Why should leaders care about performance management?
A consistent track record of sound results is the best indicator of leadership potential and capacity. Top-rated leaders are those with a history of repeated high impact results across a variety of contexts and complexities.
Consequently, performance management should be a central issue in every organisation. Sadly, in our experience, this is not so – in a significant number of cases we see leaders covering their incompetence and poor results with blame shifting.
Performance review meetings are seldom welcomed. They are widely regarded as the event about which most employees get no sleep the night before, and most leaders get no sleep the night after. We have observed many organisations in which performance management has been reduced, if not entirely relegated, to a once-a-year paper exercise for a mandatory input for annual salary reviews. We have also seen organisations where the performance appraisal is a one-sided affair in which the manager does all the talking, wanting to get one more unnecessary administrative formality out of the way as quickly as possible. Does this sound familiar?
Helping people achieve the very best results possible is a primary challenge for every leader and lies at the heart of effective performance contracting, reviews, correction and reward.
Here are five tips to improve your management of performance:
1. Reframe the purpose
2. Reframe the label
3. Reframe the timing
4. Reframe the model
5. Reframe your role
Performance is a crucial aspect in management. If you are interested in how to leverage your performance management, feel free to contact us.
