Posts tagged performance management

What – No Personal Responsibility?

Apr27
2010 1 Comment Written by Steve

There is something happening more and more today that just has got me fired up, the lack of personal accountability or responsibility. I don’t know if I am more sensitive to it or just that the frequency of the occurrences have increased. Either way, I am sick and tired of witnessing this. How about you? Nothing makes me more frustrated to listen to someone blame another person for their lack of attention to detail. I actually heard this one, “it was not my fault, so and so, did not do what I told them to do, so they are to blame.”  I then had to understand better the complete picture. Asking more questions, spending more time and then getting to solution space to get results, lots of effort. I used to get this on all the time when my kids were growing up. You know the one where you asked who did something. The answer you always got was, “not me.” That invisible additional child you did not know you had. Well, now “not me” is in the workplace. I really don’t like him.

What would make people not want to stand up and take responsibility for their actions?

  • Afraid of the perception that they don’t know what they are doing. I don’t know about you, but this one really makes them look incompetent.
  • Afraid of the consequences. Fear does wonderful things, usually not in a good way.
  • Never had to take responsibility ever, so why start now. This one, is starting to really come out loud and clear to me. As the workforce is changing – this lack of responsibility is a fundamental building block on solid work ethic.

How do we change this behavior? For me, there is one key to turning it around. It all starts with one person, yourself. Demonstrate exactly what behavior you are looking for. Take personal responsibility to your actions. When you make a mistake, stand up and be counted. Demonstrated by say, “I made a mistake, I will do XXXX better next time.” This will let the folks in the team know that you are human and willing to admit that you messed up and how you plan on fixing that mistake in the future. Next up, I would make insure that the work environment is set up for folks to admit to mistakes without fear or perception issues popping up. When people feel that they are open to say what they need to say, they usually will do so. Lastly, when someone opens up and admits it, go ahead and thank them for their honesty. Seems like a strange thing to do, thanking someone for admitting a mistake, but when the team sees this behavior, they will understand that the environment is a safe place. This does not mean that the slate is wiped clean of the actions. Work has to get done and quickly, but what happens is everyone can get on with producing results, rather than wasting time “getting to the bottom of what happened.” I have never seen a person get fired for standing up when they have made a mistake and take ownership to insure that it does not happen again. Have you?

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Posted in Observations - Tagged , , , ,

Judgement Error’s

Jan22
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Steve

Awhile back, I wrote about the project that just never ends. The other day, I got the news that it is in hibernation and will be coming back in 2011. This got me thinking about all the time that was spent and all the time that gets spent on projects or work that amounts to very little, other than a waste of time. As leaders it is easy to ask a question or maybe attempt to gain some knowledge on a subject – that simply sets the organization on a whole new effort. I can safely say that I have been on both ends of those situations. Looking back, I have a few examples:

  • The never ending project or sponsoring something that is too early on to move forward. To clarify these, they are the ones that the leader may see, may hear about or just have a question as simple as “why have we not looked at X?”. These projects take on a life of the own. Everyone wants to do a awesome job and provide the level of detail to what they are being asked. I think, we take that a bit too far. Why? I know I have made the assumption that this could not be real, so give it about as much time as necessary. Only to find out that my assumption was wrong. So, the next time – I am off on the complete analysis. Only to come back with the same answers as the quick way. Either way, the work is not really used for much or considered by many a waste of time.
  • Every team has a “star” player, overload that person. Every manager that I have had (and me included) have one or more (hopefully more) stars on the team. They are the go to person that gets stuff done. They seem to have endless capacity or just make it look easy. Fact is, those folks don’t know their limits and just keep on, keeping on. Until the work is not getting done or complaints about the person start showing up.
  • Not managing performance, quickly and effectively. I have had teams that have been pretty high performing teams, but not everyone performed the same. When performance is slipping, there is something wrong. Addressing it quickly and effectively, will help everyone.
  • Labels. It is so easy to put labels on people and projects. Once you do that, the label will stick forever. Projects that start off wrong and struggle – get the label of failing. What happens when the team gets their act together doing the middle. Most leaders have already given up on that project or project team. Performance is usually documented once a year, labels come with that. Could take you a year to shed the label! Referencing my performance management  posts – just in case you want more detail.

