Performance Expectations – Be A Better Manager

If you like what you read then please join us using the form on the right.

1 Value Your Role as a Manager

I meet so many apologetic managers. Managers who really wish they weren’t. Managers who see entering management as a step towards the dark side. The truth is that as a manager you can have a profound effect on how your staff experience their work, and how your clients experience your staff and your organisation. Embrace this responsibility with creativity, imagination, courage and a systematic approach and you can deliver positive results all around. See management as a necessary evil, and that is just what it will become….

2 Communicate clear performance expectations

Get REALLY clear about what you expect from the people you manage and then find ways to communicate those expectations clearly and consistently. This is likely to include the results that you expect them to achieve in their work, but it is also likely to include some criteria for HOW the work is to be done. For most of us it is not JUST about results, but also how those results are achieved. I might argue that most managers spend too much time obsessing about results and not enough time creating the process, systems and cultures that allow the results to be produced.

3 Provide regular performance feedback

By ‘regular performance feedback’ I don’t mean an annual appraisal. I mean daily, preferably more than daily, feedback that is based on what people are actually doing at work. Appraising performance in real time, all the time. You see someone modelling values and behaviours that matter to your organisation, and you give them performance feedback. You see someone modelling values and behaviours that undermine what your organisation is trying to achieve, and you give them good performance feedback. Giving good performance feedback need not be a big exercise involving lots of emotion. It should take just a few seconds of your time, and is perhaps the most powerful thing that great managers can do to improve performance.

4 Consider all relevant information when appraising performance

Annual appraisals are great. Annual appraisals supported by quarterly mini-appraisals are even better. Quarterly mini-appraisals supported by documented, weekly 121s better yet! But how can you get the voice of the customer to inform the appraisal process? What about the voices of other colleagues? Develop a culture and systems that ensure that you have considered all the relevant information when you are appraising performance.

5 Observe staff at work

You can’t just manage people by monitoring performance data. At least, you can’t manage them well. You might be able to prevent them slipping beneath minimum acceptable standards, but you certainly won’t be able to help them do their best work. Take the time to watch staff at work. Especially watch their interactions with colleagues and customers. Observe the details, the mannerisms, the language patterns. Understand how they do what they do, and help them to reflect and improve – mostly by giving them timely feedback on performance, but also by coaching them where appropriate.

6 Help staff develop self-improvement plans

You should not only expect people to ‘do their job‘ but to get better at doing their job too. Self development is primarily their job, not yours. Of course you stand by ready roll up your sleeves and help – but primarily the expectation is that they will be the architects of their own success.

7 Recognise and reward high performance

More often than not when I see where managers spend their time, effort and attention, it on the underwhelmers. The staff that come in late, leave early and do as little as they can get away with while they are at work. Now, of course underperformance has to be managed. And managed effectively, robustly and quickly. However you should be rewarding and attending to those that performing well. Thanking them praising them, developing and encouraging them in whatever way you can. Time spend recognising and rewarding high performance is likely to reward you with more high performance. Leave it unrecognised and it is likely to whither over time….

8 Provide help, training, and guidance

This isn’t about the annual performance development plan. This about building a culture of ‘just in time’ help, training and guidance. It is about providing role models and ensuring that everyone is looking to learn from their experience. It is about giving people the skill of self managed learning and an expectation they use them to improve performance

9 Build a working relationship

This should really be number 1 on the list, because without a working relationship you can’t manage people. Take time to understand people and their motivations and aspirations. Be curious about them. Don’t judge them too quickly and work out your role in helping them to do the very best work that they are capable of. Build a 2 way relationship; where they respond to your management and leadership and you respond to their wants and needs too. Recognise where relationships aren’t working and commit to either making them work or ending them. Don’t let non working relationships drag on.