by Diana Southall | Mar 14, 2018 | accountability, coaching, performance
Read my last article on Step 1 to coach for accountability [clarify who does what].
Step 2 is to start Weekly Coaching Conversations:
6 Steps to Coach For Accountability & High Performance [see all 6 steps on my 1 minute video slideshare].
Your employees want and need ongoing direction & feedback & support & recognition, so that they can focus on high priority actions.
Just like a sailboat, if they drift just one degree off course every week they can end up going East instead of North.
You need them to tell you when they are stuck, if they need clarification or resources, and to make more informed decisions.
You also want them to make progress on projects beyond their daily tasks.
All of these employee and manager needs can be met with a 15-minute “weekly coaching conversation”
Weekly Coaching Conversation [Check Ins] Agenda:
- Results on individual/ team KPI [key performance indicators]
- Status update on ongoing tasks [what my manager needs to know]
- Status update on project action items
- Challenges- where are you stuck or need more help?
- Priorities for this week
….I know you are thinking “how am I going to squeeze in weekly chats with every one of my team?”
I will be honest, the first few weeks are hard for managers to schedule, but then they find something miraculous ….
After a few weeks– people start changing how they interact with their managers:
- They hold the “do you have a second” updates and questions for their weekly chat [time saved 5+ minutes per day x per person]
- You don’t have to chase people down to get status updates — you know you will hear them on your weekly chats [time saved 10 minutes x per person]
- They start completing project action items that you assigned but never went anywhere [1+ hours per week of new “to-dos” completed x per person]
- You now have a way to start handing off small action items on the bigger projects to someone else [time saved 1-2 hours week of your time]
- You don’t have to put out fires because someone forgot or were stuck or handled something badly [time saved 1+ hour per week]
When you think about all the time you spend on all these reactive activities, it adds up to well over 15 minutes per person.
Would it be better to have a pre-planned time carved out of your schedule to be proactive, to give direction, feedback, support, recognition, and coach for learning and improved decision making and time management?
If you have more than 10 people, over time you can designate and train a “team leader” to have these weekly conversations with the team and just bring you the weekly team updates [time saved 15 minutes x per person]. As an added benefit, this process develops your high potential employees into team leaders.
As with anything that is “good for you” it takes a bit of effort to change your habits and the habits of your team, and diligence to keep consistency and progress.
Managers who master this habit say they would never go back to their old ways.
Next Steps:
In my next article, I will share details on Step 3 “Action Plans for Development and Business Improvement” [see all 6].
by Diana Southall | Feb 27, 2018 | accountability, coaching, job role, performance
Are you interested in everyone on your team taking on more responsibility?
I mean real responsibility — when they “own” the work, solve issues, make suggestions and even improve the process, and [the ultimate level] keep you in the loop with status updates or “exception” reports.
You might even have a few people who do this now… but you would like EVERYONE on staff to do this. [Keep reading for the First of the 6 steps…]
This magical state is called the “Accountability Culture” — and blends the benefits of a Results Culture and a Caring Culture, and the top ranked most-effective leadership style that blends concern for People with a focus on Results.
Accountability is not a new concept, but it has become a high priority for the business owner and manager who wants to spend more time on business planning and management and less time on getting the daily work done.
If your team “does what they are supposed to do” then managers are freed up to work on the business- revenue generation, process improvement, cost control and great team and customer experiences. If your pants are on fire you can’t plan and improve your business.
Let me be clear—- Positive Accountability is essential to grow your business.
Last week I spoke to 91 planners and managers in operations, who work for companies with 50-500 employees. Guess what? These organizations are also challenged with building accountability on their teams.
Here is your opportunity to take your smaller more agile company and out-perform you competitors, with
6 Steps to Coach For Accountability & High Performance.
Step 1 is to clarify the Roles, Responsibilities and Results of your key people:
Employees want to have four main questions clarified about their role (although they rarely ask them):
If you cannot answer these questions about your role and those of your key people,
you will not be able to effectively hold them accountable for results.
1. What is my role?
2. What does “good” look like?
3. What is my responsibility?
4. What results should I produce?
To Learn More:
For a detailed outline of how to accomplish Step 1 [Clarify Roles and Responsibilities], see page 7.
See all 6 Steps to Coach for Accountability [Slideshow]
by Diana Southall | Jan 29, 2018 | coaching, job fit, performance
Determining the cause of a performance issue can be like being a detective– here is a list of 11 major reasons employees “don’t do the job” with possible solutions.