Being leaders is not easy, during the day to day activities; there are times when error’s in judgment happen. It is the good leader that is able to quickly see that they have made a slight error and correct it. Work has to get done and the people in the organization need to feel enriched for the experience as well. Wasting time, helps no one. Look at the long term stuff, rather than the short term. Remember to keep your goals in front of you.

Posted in Leadership, Observations - Tagged , , ,

How Do You Influence?

Sep10
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Steve

As many can tell from many of my posts, my career has been mostly as a manager. I have a somewhat easier route to influencing my direct reports. I’m the manager who coaches and mentors his employee’s. I’m the manager that writes and determines their compensation. I have more direct connection to my employee’s. Influencing skills are critical for direct and especially with indirect management. Each and everyday we each influence others.  I asked a manager friend of mine, the other day, to describe how he influences others?  After several moments – he started to describe a situation and what he did. He really could not clearly state what skills or styles he uses. I am not surprised, when he twisted that question to me – I was somewhat lost for words. I never really gave it all that much thought. So, off I went to find some answers.

Researchers have found that most people use influencing styles that are a combination of logical, emotional and cooperative appeals. Nice what of wrapping words around my manager friend and my answers to the question – describe how you influence others?

Influencing Styles:

  • Logical influencing is about appealing to the person’s reason and intellect. Clearly and logically explaining what one is trying to achieve and the why. Providing examples of how one’s goal is realistic and achievable. Going back to setting the proper expectations in a very logical manner.
  • Emotional influencing is about linking the message to an emotional motivator. Demonstrate the trust that you have in the person’s capabilities.  Everyone wants to be successful, so tie you message around the success that will come from doing the work (visibility in the organization, learning new skills and the all important advancement).
  • Cooperative influencing is about building a connection between the two parties. Working together to set expectations, making decisions or just getting the necessary results. In the end, the relationship becomes stronger and easier with cooperative influencing.

To drive home this with an example – I want to use my adult children. When raising kids – you get to practice almost everyone of these everyday. I remember trying to use logic at times, just to see the deer in the headlights look or the disgust look of your wasting my time. But, you march through – because they will grow up and need to be able to do the right things. Emotional seemed to really work! Never really got much pushback on any reward system. Cooperative on the other hand, difficult to practice on the wee little ones. When you can include them, it definitely makes for some solid shaping of the young adults that they could become. I think this example also translates to influencing at work as well. I think I learned the honed the skills in the workplace - than applied them when my children were born. For me, I don’t think I can ever stop learning how to do this better, the situation and the people are changing every time.

Posted in Leadership - Tagged , , , ,

Strengths Based Management

Jul22
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Steve

 

Over the my many years, I have been very fortunate to try different management techniques, fads or whatever is hot now.  Many of them, were employer recommended or part of my mandatory training. From just about everyone of them – I have taken some nuggets that help shape my management style. Over a year ago, I took strengthen management/leadership course. We used the Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath to frame the class.

The on-line survey took us about 15 minutes to complete and provided at the end – your top 5 strengths. Am I surprised by the strengths that the survey told me – not really. I know have better labels for those strengths. The question I have is does a manager truly understand his/her teams strengths? Does that person know their own strengths? I don’t mean the skills that they are good at – but their true strengths. So, as soon as the book comes in; I am going to have my team complete the survey, read part 1 (what is survey and why) and then read their top 5 strengths. Once done, we will have a team meeting to share our strengths and how we can apply them.

For those that are wondering – what are Steve’s strengths.. Well, I’m not shy – here you go.

