Post No.: 0859
Furrywisepuppy says:
The world is changing constantly, due to new technologies, competition, cultural shifts or global events – thus organisations need to continually be agile, adapt and refine what they do and how. No one is going to enter your organisation ready for everything they may face, thus it’s essential – and your responsibility as a manager is – to think about perpetually developing your team, as well as yourself. Invest in and help your people grow and they will help the fluffy business grow.
Employees who are given the opportunity to learn and develop in their roles feel more valued. They’ll likely become more confident in their roles, efficient, productive, adaptable and innovative in the face of new challenges.
The 3 main areas to consider are the employee’s current performance, the wider and long-term needs of the organisation, and the needs and aspirations of each individual. There must be a two-way dialogue between the manager and employee for this to work. They must discuss their needs and career aspirations, these must be balanced against the needs of the organisation as a whole, and a development plan must be tail-ored for them as an individual.
Regarding current performance – the purpose is to find the employee’s strengths that they could explore further, and weaknesses that they could address. A useful question to ask is what they feel their top achievements have been in their present role over the past year? You want their duties and responsibilities to be offering them the optimal amount of challenge (not too easy, not too hard).
Regarding organisational needs – consider your organisation’s objectives and strategy, and how your team’s objectives and strategy fit into this, like what new skills might your people, and you, need in the near future?
Regarding individual hopes and needs – find out if they wish to progress in the organisation or stay where they are? Where do they see their career developing in the next 1 to 2 years, whether they’ll wish to remain with the organisation or not? What challenges will they face and what support will they need in achieving their goal? Do they have any useful skills they’re under-utilising?
There are tons of ways to learn things. Forms of learning can include job shadowing or secondments, learning during the flow of work, expert speakers, networking events, webinars, games, hackathons, informal ‘lunch and learn’ meetings, unconferences (participant-driven meetings), social or peer-to-peer learning, open forums or sharing useful articles with others via social media, internal training programmes, allowing employees the flexibility in time to attend external courses in order to attain formal qualifications, a zetetic approach (proceeding by enquiry and going wherever it takes you), and more. Courses can involve face-to-face, books or online/e-learning avenues.
Coaching is probably the primary way to develop your team members as a manager – every time you interact with someone, there’s an opportunity to coach them. It requires no special preparation and it improves your mutual relationship too.
‘Coaching’ can be contrasted with ‘job instruction’ – in coaching, you ask not tell, you allow the learner to explore rather than think the teacher knows best, and you focus on the objective more than the method, which might mean they’ll discover that there are multiple ways to reach the same end goal. This approach encourages more creativity and taking the initiative, which means that the employee doesn’t need to be micromanaged and as dependent on their manager.
COACH is an acronym (the business world loves acronyms!) that represents the key stages in a coaching meeting. These are – analysing the current situation of a problem or opportunity; clarifying the overall goal in relation to the above (preferably stated as a positive statement of what’s desired rather than as a negative statement of what isn’t); letting the coachee devise any alternative approaches or solutions to the above; and committing to a concrete change plan that’s owned by the coachee (and reviewing their progress while knowing what success in reaching the above goal will look like).
So a typical framework is to ask the learner to explore and explain their goal, to enquire where they are now, what options they have to move forwards, and what actions will they ultimately take? The learner should come to his/her own conclusions about these so try to avoid making judgements, suggestions or giving advice too early. Challenge them to be ambitious, but prompt them to explore the potential consequences of their suggested course of action, and keep them focused on their own behaviours instead of those of others. Question, listen, summarise to check understanding, and control the process to ensure things are kept on track.
Remember, as a coach, you’re not there to solve the problems the coachee brings to the session – your role is to coach them to find their own solutions.
High-performing team members have or exhibit shared team objectives, they feel confident, engaged and motivated, they trust one another highly, help each other and contribute to the successes of others, they look out for each other especially when things aren’t going well, make sure everyone is on the same page at the same time, they make the most of or leverage each other’s strengths, have a tolerance for and even celebrate each other’s differences, they challenge each other’s views in a constructive way, they’re adaptable, and of course they produce desirable results according to the data.
