Managing Employee Performance – Mindset & Ownership
/0 Comments/in Employee Management/by David TownThis 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 – It’s Not About the Forms
/0 Comments/in Employee Management, Employee Success/by David TownThis 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.
Maximizing Personal Productivity Part 3 – Time Management: How to Plan What to Do
/0 Comments/in Executive Coaching, Executive Training, time management/by David TownThis blog is the third in a series on the topic of “Maximizing Personal Productivity”. Part 1 & 2 focused on understanding the mindset of time being a fixed resource and on the process required to make decisions that maximize the productive use of time. In Part 3, we will review how to “Organize” and “Assess” incoming work, as part of the process for making good decisions on how to spend time.
The “Organize” Phase
The “Organize” phase of the process is all about collecting and managing incoming work so that you’ll have a very good understanding of the different choices regarding how to spend your time. You need a strategy for capturing all the deferred items in one place so you can refer to them later. During the process of organizing work, you either put a task or commitment to do something on a list somewhere – a list you refer to every day – or you put them in a calendar that you refer to every day.
The “Assess” Phase
The “Assess” phase of the process is all about reviewing your list of deferred items (often stored in a “To Do” list) and planning how to spend your time. A quote that has really stuck with me is:
“You can anything you want; you just can’t do everything you want” (author unknown).
Know Your Options Then Pick the Best Ones
Don’t try to do everything that comes your way. Be able to say no (or not now). This is a lot like financial budgeting. You identify all of the things you could spend your money on and then you review the list and decide how to spend based on the resources you have. You make a plan. The plan is based on identifying what adds the most value.
The “time management” planning process is all about sorting the list (prioritizing) according to the activities that provide the most value in meeting what you want to achieve each day, week, month, etc. The definition of what is valuable is different for every person and is based on your goals.
In order to be good at managing how you spend your time, you have to know what adds value for you.
Move from Intention to Commitment
Once you have mapped out a plan for how to spend you time, you should move from an intention to a commitment. A few times each week, get your calendar out and start plugging each activity into it, starting at the top of the list. If you just work from the planning list, you are more likely to miss important tasks – particularly if they are not really urgent.
Don’t Waste Time on Urgent Tasks that are Not Important
One of the biggest time wasters is spending time on urgent tasks that are not important. Meetings can be a classic example of this. If you attend a meeting and at the end of the meeting you don’t feel you got any value or added any value, you just spent time on a low-return activity. Don’t go to a meeting just because you’re invited. Go because it adds value to the achievement of the goals you are committed to.
Anticipate Room for Unexpected Urgent Matters
When populating your calendar, remember to leave room for discretionary choices. If experiences tells you that everyday you spend an hour or two dealing with issues that are urgent and important that require your attention, leave space in your calendar to accommodate this.
Populating your calendar with the prioritized To Do list tasks provides three very important benefits.
- It creates a sense of urgency around important tasks so that they don’t get deferred to do less important tasks.
- You have a very good idea of what can be accomplished by the end of the day. If there are very important activities on the list that the calendar didn’t have room for, it is much easier and less stressful to deal with that issue at the beginning of the day than at the end of the day.
- Possibly the most important benefit is that by committing tasks to a calendar, you increase your focus and your spending can be more carefully measured and analyzed for improvement.
Four Actions for Sorting Work
In the previous blog, I introduced the process for sorting work that involves acting in one of four ways to determine what to do with the incoming opportunity to spend time.
- Dismiss it (delete it)
- Deal with it (do it now)
- Defer it (do it later)
- Delegate it
When you have a plan in place and your calendar is populated, choosing which of the four options is best is very straight-forward if you have a clear idea of what is important (what adds value).
Don’t do something because it is urgent, do it because it adds value.
Planning has to happen on a regular basis. There is an old adage: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Understand your choices and make the most of them.
Part 4 in this series will continue to explore how to maintain your focus.
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, ACC, CHRL, is a coach and facilitator 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 performance management and 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.