  1. Arranger – I am a conductor. When faced with a complex situation involving many factors, you enjoy managing all the variables, aligning and realigning them until you are sure you have arranged them in the most productive configuration possible.
  2. Relator – describes my attitude toward your relationships. Making deeper connects.
  3. Responsibility – forces me  to take a psychological ownership for anything I commit to, and whether large or small, I feel emotionally bound to follow it though to completion.
  4. Strategic – enables me to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large.
  5. Self-assurance is similar to self-confidence. In the deepest part of me, I faith in my strengths. I know that I am able – able to take risks, able to meet new challenges, able to stake claims, and, most important, able to deliver.

I decided that I was going to take this to my 10 person team -  we need to take an inventory of our strengths. The results for the complete team were solid (the team covered over 80% of the strengths in the book).For most folks, they did not feel too surprised by their individual results. They really should not, strengths are strengths. What they really enjoyed was learning what the other members of the team’s strengths were and how they could work better with their teammates.

We were in the middle of our performance management, I decided to focus more on taking the time to work with each team member to focus on their strengths. What would make them a valued member of the work team, the organization and the company. Really drive to their strengths. I used to focus on the areas of improvements and how they could be better. For the most part, this was met with little to moderate success.

Can you get away with only focusing on their strengths? Simple answer, No. There are those weaknesses that folks have that are necessary for their jobs in order to be successful. I call that the price of admission. You have to punch that ticket either way.

Is this working? So far it has been about three months, some of the team has really embraced this and are taking off. I have a few that would rather I tell them exactly what and how to do it, but that is okay. Price of admission… I am looking forward to the end of this year to see exactly how this is going to play out.

Thoughts?

Posted in Leadership - Tagged , ,

Next Up – The Difficult Employee

Jul09
2009 1 Comment Written by Steve

 

My last post was about how to deal with the difficult or overly demanding manager – when is enough, enough. Sticky situation all the way around.  The more common situation is how do you manage difficult people.

As a manager for quite sometime, I have come across a few of those folks. Some that worked directly for me, some that I had to interface with quite frequently and some that I just happen to work with briefly.  I would like to share about five of my techniques with those situations.

  • Document everything!  I know, we all don’t like to document everything, but when you do – you will be better off because of it. As a new manager, I used to skip over the document part. I thought, well, we talked about this and that should be good enough. In a perfect world, probably, but this is not a perfect world. Memories get faded over time or even lost. Documenting everything is your record of exactly what was communicated, received and expected. When it comes to the court, if it isn’t written down, then it never happened. Take the time to document – it is your best friend in the long run. I have been doing this for quite some time and documentation has been my savior more than not.
  • Objective counts. When communicating your expectations and areas for where the employee needs to improve – you most certainly want to have the results be tangible. This way the employee can track their own performance as well.  Subjective accountability is left too open for interruption and could be misleading later on.  One word of caution, stay away from the ‘attitude’ references. Nothing smells more like subjective than describing someone’s attitude. Always focus on tangible objectives!
  • Be a role model. Be aware of how you are acting and reacting. You should be an example of what you would like the difficult person to be like. Look the person in the eye when talking to them! Not too much to seem intimidating, just enough to show how important this is. A normal everyday discussion – as if nothing was wrong. Treat the person as you would like to be treated. Who really is the better person in this situation? Act it.
  •  Ask questions like – “Everything okay or Is there anything I should know about?” Let them know that there has been a drop in performance, change in their overall performance or simply they are not themselves.  Opening up these discussions could lead you to something different than what is already in your head.
  • Follow-up in one on one’s. You have documented everything, you have focused on the objective results and you are helping with role modeling – you need to make sure that this is not a one time activity. Sit down and discuss how things are going, discuss the results to date, ask the person how they think they are doing. Don’t forget to document this too. The end goal is to have solid results and an employee that is producing and working within the team well.

 

Managing people probably more common sense than anything. When I first became a supervisor – it was because I was viewed a superstar at the tasks that I given to lead. That did not make me a good supervisor. I have had years of experience to help me develop a style and way of how I do things. Some mentors along the way to follow and some difficult managers that I used those examples as what not to do. I continue to learn and hopefully grow.

Do you have any tips or items you want to share?

