Performance management is a very broad and decidedly difficult subject and one that many leaders are confronted with on a daily basis. Because we have to be fair: even if this activity is a foundation of management, can be one of the most unpleasant for a leader.
At the end is not always nice to express an opinion on someone else performance, but working on it by pairing normal one-on-ones combined with regular goal setting and constant monitoring can make performance management part of everyone’s skills, but most of all, make it a “natural” activity.
As a starting point, you have to think that, for sure, performance management benefits from a very simple tool: if it is stimulated by asking the correct questions. Obviously restricting the field of performance management to putting on the table a few right questions would be limiting, but the following represent macro-categories of questions that can then be modulated on the needs of your organisation.
In particular, it is interesting to stimulate discussion with your resources on these topics:
- Picture clearly what means succeeding: The more clear you are on what a goal is and how will be achieved, the easier will be to monitor it and, most of all, will clear all possible shadows of doubt around it.
- Reaching a goal is a road paved (also) by the help of others. No one achieves things alone and for sure you will be needing to have specific resources, human or material, involved. What supports will help you succeed? (human, financial, knowledge, material resources)
- Looking ahead to problems. What could be possible to encounter as obstacles? For example, it could be competing goals, “environmental” issues, lack of resources / equipment / people, lack of clarity of role or concurring tasks not correctly prioritised …). The more you and your resource are setting the stage, the more will be easier to find an avoidance or mitigation strategy
- Put it in context and clarify. Frame goals and feedback inside a wider context and take away any confusion they may have been surrounded.
- Performing happens with bilateral support. How can we help each other or I as a manager can intervene (for example by postponing the goal, removing it, modifying it …)? The more you make the help effective, the easier will be.
- Monitor and correct. All the plans and all the goals do not have a straight path to be achieved. How will you / we know that the path deviates with respect to the goal? How can you correct it?
