by Diana Southall | May 12, 2015 | action plans, coaching, culture, job fit, performance
“Chase left our conversation abruptly. Across the plant floor, he had spotted a problem and rushed to make a correction. He was apologetic on his return. “Sorry, but this is why I called you today. I feel like a two armed octopus. There are eight things that need to happen, but I can only work on two problems at a time. Things get out of control about fifteen minutes into the day. And they never stop. At the end of the day, I look at my boss’ list of projects and the important things never seem to get worked on. There is always a crisis.” (Excerpt from Tom Foster management blog, 11/28/14)
Do you have an employee who is struggles with performing in their new role (either a new hire or an existing person who you gave a different responsibilities)?
How do you think “Chase” is feeling? Delighted this new position is overwhelming? Going home feeling a sense of accomplishment? Feeling like a success? Most likely Chase is disappointed and frustrated, as he wants to do a great job and feel competent.
After all, you thought he had what it takes to this this job well. And you hold the keys to finding out if this is a temporary training issue or a mis-match of his attributes to what is required to fill the role.
If you have a Chase on staff, I recommend evaluating for job fit through the following steps, and then jointly outlining a plan to give him the training, tools, and support to potential succeed.
If you both make an effort to develop his knowledge, skills, and competencies, he has a fair chance to do well.
Three main causes of performance gap, based on ability:
- Person isn’t ready—needs more skill development
- Person needs systems- may excel if given a structured process to plan and monitor work
- Person isn’t a fit to job role- lacks key competencies that are difficult to develop in short term
Your Action Steps
- Evaluate for job fit- identify the cause of gap
- If coachable gaps, jointly create and implement a training action plan with Chase
- Develop and coach on process and systems
- Coach weekly towards improvement. If slow progress be patient and keep going. If there is no noticeable improvement or it is not lasting, more intervention is needed.
See next article for tips on a 90 day coaching plan for performance improvement “Always a Crisis— Part 2”
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by Diana Southall | Jan 13, 2015 | action plans, culture
Currently I have four projects re-designing “bonus” or profit sharing plans for a wide range of clients (from 30 to 3000 employees, and from a local company to two mid-sized regional to a global one).
They all are faced with the same challenges:
- Bonus calculations are discretionary (picked by the manager), with limited guidance on how to calculate an amount
- Employees are likely not incentivized for the work that achieve business goals
- Managers cannot clearly explain to employees what they need to do to earn the same or more next year
- Employees don’t like or trust the plans (they do not believe bonuses are internally fair, or that their performance makes a difference in the final amount, or that their bonus is market competitive for their position)
To transition your bonus (profit sharing, incentive) program from a perk for employees to one that motivates and rewards performance and business results, it needs to follow the “4 C’s model.”
4’s Model of Variable Pay Plans
- Control- key individual performance measures in the plan align with business results and are under the control of the recipient
- Clarity – recipients understand the behaviors, activities and results they need to achieve what reward
- (not) Complex— maximum 4 measures (per job role/ level)
- Communication- recipients receive regular updates on the key performance measures to monitor if their work is achieving the target (even if payout is annual, monthly updates are ideal)
(4’C is the revised model from Dr. Jerry Newman’s 3’C Model, University at Buffalo)
Design steps to effective variable pay programs with the maximum business ROI
1. Basically, you need to go back to the drawing board to identify what matters most:
- Outline key business metrics that add the most value to your firm and show achievement toward 5-year goals (strategy)
- Cascade goals and down to department and job level key performance indicators (KPI)
- Create a tracking and reporting system to communicate a monthly dashboard of KPI results (individual, department, company)
2. Finish with Incentive Plan Design:
- When you have completed these first three elements, then link your incentive pool and payout calculation to reward those KPI
- Keep it simple Sam, and communicate clear results often
The real “bang for your buck” will be that everyone be focusing their work on the most important things and finally understand how they can contribute to achieving organizational goals.
Then the incentive pool will be worth every penny.
(Sounds like a daunting task? With expert guidance to facilitate your management team through the 10 key decision steps, you can design a plan in about 3 months.)
by Diana Southall | Dec 16, 2014 | culture, job fit, performance
Does “Scrooge” the manager still exist?
I love this holiday themed article by research group Zenger & Folkman. They research the key differences between high and low performing managers, and recently searched their database of 45,000 managers to identify the Scrooges.
They defined the Scrooge as a leader who is very task focused (drives for results) but has low consideration, and found that less than 1% of managers fit this profile (good news, unless you work there!). You know the type, like Danny Devito in the movie “Other People’s Money” running around yelling “back to work” to his frantic staff loitering outside their cubicles.
Despite the unpleasantness associated with this management style, is there any impact of driving for results while showing limited concern for employees’ needs and perceptions?
Actually, yes—how about the fact that new Scrooges have one-third fewer engaged employees than high impact managers!