Posted in Leadership, Observations - Tagged , , ,

Performance Appraisal: Documenting the Year in Review

May28
2009 2 Comments Written by Steve

 

Performance appraisals, performance reviews, appraisal forms, whatever you want to call them, I’ll use appraisal. I’m not sure if it has been the 27 years of writing these for my team or having one done about me, but I think the appraisal is a necessary part of the whole process.  Yearly also seems to be the right timeframe. I have done this with every six months to 18 months – 12 months (January to December). Built in reminders that when the holiday season is coming upon us – it is time to close the documented part of the year.

From my experiences and tweaking of my past 26 years, here is the checklist for how to close the annual performance appraisal – start to end!

Preparation for annual performance appraisal:

  • Kick-off the end of the year, with a nice reminder to your team that our performance appraisal time is now just around the corner. I usually send this message out with expectations, timelines and expected closure.
  • Within the initial message, my employee’s are given a blank document for them to write a self assessment on their key accomplishments, their strengths and some areas that they may want to improve on in the coming year. This provides them some input on their overall assessment.
  • Provide the opportunity for broader feedback. I use a 360 degree performance feedback request.  That incorporates feedback from the employee’s peers, customers, and people who may report to him.  Each employee can provide me names of the above that they feel will be a good source of providing feedback (I also reserve the right to add additional names). We really want a well rounded loop of feedback.
  • The self assessment and 360 feedback requests have deadlines that all will be due to me.

Assessing employee and the team performance:

  • Start the Rev 1 appraisal. This is where I sit down and review the self assessment, 360 comments, during the year coaching session notes, employee 1:1 file (all feedback good or bad, awards and such for the complete year) and write my document that I would say is very close to the performance appraisal (Rev 1). Focus on the expectations for the coming year – keeping the cycle alive.
  • Sit down and discuss the Rev 1 document with the employee. One more attempt to review the document and for each to provide feedback. Usually there are minor tweaks or maybe some missing information that may come to the surface, but rarely.
  • Take my individual employee’s performance reviews and assess each to the overall team. This is where folks are being ranked and rated to each other. Depending on the team, you may have senior folks and junior folks on the same team – and assessing them could get a bit difficult. I usually have to remind myself to look at their job expectations, their grade level and level set my expectations to match. Finish up the process by giving each a rating.

Delivering the performance appraisal:

  • Insure to schedule the meetings! Coming up to an employee that happens to sit in the same site as you, is not really a welcome sight. If the employee’s are at different sites, insure to schedule conference rooms. Privacy is something that is important.
  • The night before the scheduled appraisal review session, I send out the Rev 2 document. (I do this for both the folks on and off site). This is the complete review form – that has been reviewed many times by each of us, discussed and finished up. The main item that the employee really has not seen is the overall performance message and ranking/ratings.
  • Minutes before the meeting – I send out to the employee’s that are off site – the overall pay letter. Each employee knows to come to the meeting with their laptop to open the emailed pay letter. For those on site, I have a copy for them.
  • We discuss both documents in detail! Questions and comments – whatever is needed.

 

Tips:

  • Never schedule these review sessions back to back! You may want to get it over with, but time to discuss is critical and needed. Running a marathon of performance appraisal meetings, is very taxing.
  • Never schedule on a Friday! From past experience, this gives too much time between delivery and potential additional discussion. If this message is not going to be perceived well, the receiver really does not need to have their weekend wasted. Schedule those messages, early in the week…
  • For off-site folks, try to be there, physically if possible. If travel is restricted, definitely try to use a video feed. Gauging reaction to messages is very difficult over the phone.
  • After completed, I usually give the employee some time to think about the appraisal some more, and if they have any questions and/or comments – to just get back to me by 3 days. This is when I usually close our companies policy by uploading the document to the employee’s record.
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Performance Management: The Meat, Performance Coaching

May27
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Steve

 

This next step,to me as a manager, is the most critical. It is the performance coaching aspect of the whole performance management cycle.  This becomes the year round work! All of the foundation work in the planning phase has gotten you started. What’s next? You spent all that time working on the deliverables, coming up with the indicators and goals to help get to the desired outcome – you have to stay on top of progress. 