Source: Expectations
1. They don’t know what to do
2. They think they are doing it
Solution: I read many job descriptions—hundreds per year from dozens of organizations—rarely do they clarify for me the specific job activities and key results areas, much less how the job will be measured. It is difficult to hold someone accountable to results when the manager has not made it crystal clear what those results should be and what s/he has to do to get those results. Otherwise employees just take their best guess and do what seems to be the most urgent.
3. They think something else is more important
Solution: A great survey report showed that employees only agree with managers on 1 out of 3 priorities! Frequent coaching and follow up makes sure that what a person is working on is the highest priority for the job and department. An employee does the best she can reading the tea leaves to guess what her manager thinks is priority. Don’t make them guess… also, remember employees often don’t have the broader view or much information outside of their own activities (and yes, the more they do the better decisions they will make.)
Source: Training
4. They don’t know how to do it
Solution: Work with employee to identify skill or competency to enhance with training, create a training plan with a timeline and hold employee accountable to stick to the plan (even if it means reminding her manager to schedule the time or resources).
5. They are uncomfortable doing it
Solution: Sometimes a little training can increase someone’s confidence and they become “comfortable” with the task and then perform it regularly. More likely this is a symptom of job fit—someone’s personality traits or competencies are not aligned with those required to excel in the job. A classic example is “asking for the sale”— a person who is cooperative (lower assertive) can be trained for years on sales techniques and given scripts, but he is always uncomfortable closing. For job fit, the remedy is to change the job duties to ones that correspond with the person’s strengths and attributes.
6. They lack the competency needed to do it
Solution: Depending on the type of competency, the person may benefit from more training and development. However, many competencies are a function of personality traits that are ingrained and difficult to change even with extensive training. For example, “planning and organizing” is a set of traits and habits that your employee may not have and will be challenged to overcome in a role that requires tracking and pacing their work on month-long project. In many cases, the solution is finding a better job fit for the incumbent’s competencies.
Source: Feedback/ Recognition
7. They can do it but don’t want to
8. They are rewarded for not doing it
9. They are not rewarded when they do it
Solution: This is fundamental psychology. People do what is measured and recognized and rewarded. If they are not rewarded (or worse, “punished”) for doing something, most people stop doing it. Sales people don’t like to do paperwork—but they also don’t want to be reminded that they were late 9 of the last 10 weeks—this is powerful feedback.
Often the signals sent by managers are unintended. Do you reward your poor performers by giving extra work to others that you can depend on? Do you remember to praise and even publicly recognize the team that worked last weekend to finish up a project?
Source: Belief
10. They don’t know why they should do it
Solution: Some people will blindly follow rules, but most want to know the “why” behind something that they are asked to do. It they believe a task or process is x (insert label here: low importance, arbitrary, a waste of time, or just plain stupid), no amount of training will effect a change in behavior. You might get begrudging compliance but that is about it. To get commitment, you have to explain the “why” to change the belief. (Until they believe his IS important, worth my time, etc.)
11. They think their way is better.
Solution: Read the solution above… plus this often happens when you ask someone who is good/ comfortable with the “old way” and now you have a “new way.” And in the beginning, the old way is better since an employee is more comfortable and competent in the old way. A big part of culture change and process change is to overcome the belief that the old way is better.
A key personality trait is openness to new experiences and some people are not. They will cling to the things they know how to do. As a manager you will need to support and coach these employees through the pain and fear that comes with change. Recognize that this is more deep seeded than just a training issue, but a consistent personality trait or a cognitive filter (belief) and be patient and supportive, and work through changing the belief, not just behavior.
As a client’s manager once stated, “if we have 100 people then we have 100 different personalities.” It’s your job as a manager to figure out what is the cause and the solution that works for all the unique individuals on your team.
Related Articles:
Related Resources:
Read the Short Guide
by Diana Southall | Jan 23, 2018 | coaching, performance, rewards
In my last LinkedIn article, “Despite the flaws, don’t just stop your annual review”, I shared 5 articles and 3 books that explain why “everyone” hates the annual review process, BUT I cautioned just dropping this all together.
When companies stopped their performance review process, managers gave less feedback and employee performance dropped 10%! (Wharton article)
So how can you give your team feedback in a positive way, that they enjoy, and that will ultimately achieve the intended goal to improve performance and engagement?
I am glad you asked!
Let me introduce you to “ongoing performance management.”
This process takes the best aspects of the annual review (yes there are some beneficial aspects), and combines it with weekly coaching and feedback, with a dose of training and development planning thrown in for good measure.
Such a hot topic – as I was writing this I received an email quoting a study by the Brandon Hall Group that showed that “organizations that made ongoing performance management a collaborative, strategic priority had better business results than those who didn’t.”
