Performance Management Skills: Overview

1. Performance Management Skills:Overview • Coaching • Coaching Styles • Coaching Process • Performance Review Meetings

2. Coaching: Definition (1) • Helping relationship • Manager • Interacts with employee and • Takes active role and interest in performance

3. Coaching: Definition (2) • Collaborative ongoing process • Directing employee behavior • Motivating employee behavior • Rewarding employee behavior • Concern with long-term performance

4. Understanding Successful CoachingGuiding Principles (1) • A good coaching relationship is essential: • Trusting and collaborative • Willing to listen in order to understand • Looking for positive aspects of the employee • Understanding that coaching is done with the employee, not to the employee

5. Understanding Successful CoachingGuiding Principles (2) • The Employee is the Source and Director of change • The Employee is whole and unique • The Coach is the Facilitator of the Employee’s growth

6. Major Coaching Functions: • Give advice • Provide guidance • Provide support • Give confidence • Promote greater competence

7. Key Coaching Behaviors • Establish developmental objectives • Communicate effectively • Motivate employees • Document performance • Give feedback • Diagnose performance problems • Develop employees

8. The Good Coach Questionnaire • Do you listen to your employees? • Do you understand the individual needs of your employees? • Do you encourage employees to express their feelings openly? • Do you provide your employees with tangible and intangible support for development? • Do your employees know your expectations about their performance? (continued on next slide)

9. The Good Coach Questionnaire (continued) • Do you encourage open and honest discussions and problem solving? • Do you help your employees create action plans that will • Solve problems? • Create changes? • Do you help your employees explore potential areas of growth and development?

10. Coaching Styles

11. Adaptive coaches use all stylesaccording to employee needs: • Sometimes providing direction • Sometimes persuading • Sometimes showing empathy • Sometimes paying close attention to rules and established procedures

12. Coaching Process Identify Developmental Resources & Strategies Set Developmental Goals Implement Strategies Give Feedback Observe and Document Developmental Behavior

13. Coaching Process:Steps covered in Chapter 8 • Set Developmental Goals • Identify Resources and Strategies Needed to Implement Developmental Goals • Implement Developmental Goals

14. Coaching Process:Overview of remaining steps • Observe and Document Developmental Behavior and Outcomes • Give Feedback • Praise • Negative Feedback

15. Observe and Document Developmental Behavior and Outcomes Constraints: • Time • Situation • Activity

16. Organizational Activities to improve documentation of performance • Good communication plan to get manager buy-in • Training programs • Rater error training • Frame-of-reference training • Behavioral observation training • Self-leadership training

17. Reasons to document performance • Minimize cognitive load • Create trust • Plan for the future • Provide legal protection

18. Recommendations for Documentation • Be specific • Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly • Balance positives with negatives • Focus on job-related information • Be comprehensive • Standardize procedures • Describe observable behavior

19. Giving Feedback • Main purposes: • Help build confidence • Develop competence • Enhance involvement • Improve future performance

20. Potential costs of failing to provide feedback: • Employees are deprived of chance to improve their own performance • Chronic poor performance • Employees have inaccurate perceptions of how their performance is regarded by others

21. To be effective, feedback should: • Be timely • Be frequent • Be specific • Be verifiable • Be consistent (over time and across employees) • Be given privately • Provide context and consequences (continued next slide)

22. To be effective, feedback should:(continued) • Provide description first, evaluation second • Cover the continuum of performance • Identify patterns • Demonstrate confidence in employee • Allow for both • Supervisor’s advice and • Idea generation by both • Employee • Supervisor

23. Guidelines for Giving Praise • Be sincere – only give praise when it is deserved • Give praise about specific behaviors or results • Take your time • Be comfortable with act of praising • Emphasize the positive

24. Giving Negative Feedback Managers avoid giving negative feedback due to: • Negative reactions and consequences • Negative experiences in the past • Playing “god” • Need for irrefutable and conclusive evidence

25. Negative feedback is most useful when it: • Identifies warning signs and performance problem is still manageable • Clarifies unwanted behaviors and consequences • Focuses on behaviors that can be changed • Comes from a credible source • Is supported by hard data

26. Feedback Sessions should always answer: (1) • How is your job going? • Do you have what you need to do your job? • Are you adequately trained? • Do you have the skills and tools you need to do your job?

27. Feedback Sessions should always answer: (2) • What can be done to improve? • Job • Product • Services • How can you better serve your customers? • Internal • External

28. Supervisory roles in managing performance • Judge • Evaluate performance • Allocate rewards • Coach • Help employee solve performance problems • Identify performance weaknesses • Design developmental plans

29. Performance Review Formal Meetings Possible types of formal meetings: • System Inauguration • Self-Appraisal • Classical Performance Review • Merit/Salary Review • Developmental Plan • Objective Setting

30. Steps to take before meeting: • Give at least 2 weeks notice • Block sufficient time • Arrange to meet in a private location without interruptions

31. Explanation of meeting purpose Employee self-appraisal Supervisor & employee share rating and rationale Developmental discussion Employee summary Rewards discussion Follow-up meeting arrangement Approval and appeals process discussion Final recap Merged Performance Review MeetingComponents

32. Fightresponse Blaming others Staring at supervisor Raising voice Other aggressive responses Flight response Looking/turning away Speaking softly Continually changing the subject Quickly agreeing without basis Other passive responses Possible defensive behaviors of employees

33. To prevent/reduce defensive behaviors • Establish and maintain rapport • Be empathetic • Observe verbal and nonverbal cues • Minimize threats • Encourage participation

34. When defensiveness is unavoidable: • Recognize it • Allow its expression • Accept employee’s feelings • Ask for additional information and clarification (if appropriate) If situation becomes intolerable • Reschedule the meeting for a later time

35. Quick Review • Coaching • Coaching Styles • Coaching Process • Performance Review Meetings