It's very tempting, especially if you're new to management, to leave it up to the people on your team to manage their own performance.
It's tempting because it's the easy route, but it is also the route which leads to mediocre performance and loose bonds. People don't usually (if ever) discover what they are really capable of without any input from others. We all need supporters, coaches and course correctors - and this is the combined role of a great boss. This is what helps others to step into their full potential and this is what it takes to lead your team to great outcomes through collective work, towards shared goals. This is about leading with both backbone and heart, to help people perform at their best by building relationships based on integrity and trust, and offering the right balance of support and challenge.
Effective Managers know how to set and communicate purpose and goals. They also know how to hold people to account for their results - for both their behaviour and impact. They make tough decisions where needed, and build a culture of recognition and accountability. They help others to build confidence and grow awareness of their own strengths and potential derailers. And they engage the people on their team in rich career conversations and encourage them to create meaningful and measurable personal development plans so they can create successful and fulfilling careers.
This all sounds wonderful, but what does it really take to proactively manage the performance of your team?
Optimising performance is all about developing strong, adult to adult relationships with your people to ensure that they are always learning how to improve. The foundation is a good, trusting employee-boss relationship; you have to really know and understand a person and their needs, in order to offer them the support and challenge that will help them deliver their best work and connect to their value on the team. See more on the importance of the correct balance of support and challenge in this article. To enable this relationship, you need to allocate time for quality conversations and have regular one to one meetings scheduled with each direct report, this takes the investment of time, something you must carve out for every member of your team on a regular basis if you aspire to being a great Manager. And there are FIVE key components you can focus on:
1. Providing clarity on expectations and goals
Clear expectations and goals, aligned with those of colleagues, and with company values, are the starting point for high performance. Expectations and goals adapt with changing business needs, so this needs to be an ongoing dialogue - starting with the clarity you provide through the job description and reinforced with every subsequent conversation about what matters most in the delivery of their work. This dialogue should establish a relationship of effective communication and collaboration from the beginning. It enables a clear, shared view of what ‘outstanding performance’ will look like in this role, at this time.
It’s critical to recognise that work performance is never just about the achievement of tangible goals. It’s also about HOW the work is approached and the impact that we have on the people around us. A Sales exec who exceeds her sales KPIs and targets, but damages relationships in the process is NOT a high performer. So the discussion about expectations must include behaviour, approach and attitude - ideally tied into organisational values and culture and with an understanding of the dynamics of the specific team.
This article on goal setting will be useful if you’d like more guidance on how to create really impactful, SMARTER goals.
2. Having powerful feedback conversations
A critical tool in optimising performance is powerful feedback conversations.
These conversations involve a frank assessment of both the positive and negative aspects of an employee’s performance - What’s going well? How does that relate to this person’s overall strengths? How might they do even better? People need a clear idea of what ‘good looks like’ in order to continue to develop a shared understanding of expectations.
Many people find giving any kind of feedback difficult - but this is a critical skill for every leader and it must be not only studied, but practiced until it becomes second nature to both ask for, receive and give. Even giving positive feedback can feel awkward and embarrassing if it’s not your natural style. However, for many of us, praise, gratitude and recognition of good work is like oxygen, absolutely vital for energy and engagement.
Providing feedback on things that aren’t working is even harder; this is a huge area of weakness in management and leadership practice. We love Kim Scott’s work on radical candour which emphasizes the importance of direct and honest feedback, delivered with compassion for the person on the receiving end. Holding back hard truths is rarely kind, even if it makes life easier in the short term.
For these conversations to feel authentic, specifics and examples are important. It’s a good idea to keep ongoing notes on each of your direct reports so that you’re well prepared for feedback conversations. Detailed, patient discussion is often needed to build shared understanding.
We have a practical guide to creating Powerful Feedback which we would be happy to send you - just
3. Recognition and reward
As Gallup's extensive research has shown, in order to perform at their best, most people need recognition and praise for good work every week. Without recognition and reward, it’s difficult to know when you’re moving in the right direction and, perhaps more crucially, it can be hard to be motivated to work at all.
A common myth of managers in big companies is to believe that recognition and reward only comes in big gestures such as annual prizes or events. Every individual is different in how they like to be recognised, but often the most effective approach is in simple communication that is offered frequently and consistently. A simple thank you is a good start. And remember that reward is not taken care of in monetary terms. We know from Daniel Pink’s work that what actually motivates us is ‘intrinsic’ (as opposed to extrinsic - which would include compensation) and the three most important intrinsic motivators are autonomy, mastery and purpose. What this tells us is that it’s really important for managers to provide a clear view on ‘why’ they are asking their team members to do their work (their purpose) AND to provide regular and honest feedback on how they are progressing towards mastery of that work.
4. Helping people identify their strengths and gaps
When you’re regularly having powerful, deeper conversations with your people about their performance, a positive consequence is the identification of particular strengths and skills unique to that team member.