At the high level – let me describe what I use”

  • Hold interim discussions and provide feedback about employee performance. The frequency of these discussions can be daily or weekly depending on the criticality of the deliverable. I also summarized and discussed, quarterly with the document in front of both of us.  Provide positive and constructive feedback.
  • Maintain a record of performance through notes, emails or whatever you use.  I like to use Microsoft OneNote for capturing my notes from our discussions. I have all of my employee’s in one notebook with each of them having a tab and the notes from every aspect on it’s own page. I also have an outlook file for each employee for the email traffic to be saved. Is that a lot of work, yes, but it is worth it – you will see later on.
  • If needed – Provide the opportunity for broader feedback. Use a 360 degree performance feedback system that incorporates feedback from the employee’s peers and customers. I say if needed for the sole reason that when the employee or yourself are not seeing things the same way. Getting additional feedback will help clear the air (for either of you).
  • Develop and administer a coaching and improvement plan if the employee is not meeting expectations. Another way of saying we have talked, we have agreed that performance is not meeting expectations and here are the focus areas to get to acceptable performance.

 

Like I wrote above, this seems a bit of extra work; it is! I used to only focus this with employee’s that struggle from time to time. What I have found is that this level of detail is necessary for every employee. It allows you the opportunity to really have a solid documented path for everyone (good or bad). When a really shining star comes up and asked how am I doing and where do you think I can go from here – you only have to skim your notes and provide a very solid answer. When I used to ask that question of some of my managers, the answers definitely seemed to come from the top of their head. I was truly wondering if they were talking about me or someone else. Providing solid feedback to all employee’s is important.

Coaching sessions or opportunities come in many flavors. There is the ad hoc version that when you see something positive or negative – you provide immediate feedback. Methods of delivery are key. If it is something that you see or hear in a team setting and it is positive – then share it with the team. Nothing shows the team more than you as the manager care then providing positive feedback to everyone. If the feedback is not positive but an opportunity for doing something better – it maybe best to discuss privately with that employee. No need to embarrass them in front of their peers. Schedule discussions – I meet bi-weekly with my employee’s and we usually have a small bit of time for us to go over performance. Those meetings really are the employee’s agenda, but they usually want some feedback and I am happy to provide  (Both positive and negative feedback). The last big feedback session is the quarterly discussion – this is where we dust off the document and review.  Along with the summarized feedback that I have capture over the weeks leading up to this session, the quarterly deliverable status and a close review of the indicators and goals. Here is where we insure we are on task, maybe need to adjust the task, get some help if needed, or whatever the course of action should be.  No one ever gets better from guessing what the are doing or how they are doing it. We may get lucky from time to time, but overall hearing feedback is necessary for meeting the desired outcome.

In a perfect world this would work 100% of the time, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes the employee and manager just can not get the desired outcome. Sometimes the managers coaching skills are less than acceptable. Sometimes the employee just does not hear you, they maybe listening but not getting it. There are plenty of situations out there. I think I have lived almost everyone of them.

  • When I first started out, I was not very good at coaching my employee’s on performance. I knew what needed to get done, I used to talk them through it, but really did not coach them. Over the years, I have gotten better, but from time to time, I get a little lax with my own process (especially if the team has been with me for sometime – I figure – they know.. Well, they still want to discuss).
  • I have had a couple employee’s that just did not get what I was saying. I went after the additional feedback route to help me show that the feedback is just not me – did not work. One employee in particular went as far as to tell me that everyone they are dealing with are junior folks and no one knows as much as that employee does. Now that one was a fun one.  End result, I had to document it inside of the performance appraisal and get full attention of that employee. They did not like it, but at least it did have a positive effect, for awhile.
  • Sometimes no matter what you both do – nothing seems to work. Oil and Vinegar – separate, so should you all. We all know that everything is about doing your job well and meeting the team’s goals, but sometimes for some reason it just does not happen. Time to move on. I had that situation years back. I kept trying my best to make it work. I blamed myself that it was not working. I went out and talked to my mentor, talked to whoever managed that employee in the past and anyone else I thought could help. I tried everything. What really help the employee and myself – was the employee moved to another team (and is did very well within that team). Maybe it was still me. My team started performing better, the other team was performing – so, everyone wins.

