that helps them to improve their performance or to do their jobs better. This is not just for those employees who are not meeting the grade, all people value feedback on how they can contribute more to the organization by doing their job better.
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Improve Performance Management not Punishment
The words “performance management” tends to conjure up all manner of thoughts about the dark side of leadership. Whilst this is a common perception it should not be the case.
Performance management should be more about managing good performance than managing poor performance.
Management Tip: If you are willing to have a discussion with an employee about a relatively minor issue then you are unlikely to be faced with having to deal with issues that have escalated in severity.
Good leaders achieve results by biasing their performance management programs towards positive reinforcement; however they are aware of and selectively use all five reinforcement techniques.
Management Tip
- Even when having a difficult conversation ensure you approach the conversation in a way that does not harm the employee’s self-esteem.
- Most leaders spend 80% of their time with their poor performers and 20% with their good performers – consider what happens to business performance when this is reversed.
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Why Improve Performance Management?
A recently published report identified that employees who received regular feedback from their managers are on average 15 to 20 percentage points more engaged, (motivated) than those who do not get regular feedback.
Do your teams score 85% or more in employee engagement surveys?
If not, then encourage your organization to embrace the top eight drivers of employee performance and measure the benefits.
To be considered a good leader you will need to be having regular open, candid conversations with your people about their performance.
A simple test you can take to determine if you are open and candid is to answer the following three questions
- Have you personally told your employees, who rate in your top 10% for performance that they are in the top 10% and why they are rated so high.
- Have you personally told your middle eighty percent of employees where their performance is rated and why? Do they know what they need to do to get into the top ten percent?
- Have you personally told your bottom ten percent of employees where they are rated, why they are rated this way and what their options are?
The report also identified that if you engage greater than seventy percent of your people your business performance will improve.
There are many additional reasons to improve performance management including the impacts on the following groups
Leaders who are good at performance management;
- Are less frustrated by their employees
- Have high employee morale and gain high scores in climate surveys
- Exceed all performance expectations
Teams managed by leaders who are good at performance management;
- Are good places to work
- Are filled with high performing team members
- Have active social networks
- Are supportive of each other
Employees managed by leaders who are good at performance management
- Feel Valued – Their contribution is seen as important
- High performers do not feel like they are carrying the low performers
- Feel supported and can ask questions
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What happens if you don’t have good Performance Management skills?
If you do not have open candid conversations with your people you will
- delay correcting any performance problems
- Reduce bottom line profits
- Problem employees will become disruptive
- You will loose the respect of your team
- Your team will become confused about what is acceptable
- Your middle and top performing employees will achieve less than they are capable of achieving
Where an undesirable behaviour exists (poor performance or poor behaviour) the purpose of good performance management is not discipline or making an employee feel bad it should be viewed as part of your continuous improvement processes, it is far easier to have a discussion with an employee from the position of developer than from the position of disciplinarian.
What to do when it all goes wrong?
Even good leaders who establish clear expectations for employee performance, who ensure the employee has the required skills to do the job and who provide support through coaching, feedback and reinforcement will at some time end up with an employee who does not meet expectations. (either performance or behaviour).
Take five minutes to review our Managing Poor Performance section, follow this link right now and discover the secrets to managing poor performance.
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