This matters because those skills can then be nurtured and used to the benefit of both the individual and the company, achieving true optimisation of performance. It also helps the individual to grow their own self-awareness and take greater care in owning and developing their strengths and understanding the value they can create using them.
At its best, awareness of strengths applies to the deep elements of a person that transcend the immediate demands of their role. Ideally you are looking for behavioural characteristics - generic elements of personality (like persuasiveness), rather than job-specific skills (like finance expertise). Job specific skills can always be learned, but behavioural characteristics are much harder to change, so the skilled leader knows how to recognise and harness strengths for maximum impact.
Understanding a person’s greatest strengths can also help them to identify the things they need to work on or to be aware of. So often, strengths and derailers are part of the same underlying characteristic and this becomes clear as we start to work on owning the impact of our strengths - both good and bad. For example, it's much easier to recognise and manage my impatience, when I remember that it's part of the same character trait that makes me driven and productive.
5. Making tough decisions
Sometimes being responsible for a team is extremely difficult. When your highest performer is ready for their next opportunity and leaves the team, it can be a huge blow.
Equally, it can require huge reserves of emotional strength to face up to performance problems that may not, ultimately be ‘fixable’. The details of how to operate in this situation will vary according to the legal implications and the specifics involved, but some truths remain constant:
- Take action. Even when the consequences seem harsh, it's usually even more unkind (and damaging to the surrounding team) to ignore the problem.
- Seek support and input, practical, legal and moral. Good leaders are confident in their own judgment - but to achieve this they need to involve others in their thinking; peers, their own boss and an ally in HR can all play a role. In most countries where embarking on a formal performance management process with someone is highly regulated by the law, it’s vital to get clear legal advice and follow the correct procedure.
- Distinguish between poor fit in a role and failure as a human being. The impact of poor performance on the individual’s self esteem can be devastating. If they’ve been told their work is not good enough, it’s normal for a person to see themselves as a complete failure. You can make a huge difference by pointing out (and repeating!) that we are all different and no-one is well suited to every type of role.
- If the person is ultimately ‘let go’ as part of a performance management process, have a plan for a dignified exit, where the individual is privately supported to announce their departure in a well planned way.
Why is it important for you to be managing other people's performance?
Afterall, shouldn't the people on your team be proactively managing their own performance?
The simple answer to this is YES, everyone is responsible for their own performance, but as a Manager you are responsible for the collective performance of your team. This means a number of things including setting expectations, creating clarity and provding feedback. None of us operate well within a vaccum, we will move faster together, and we will adapt to the winds of change more successful when we have others to support us and help us course correct when we get blown off course.
For your team to maintain success in these times of constant challenge, they need the agility to learn and pivot. This means you need to support your team members to develop to improve, adapt and overcome, otherwise their ability to succeed will stagnate very quickly. Committing yourself to optimising performance and developing others creates a positive work environment, strong relationships and active, effective communication - which all contribute to a more positive work experience.
Do you see any of these warning signs from your team?
- People aren’t crystal clear on what’s expected of them and what ‘good looks like’
- You feel disappointed with the performance of at least one person in your team, and not sure how to address it
- You’re working hard to make excuses for someone on the team, but deep down you know there is an underlying problem that is not being tackled
- You’re over-loading one or two trusted members of the team (maybe including yourself), rather than sharing the load more fairly, because you don’t trust everyone to deliver
- People don’t feel recognised, praised, and/or understood
- People don’t know where they stand or what is being said about them when they’re not in the room
- Negative behaviours are not challenged - by you or by anyone else
- There’s not enough accountability, or consequences for failure in both results and behaviour
- The morale of high performers is low because they can see nothing is being done to manage to proactively manage underperformers
- People don’t feel supported in their career development and growth
- People don’t feel they are getting opportunities to learn and grow
What to do if you felt uncomfortable reading that list ...
First, recognise that it is a tough and unavoidable part of any Manager's role to proactively manage the performance of your team members on a daily basis.
This isn’t just about getting the right results, it’s also about nurturing a positive culture and providing the right role modelling for everyone around you.
The good news in all of this, is that the skills and awareness needed to proactively manage performance can be learned. So revisit our 5 key components listed in this article and decide which one is letting down your own leadership performance, then commit to start working on it, this week. There are loads of great resources available to support your research into what good leadership looks like in each of these areas - and we would be very happy to provide suggestions if you’d like to get in touch.
Finally remember that the ‘rubber hits the road’ when you start to take action and do things differently - so make that commitment before you get lost in research which may provide a pleasant distraction to the task at hand.
If you manage a large team we would love the opportunity to talk to you about how we support leaders in optimising the performance of their teams. At Nkuzi Change we help people inside large organisations unlock the full potential of their people through coaching that is focused and directed, inclusive and scaleable.
Learn more at www.nkuzichange.com
And connect with me and my co-Director Elise on LinkedIn: Kate Franklin and Elise Finn
