If they're not on track...ask!

“I have an employee who isn’t meeting my performance expectations. I don’t want to take disciplinary action inappropriately…is there some short set of questions I can ask that gets to the bottom of the issue?”

Managers are often reluctant to take appropriate corrective action with an employee. Sometimes it’s because they think the employee is too senior, (really), sometimes they feel it’s just a personality issue they need to get over, and sometimes they can’t quite put their finger on the performance issue that needs to be addressed. Corrective action comes in many forms, and disciplinary processes are the last resort.

Here are the four questions I use:

1: Is the goal unclear? Sometimes employees don’t meet expectations because they don’t understand what the expectations are. Of course, sometimes the managers aren’t clear on the expectations either, and that’s where a good performance review and consensus process is essential. However, if there is any doubt at all on the clarity of the goals there is a simple solution. Make sure they’re SMART, (Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Defined).

2: Is the employee competent? Sometimes the employee just doesn’t have the required skills and abilities for the job. No amount of “performance management” is going to fix that. Have a candid discussion with the employee and decide to either get the required coaching and training, or change the employee’s job requirements.

3: Have things changed? Sometimes circumstances have moved on and the original goals just aren’t relevant any more. Particularly in the current climate, you can’t hold employee’s personally responsible for circumstances out of their control. Once again, have a candid discussion with the employee, remove barriers to success, facilitate problem solving, or renegotiate the goal.

4: Is it a problem of motivation? This is probably the classic precursor to disciplinary action. If the goal is clear, the employee is competent and things haven’t changed, then the only reason I can see why the employee isn’t performing is because they don’t have the appropriate engagement, incentives, or motivation. Manage them up or manage them on.

Most people are aware an issue exists before the discussion starts. Demonstrate that you can be trusted and the conversation will go much easier. If the employee knows they will be treated with dignity and respect you’ll have an open and candid exchange and come to a positive resolution.

Feel free to download a copy to keep or distribute here. You can email me here with comments or leave a question or reaction below.

Getting the most from ‘one-up’ meetings with your boss on performance

“OK…my HR team has convinced me to get involved in our performance calibration meetings. I’m going to have a “one-up” meeting with my boss. What should I expect, and how can I prepare so I get the best use of my time?”

You and your manager are going to sit together and discuss the performance standards in your area. There may even be other supervisors there. Whether or not it’s been arranged formally, most executives want their managers to come to them with a sensible plan for how they are going to apply the organization’s performance standards to their people. Some businesses such as GE even mandate the process.

You are probably going to come to two kinds of understanding: UNDERSTANDING of the RATINGS that define each level of performance, and common APPLICATION of the RATINGS across a range of performers. Your ‘one-up’ meeting is really a Ratings Consensus meeting.

I recommend clients start by agreeing on a common understanding of the performance ratings. To do this, don’t just look at words such as Below, Meets or Exceeds Expectations. You can argue about those all day and still not reach agreement. Rather, imagine what it would look like if an employee were performing at that standard in your group.

For example, you discover an employee error and the employee is asked to correct it. The employee denies there is an error and refuses to investigate or take corrective action. Depending on the severity of the error, you might all agree this is behavior meriting a “Below Expectations” rating or even disciplinary action. Another example might be a receptionist who is recognized by others for their enthusiasm and whose greetings are now standard throughout the department merits an “Exceeds Expectations” rating.

Gaining this kind of agreement on the meaning of the performance ratings can take a significant amount of time, depending on the number of ratings in your system, and the number of different levels of employees and kinds of jobs they have. If well facilitated you can do this as a group, (one manager and all their supervisors), and it shouldn’t take much more than 90 minutes to three hours. A worthwhile investment for a certain return in future time, well-being and productivity!

Once you have reached agreement on what the ratings look like when translated into behavior, it’s a relatively simple process to have a principled discussion about the ratings to be applied to each person. Whether it’s done as a group, (which I recommend), or just between you and your boss, all you have to do is produce your best examples of the employee’s behavior which fit with the ratings you have agreed on. If you’re doing it as a group, be prepared that other people may disagree with you based on what they see.

This is also the answer to the preparation you need to do. Throughout the review period keep a running collection of examples of the employee’s behavior and achievements. Present them at the meeting.