Companies who adopted ongoing performance management saw these improvements:
- 70% reported an increase in revenue
- 72% noticed a decrease in voluntary turnover
- 54% experienced an increase in customer satisfaction
How did they do it?
Organizations are adoping three new methods:
- ongoing feedback- usually weekly or monthly “one on ones” between managers and each employee individually
- “ratingless reviews” – without the focus on employee rating on a scale from 1 to 5
- “crowd-sourced feedback”- input and feedback from peers and direct reports (if a manager) are included, not just an employee’s boss
Companies who saw the best results didn’t stop the annual performance discussion, they shifted the focus to more of an overview of key learnings and jointly created development goals for the next year.
This is what employees want to know– “how can I learn, grow, and perform better next year?”
When companies ADDED these three methods (together) to the annual discussion between an employee and manager, they saw improvements in strategic alignment, developing a performance culture, support of company values and strategy, and yes, increased company performance.
This combination of “cutting edge” practices provided more focused and useful feedback, while increasing both manager and employee experience with the performance management process. [See graph]
Said another way, people like this process better and feel it is more effective on the things that matter– improving employee and company performance.
For more information on how this process works, visit our website page for more resources:
http://people-plan.com/coaching-accountability-performance/
by Diana Southall | Jan 14, 2018 | coaching, performance
It’s that time of year- yeah! The annual performance review season…when managers scramble to track, measure and discuss performance with employees, in an attempt to focused employees on key priorities and improve performance, attitude, commitment, trust and engagement, all in one hour.
Oh right, you also squeeze in a quick chat about this year’s “raise” as you wrap up the meeting [perhaps awkwardly].
I usually joke that performance reviews are “universally” hated, but this is close to the truth.
Employees and managers dread doing them and question the value of the traditional annual review process. Even the largest employers struggle with improving employee performance and engagement based on this time-consuming process. More than half admit there is limited alignment of “pay for performance” in their process.
“Performance management is often a source of great frustration for employees who do not clearly understand their goals or what is expected of them at work. For these employees, annual reviews and developmental conversations feel forced and superficial, and it is impossible for them to think about next year’s goals when they are not even sure what tomorrow will throw at them.”
(Source: State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders, Gallup 2015)
In fact, by 2015 12% of the Fortune 100 decided to eliminate them.
Since large employers are abandoning this very corporate practice, you may think you should do the same at your business.
The question to ask is: “was the new system any better at linking performance to rewards and enhancing a culture of engagement?”
Unfortunately, no.
A new study by advisory firm CEB found that measures of employee engagement and performance dropped by 10% when they stopped conducting annual reviews!
According to a Wharton article that summarizes this research paper, “Managers actually spent less time on conversations, and the quality of those conversations declined. Without a scoring system to motivate and give structure, performance management withered. As one manager told CEB: “When I gave someone a low score in the past, I felt responsible for helping them out, now I just don’t feel that I have to spend time doing that anymore.”
Wow, scary stuff! When managers don’t “have” to conduct annual review meetings, they actually might have less interaction with their team. Even the imperfect process is holding managers partly accountable to coach their team.
Here are several articles and books that explain the flaws with this universal practice, and some solutions that have been tried:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-end-of-annual-performance-reviews/
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-problem-with-job-performance-appraisals/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201211/why-performance-reviews-dont-improve-performance
https://lattice.com/blog/how-your-brain-responds-to-performance-reviews/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/ahead-of-the-curve-the-future-of-performance-management
3 Books:
Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins, Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What To Do Instead
Garold Markle, Catalytic Coaching: The End of The Performance Review
Charles Jacobs, Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Supervisory Lessons from Brain Science
Now that you see the challenges with traditional performance review, read my article to learn about the “cutting edge” practices that are replacing it: “Replace Your Broken Annual Review with “Ongoing Performance Management”
by Diana Southall | Nov 15, 2016 | coaching, Delegation, job role, performance
Lately I have been sharing with you resources to 1) Clarify the best use of your time, 2) Create a delegation wish list of your “stop doing” tasks, and 3) Identify to whom to delegate this list.
By delegating, you are creating a “win” for you AND a “win” for you high performers.
Your high performers crave challenging assignments and want to know they are being developed for future growth.
In fact, “opportunities” to develop is the number one retainer and engager of your top people- the least expensive and most powerful reward your organization has to build your A team.
To continue your delegation journey, I created a 18 minute video to show you the whole process. The development action plan process gets all employees working towards goals that benefit them and the company.
Watch the 18 minute Video: Develop High Potentials with Action Plans
(The video shows not only how action plans benefit your best performers, but also the average Jane and the lowest performer as well!)
So go ahead, give up something off your list in January and watch your people grow!
