This is the fourth in a series of blog posts – if you are coming to this one first, may I recommend that you take a look at 1, 2 and 3 as well!
You have agreed, set and communicated the standard that you wish your people to work to, and you have measured or monitored their performance using the methods I wrote about in Part 3. This is a crucial part of the performance management process and it is essential that you carry it out well. So, if a member of your team has achieved the standard, consistently, what do you do? If one of your people has exceeded the standard by going the extra mile in some way, what action do you take as that person’s manager? And what do you do if there is a below-standard performance from someone in your team? Let’s look at all these situations individually:
With a consistent performer, it’s important for that person to feel valued for what they do. So, if you have someone who is rarely, if ever, absent from work and serves their customers consistently well, while achieving whatever other outcomes you may have in place, make sure that they are recognised for their contribution. If you know your people, as you should, you will know what type of recognition will work for each member of your team! And I’m hoping that no-one in your team ever goes home at the end of a day without a ‘thank you’ from you.
If you have a member of your team who has gone the extra mile in some way, or consistently does so, then recognition may not be sufficient. Some kind of reward would be appropriate in those circumstances. You may be lucky and work for a company that has a process in place for rewarding exceptional performance in its people, or you may have to create something yourself and acquire funding for it. Taking your exceptional performers out for a nice lunch once a month won’t break the bank, and it will make it more likely that they will continue to be your best performers!
So, what do you do for the people who fall below the standard? I heard David McLeod speak recently, and he used a great expression. He said that ‘engaging’ managers never walk past dysfunctional behaviour. In my experience, many managers think that poorly performing members of their team will go away of their own accord in the end. In fact, persistent poor performers poison the rest of the team if they are not given feedback and coached, so having difficult conversations is very much part of any manager’s role. It is very rewarding when you help someone to become a stronger performer. I once had a member of the team that I supported who had received a particularly poor mystery shop report. I sat down with her and sympathetically asked her how she felt about it, and what she thought had gone wrong. It turned out that she had not worked to the standard on that particular occasion, she explained what had happened, and why, and I was able to help her to understand why we had the standard, through coaching. The following month, she had a much better mystery shop report, and I made sure I sought her out to congratulate her on the improvement.
People often say to me that they ‘don’t have time’ to spend time with their customer-facing people regularly. Well, if you are a manager of people who serve customers (and every manager is!), then how do you spend your time?
More soon!