I’ve talked before about the benefits to the organization when good performance consensus occurs. There is also a big payoff for the supervisor. It’s difficult to be the only one who sets stretch goals, or holds people accountable. It’s also hard to earn the disrespect of your people for being too harsh, or too soft. It’s much easier to be a principled people leader and be known for achieving your goals when you are consistent and have the support of your peers.

Download a copy to keep or share here, and email me with any questions here.

Gaining consensus on performance ratings

“My human resources team wants me to get involved in “Performance Calibration Meetings.” It seems like a lot of work and something that will take away my ability to rate my people the way I want. Why should I get involved?”

A Performance Calibration Meeting is a discussion between a manager and one or more supervisors where they come to an agreement about the performance ratings to be applied to the supervisor’s employees.

By performance ratings I mean the kind of feedback we give to employees in their performance reviews. They are usually some variation of the Below Expectations, Meets Goals, and Exceeds Standards variety. There are two kinds of calibration: common UNDERSTANDING of the RATINGS that define each level of performance, and common APPLICATION of the RATINGS across a range of performers. A better term for the meetings may be Ratings Reviews, or Ratings Consensus meetings.

The meetings are designed to enable managers and supervisors to reach agreement on the performance ratings to be given to each employee. They do take time and require some deep thinking about the standards your employees are achieving. They are definitely a good idea, and I support their introduction into every management and executive team I work with. Here’s why.

We know that one of the things that is most important to employees is a sense they are being treated equally and fairly in the workplace. Performance ratings have such a huge impact on career development, job opportunities and work distribution. It’s important that every employee feels they are being judged by the same standards. We’re used to diversity requirements that ensure we treat employees equally and without fear or favor based on their race, gender or age. Ensuring performance ratings are applied equally is just an extension of the same principle.

We also know that if we want to use our performance ratings as input to decisions such as pay, bonuses, promotions and disciplinary actions…they had better be right! I have seen many organizations open themselves up to significant legal and financial consequences because their performance management system contained inherent biases or a disorganized application of standards.

Quite apart from making sure that the organization applies consequences and rewards appropriately, you want to make sure you don’t suffer from applying performance ratings inappropriately.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power that comes from having everyone in the organization aligned around the right tasks performed to the right standards. Providing a common language, common understanding and common application of performance ratings eases communication and ensures accountability. We know that with a well functioning performance management system you can easily achieve 10 – 15% efficiency and productivity gains with the same resources.

As always, trust is essential. If you are going to participate in a performance consensus process of some sort there had better be an atmosphere of respect and trust. You are going to talk about how employees are judged, and how you set and enforce standards. The people you are sharing with had better respect confidentiality, and be well motivated to supporting and helping each other. If they are, the rewards are significant.

Feel free to download a copy to keep or share here, and you can always email me with questions or follow up here.

Communicating Difficult News In Tough Times

"We’re going through tough times in our organization and I need to be able to communicate with our employees and stakeholders some of the difficult decisions and changes we are going to make. What’s the best practice in how this should be done?"

First, we know that nothing will get you very far unless you are a principled leader of your business. By that I mean that you have to be able to balance people issues and task issues, and get both done with integrity. Being too task focused during a change only means you end up coercing people, being too people focused means you end up as a cheerleader. Doing both with integrity is what counts.

Provided you have established yourself as a principled leader you can leverage your position to communicate difficult issues with integrity. Think of the communication as something locked away in a vault. Trust is the key you use to unlock the vault and begin the process of sharing the knowledge.

Here are five best practices supported by research and experience. You can think of them as the labels on your keyring, helping you unlock the vault:

1: Understand that people generally follow a predictable path when dealing with change and transitions. Whether the news is good or bad, (but especially if it’s bad), most people go through six responses we can describe as Denial, Anger, Self-Concern, (sometimes accompanied by anxiety, depression and bargaining), Search for Meaning and Options, Testing Alternatives and finally Ownership/Acceptance. Accept the likelihood of each response and prepare for it.

2: Understand what people need to hear at each stage. Tailor the communications to the needs of audience as they move through the typical reactions. At first, they need Awareness of the issues, delivered with dignity and respect. Once they have absorbed the first news, people generally need to have four other messages delivered that raise their Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Rewards during the change. For example, if you are delivering news of restructuring the beginning is to raise the awareness of the need to change, followed by information that starts to deal with people’s denial and anger by raising their desire for a better future.