Performance management is an integral part of being a manager. This is about maintaining, improving or maximising the performances of personnel in line with an organisation’s objectives. Ideally, you want your employees to feel like they have a purpose that’s aligned with the organisation’s goals, and to feel fulfilled in the work they do.
When done well, it’s a continual, open, two-way dialogue, where feedback on progress towards objectives is sought and received, and learning and development opportunities to support the growth of the individual and team are offered. It can culminate into formal reviews or appraisals every quarter, six months or a year, where performance ratings may be linked to additional rewards or bonuses.
Set clear objectives and expectations. Have regular conversations to continually give constructive feedback and coach your team (similar to a sports coach with his/her players). The method of delivery is less important than the regularity of coaching. Grow and develop your team, which will inevitably involve some difficult but empathic conversations when things don’t appear well (it’s vital to check in with and support any individual as soon as you notice anything unusual, in a fair and consistent manner with everyone in the team, whilst appreciating the richness of their individual differences). And prepare for and deliver the end-of-year review, where you can highlight their key achievements, thank them, and agree upon the areas they’ll need to work on for the future in a positive and motivating way (gather and incorporate feedback from other stakeholders that your team may have worked with too).
One problem with end-of-year reviews is that managers may just give everyone a middling ‘good’ rating in order to appear as a decent manager who’s managing a well-functioning team, especially if bonuses are dependent on the ratings. Bias also creeps in – if a manager personally hired or recommended someone, they’re more likely to rate them as well-performing (in order to not think ‘I’ve just hired/recommended someone terrible, which would reflect on my poor judge of character’). It’s also no surprise that if a manager personally likes someone (perhaps because they support the same sports team) then they’ll rate them more highly. Those more senior in the organisation, who thus feel more powerful, tend to be stricter with ratings too (because of the power trip). Some organisations have therefore decided to supplement annual appraisals with more frequent coaching-style conversations and reviews.
High-quality feedback includes information that is specific, relevant to the job, constructive, backed with evidence or credible sources, and is unbiased. Quality is more important than quantity. Identify key milestones and give a sense of making forward progress. Encourage a growth mindset. Try to frame all feedback in a positive way – frame any negative feedback constructively and as opportunities for growth. Name-calling, barking loudly, arrogance and/or unconstructive feedback just demoralises the individual, and isn’t a great experience for any staff, or customers, watching on (always try to give feedback during quieter moments, or otherwise always remain calm and professional in front of customers). And sometimes it’s not the individual but perhaps their circumstances, the inadequate equipment, inefficient way of working or lack of training? Find the root cause of the problem, and inspire a better performance. And allow from the recipient a response to the feedback.
It’s less about what the manager says but how the employee responds to what’s said that most matters i.e. it’s about the effect on them – does what you say and do motivate or demotivate them? You may consider your comments fair but if it brings out a worse performance from the recipient then it is you who has failed in this instance as a manager, not them as an employee. Post No.: 0849 discussed how good managers are crucial to any organisation. So ideally, after any formal performance review, check in with the individual later to see if they thought it was fair and useful, and take this feedback for yourself onboard.
Performance objectives usually take the form of targets (outputs, not just activities) that must be met within a specified timescale. They could be performance, learning or behaviour-oriented. You’ll have to decide which goals should be employee-led, co-created or manager-led (the latter can stretch the employee more effectively though).
SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) and stretching/challenging objectives are the way to go in most situations. However, in complex, hard-to-measure situations, where analysis-based ‘best guess’ decisions can only be made, or where someone is still learning to do a task – it’s better to be more focused on a person’s attitudes and behaviours (e.g. on learning, or as a team player) rather than their specific results. The conversations when looking to help someone develop, and when holding them to account over particular responsibilities, are very different ones too.
Approach group goals with caution – give individuals their own objectives that reflect their own individual capabilities and contributions to the team too, whilst checking for any overlaps and gaps with other team members when it comes to making sure the entire project gets done and efficiently. Setting up an internal competition will not be received well by all equally either.
Make everybody feel prepared for their goals – they should already have the skills they need to achieve it. If they need any development before they can meet it, such goals can actually be demotivating – here, more broad developmental goals are better, or setting a mix of short-term (for the learning) and long-term (for the challenge) goals.
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