 

Bottomline, coaching is extremely important to the employee (for delivering to the desired outcome, for their overall development and for motivation). For the manager, it is a way to truly help the employee, the team and the organization meet their goals and develop into a much stronger team.

Posted in Leadership - Tagged ,

Performance Management: Step 1 – Planning

May26
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Steve

 

Effective performance management requires a solid collaboration between the manager and the employee. Much of the work is on the manager to start, but quickly moves to the employee to deliver.  This is the first post, in a series of three on performance management, the beginning – performance planning.  Performance planning comes in many forms, I like to sit down and review the team’s mission and deliverables, look at my team and the employee’s – to set:

  • The group’s goals.
  • My expectations for the work of the employee.
  • Linking those expectations to the group’s goals.

 

Clear expectations have three main components to them; accomplishments, indicators and goals. I usually start with a series of questions to answer to help me come up with a very clear expectation. What does the employee need to produce or accomplish on their job (tangible result)? By when (due date)? How well does the employee need to do it (measurable; cost, quality, quantity and time)? I usually sit down with the my groups plan to ensure the deliverables are linked to the groups priorities. Looking at those deliverable’s, I assess is it within the skills and development plan for the individual employee. Definitely don’t want to set someone up for failure, but you do want to stretch them in order for the employee to develop. Lastly, I sit down with the employee and we work on the defining the deliverable in a way that we mutually understand the deliverable and how this will effect their overall performance. After we are fully committed to the plan, we document it (I tie this to the employee’s development plan and their quarterly objectives and deliverables).

Some of the areas to watch closely…

  1. Insuring that the deliverable or accomplish has tangible results that the employee needs to produce. Too ambiguous the deliverable – the results could be not the desired outcome.
  2. Indicators indentify the criteria that is going to be used to verify the desired result. It is an easy way for the employee themselves to track their own progress.  If the desired outcome can not be tracked and measured – then what really is the outcome? Who really knows when it is completed? Some strong areas for indicators fall within time, quality, quantity and maybe even cost. It depends on your situation, but look for as many indicators that will help define how you are measuring the desired outcome.
  3. Goals are another way to help define an deliverable or expectation. A goal is the desired level of performance, ideally demonstrated by the best performers. Goals should be continually increased over time to help the employee to continue to develop. Put goals on this indicators… I don’t know of any organization or team that does not want to continuously improve. One way to help move the employees and the team are being increasing those goals. Watch out for the unobtainable goals – everyone knows that if you are putting them too high and they can never reach them – folks will just do what they can rather than hit the goals.

 

Make sure that you have everything understood between the employee and yourself. Document those and make sure that you use them in the future, my next blog post, performance coaching. All too often, the discussion happens, expectations are verbally set and maybe even documented – but just sit in someone’s file, on a team site or just filed away – with no one reviewing just to be looked at in series 3 – performance appraisal.

Posted in Leadership - Tagged , ,

Performance Management – The Series

May25
2009 2 Comments Written by Steve

 

This week, I am planning on discussing the overall topic of performance management. Some folks feel this is a subject that is extremely important, but gets little attention. For me, this is where a great manager separates from just a good manager.

 Wikipedia’s definition of Performance management is the process of assessing progress toward achieving predetermined goals. It involves building on that process, adding the relevant communication and action on the progress achieved against these predetermined goals helping organizations achieve their strategic goals.

 This week’s series will over three parts of performance management:

  • Performance Planning – the basics of setting expectations.
  • Performance Coaching – the on-going day to day monitoring, discussing and coaching (feedback).
  • Performance Appraisal – formal documentation of the past years performance and a high level setting of expectations for the next year.

 

Please stayed tune for the coming posts! Provide your comments please…

Anything you want to see additional – let me know.

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