The article published in Forbes doesn’t advocate for the opposite set of leadership behaviors (high consideration but low results orientation), as these managers are likeable but may not have high performing teams due to low accountability. This style often frustrates employees because poor performance is tolerated. In the Zenger research, employees with these types of “good guy” managers were only 3% more engaged than those that worked for the Scrooges (49% vs 46% engaged).
Decades of leadership studies have shown that the optimal leadership style focuses on both the task and the people – this achieves accountability and results through positive coaching. In the Zenger dataset, these manager’s style had a huge impact on increased employee engagement- 76% engaged employees (vs 46% for the low consideration manager who drives for results.)
To learn more about how to achieve this balance in your performance discussions, view our video “performance discussions” in the resource section of our free membership .
Link to the article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joefolkman/2014/12/12/lead-like-scrooge-the-surprising-research-results/
Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by Diana Southall | Nov 25, 2014 | coaching, culture
Would you want to work with someone who has passion, focus, integrity, and positivity?
Or how about someone with great planning and interpersonal skills?
Of course! (No wait, give me that team mate who is Debbie Downer, always late with her work and tactless…)
As a coach of People, you want to demonstrate both the business skills expected of peers and the leadership traits that build trust and engage a team.
Here is a fun and quick list compiled by a very creative guy, Barry Feldman.
He calls these the “monsters of influence” but I call them essential for a Coach.
Influence pulls your team together, rather than pushing them.
Homework: Want to do your own “self-assessment” for this year– how would you rate yourself on these? (And how would your team rate you?)
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by Diana Southall | Sep 25, 2014 | culture, job fit
Want passionate engaged employees?
Then you need a passionate engaged manager with great leadership and coaching ability. One who focuses on productivity, accountability, and also cares about and builds trust with his or her team.
According to Gallup research, they say only 10% of people have the innate talent to do this, and that about another 20% can be effective if they are provided coaching and development to hone these elusive skills.
Gallup found 5 key behaviors that differentiated great managers from the poor ones (quoted verbatim):
- They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.
- They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
- They create a culture of clear accountability.
- They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency you could check here.
- They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.
If the Fortune 500 can’t find good managers, how can your firm?
The good news is that people exist in your organization and in your neighborhood with these talents. The trick is to find them, develop them and give them a good team to work with.
If you have one or more managers, here are your action steps to find out if you have the right person in the right role:
- Evaluate your current team for job fit (those in manager roles and those you see a high potential for that role in the future)- using a combination of personality assessment, performance analysis, and co-worker feedback
- Coach and train you managers to build relationships (focus on the people) while emphasizing productivity and accountability (focus on the task)
- Move those that are not succeeding in the role to another position
If you do not develop great managers, you are guaranteed to disengage everyone and are likely lose your top performers. They will leave to find a better manager somewhere else.
Read full Harvard Business Review blog article
Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Aug 26, 2014 | culture, job fit, performance
The following is a version of a conversation I have regularly with clients:
Client: “We really need some help with our sales process. Some of our bids require hours of preparation and document gathering. Our estimator needed extra help as he uses all his time to get vendor estimates and compute the final price. So he had Mary take over the non-pricing part of the bid.”
Diana: “So how did that work?”
Client: “Well, Mary started well, but the day before the bid she seems frazzled and needed the estimator to help her finish the packet.”
Diana: “So did you win the work?”
Client: “No, the bid was disqualified because it was missing two important documents.”
Diana: “Was there a list of all requirements in the bid package?”
Client: “Yup- right in the first two pages, there was a checklist of every required items.”
Diana: “Okay, we have two areas to concentrate.
First, you might want to talk about process improvement—what could be done better for the next bid. (For example, one person is responsible to double-check everything is there 2 days before the bid is due.)
I would suggest you get those involved in the bid process in a room and outline and clarify the ideal process and timeline, and then assign responsibility.”
The second area- Do you see a trend in Mary’s performance in planning of projects and detail orientation? Is she normally prepared with every item needed, well in advance of a deadline? Does she “future pace” what is coming next, reaching out to others to get what she needs to do her part of the project?
Or do you see the frantic last minute dash to pull something together at the last minute, and then something is usually forgotten?”
This is a function of job fit, some people are comfortable working in the moment, and do not typically focus on the future requirements. Some people have the opposite work habits- they setup checklists, verify that the list is complete and double check everything.
Planning and organizing is a competency—a soft skill that is based on our consistent personality traits, and can be somewhat refined and developed. (And you can assess for this in the hiring process with a basic personality assessment).
If you step back and evaluate the trend of someone’s work habits, you will likely see a clear pattern of planning and organizing behaviors and results.
If Mary has not demonstrated a strong competency in planning and organizing, the solution is to give those tasks with someone else who has a stronger competency in this area (higher job fit). And then find short term and less detailed and crucial tasks that are a better job fit for Mary (increase her job fit).
Training and systems are most effective if someone already has the competency/ job fit in that area.
Want to learn more?
Find out how about how to identify the three main reasons someone isn’t keeping up (gap in ability, motivation or values) in our webinar “Evaluating Your Current Team for Job Fit.”
See our current webinar schedule and register here: People Plan Webinars
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