3: Understand that different stakeholders have different needs. It’s likely that individuals in a business going through a staff reduction will probably need different information to raise their awareness of the need to change. It might depend on whether they are senior executives, employees or customers used to dealing with their favorite staff person. The worst organizations make blanket statements that are subject to misinterpretation. The best organizations carefully craft messages to address what is important for their different stakeholders.

4: Understand that people want to hear the news from their most direct contact. Sure, it’s important that the CEO is seen to be on board and leading the change. In fact it’s very important that they are a model for how people will be treated, (with dignity and respect), and a communicator of the vision of the better future. However, staff want to hear news from their direct supervisor; customers want to hear news from their customer service representative or account manager. It’s the people who are closest to them who will be able to discuss how the news affects them, and it’s these people they will turn to when they need help or resources in the future.

5: Understand that the best practice is to craft the complete plan before taking any action. One of the difficulties in communicating tough messages is that once you have made a decision you feel obliged to act as quickly as practical. Too often this can mean that the messages aren’t as well thought through as they should be and not as tailored as they should be. We’ve all had one of those emails that come down from on high telling us about some major change and leaving us with more questions than they answered. A good plan includes contingencies, and briefing notes that help prepare each person for the key talking points of their message. Good plans include different talking notes for different levels of people, and different audiences, as well as answers to questions that are likely to come up. The best plans include an outline of the entire process that can be adapted as circumstances develop.

Finally, remember that trust is the key. If you are delivering bad news, or even if it’s good news that is going to disrupt the regular order of things, people need to be able to trust that you will see them through the change. Getting things done with people happens more easily, more profitably and more quickly if there is trust. Trust is the essential ingredient: Trust that you are capable; Trust that you are reliable; Trust that you are open, and Trust that your motivations are good.

You can contact me or email me here if you would like more information on building a communication plan that keeps your employees and clients engaged...or click on COMMENTS below to leave a response for others to view.

The Culture Words Exercise in Organizational Awareness

There is a theory in the study of languages that the words you can use to describe something determine how you see the thing you describe, an idea that culture shapes your language, and your language shapes your culture.

In other words, if you don’t have a word for it, you don’t see it, and vice versa. Family, work and national cultures are full of culture specific words that help you understand how the culture works.

For example, when I learned Japanese at High School I learned about wabi, a flaw that makes something beautiful, or “the perfection of imperfection”. It sounds like nothing we have a word for in English but we completely understand the concept. We buy handmade suits or shoes because it’s the very imperfection of the handmade process that makes them perfect…perfectly machine stitched mass-produced clothes just aren’t as good. If you lived in a culture or worked in a place where wabi was a frequently used word you would know something about what the people value…you would be more "culturally aware" or “organizationally aware”.

An organization I once worked with frequently used the phrase “weed, seed and feed”. It represented an HR philosophy that first you had to weed out the bad performers, then seed the organization with good performers, and only if you were doing that could you afford to feed the ones who were left over. You can see that knowing about “weed, seed and feed” tells you a lot about the HR team.

Exercise:

Find three words, phrases or pieces of jargon that are specific to your organization. What do they mean, who uses them, and when are they most often used?

Review:

What does this tell you about what your organization thinks is important?

For Advanced Discussion:

Find someone who is not in your organization but who can relate to it in some way, (maybe a customer, a competitor or even a family member who shares your values but works somewhere else). Ask them what culture specific words they use in their organization. Are they describing something you understand but don’t have a word for, in which case, does this mean it’s something more important to their organization than yours? Are they describing something you have in your organization but use different words for, in which case how do you think the different words came about and what does that say about your organization?

You can down load a copy to print or share here, or email me with a comment or question here. If you want to leave a comment for everyone to see click on COMMENTS below.

The end of Week Five Post-Op

This photo of me was taken by my ever patient photographer wife at the end of my first run, exactly five weeks after my surgery. I didn’t run far, maybe two miles in the sub-zero temperature…it’s a start.

This had been a bad week for me, but it’s all relative. It began with a bloody nose on Tuesday morning after a particularly violent sneeze. It turned out that I had burst a capillary in my nose, and with the blood thinners I am taking it just wouldn’t stop. I had to cancel meetings I had set up, and then put up with hanging around the house feeling useless while my nose dripped.

One thing that happened as a result…I finally got it fixed on Saturday. I’d gone to Urgent Care as recommended by my physician if it wouldn’t stop, and after a really bad downpour that ruined a shirt I’d had enough. I was ready to get my nose cauterized. My blood pressure was up, and my blood clotting ability was down, so they’ve changed my meds and then looked at what they could do to fix the bleeding in the meantime. “Have you tried Afrin?” asked the physician.

I’m thinking it will be a $95,000 experimental drug I’ll need to get special permission to take, and it turns out to be a $3.50 over the counter spray that most people would already have used. I guess he could have recommended a more significant medical intervention, but he did for me what I hope my advice does for my clients: regardless of what he gets out of it he presented the most effective solution in my best interest.

The second thing reinforced for me this week was the kindness of the people I know, both personally and professionally. I have four projects on currently, and I’ve had to contact each client, explain my situation, and talk with them about how we can handle their project in the best way for them. The very positive thing is that each one has gone out of their way to accommodate me, juggling calendars, doing work virtually and by email, and generally being as helpful as possible. I’ve had flowers sent to my home, books and meals left for me by friends and colleagues, and even a bag of chocolate covered licorice, (my favorite), deposited anonymously on my doorstep.

In the past I’ve visited my friends in hospital, dropped by and offered help when they’ve been sick and tried to go out of my way to cover for absent colleagues. I don’t think I’ve been particularly good at it, and I’ve never been sure how my efforts have been received. Now I’m on the other side of the operating table let me say, it feels really good to have people make an effort for you. It has helped my recovery enormously and given me a world of motivation to get well. I’m sure it wasn’t done in the spirit of payback, but nevertheless, I feel fortunate to be the recipient of the largess, and an obligation to do more for others in the future.

If the golden rule of “do unto others as you would they do to you” has any meaning it is as a basis for everyone building a kinder, more generous society where we think about how our actions affect others and try to maximize their well-being. My take-away from this week is that I should try to do that more, and ask for help when I don’t know how to deal with a nose-bleed.

One small run for me, one giant thought for society.

Minnesota Judicial Branch Performance Management Superclass

Thank you for being part of the MJB Performance Management Super Class.

This is going to become your reference for the day’s activities. We are going to update it with electronic links to the key issues we discuss, as well as any topics we bring up that we can include for the future. It will be available here and on your intranet.

You will also be able to use this link to download a copy of the presentation.






Super Class Topics:

1. Principled Leadership
2. Performance Calibration
3. One Up Meetings
4. Describing Behavior Well
5. If The Employee Is Not On Track, Ask…
6. Five Key Steps To Communicating Poor Performance

On Line Materials: The links above will take you to a website and newsletter articles where you will find materials that explain each of the topics.

Below each page there is also a “Comments” box. You can ask a question of me on the website, share something of your own anonymously for other people to comment on and leave examples of your own that you would like a response to.

Follow Up Sessions: We will put together follow up sessions for managers and supervisors. These will be discussion sessions where we can review your questions on the topics we cover and help you work through some of the real life issues you face managing performance with your employees.

You can download this document as a PDF here. If you have a situation you would like covered, or a question you would like to ask, just email me here, or leave your comments for others to share below.

Week five is the week of hubris

There’s no word in the English language for hubris. The ancient Greeks and Romans wrote about it often. Oedipus in his pride refused to step aside for another on his path and unknowingly killed his father. As a result he goes on in his ignorance to marry his mother, a sort of ironic come-uppance from fate. The word means a lack of humility coupled with overconfident presumption, and usually precedes a suitable downfall.

Wikipedia has a great modern example:

“During the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis had attained a seemingly insurmountable lead in the Snowboard Cross event final until she attempted a celebratory method grab as she neared completion of the course. The unnecessary move caused her to fall, allowing Tanja Frieden of Switzerland to pass her and win the gold medal. The media has cited this incident as an example of modern-day athletic hubris.”

So…my hubris was assuming my recovery was going so well that I thought I could start back at work three weeks early, and I told people I was “as fit as a lion”. I’m still very well, and there’s no big problem to my health, but starting Tuesday morning I got a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. I’m on blood thinners so essentially I had a bright red dripping nose from about 11am until bedtime. A trip to the anti-coagulation clinic and some advice has kept the drip somewhat manageable, but still not something you want to inflict on other people.

When you presume too much and get overconfident you leave yourself open to problems! Now I have to eat humble pie and get ready for next week’s challenges. It's a sobering lesson in hubris.