Effective Communication is Key to Performance Management

Photo by Maranda Vandergriff on Unsplash

When we hear the term ‘performance management’, many of us think of performance reviews which include numeric ranking scales or scorecards measuring various business measurements.  

While it’s true that effective Performance Management must include metrics in order to provide substance and accountability, the real key to performance management is communication.  Everyone including the business owner needs to have someone; a trusted advisor, board member or manager, to help them process the data that supports performance management.

Having performance data is just the first step.  Communication is needed to interpret the results, talk about successes, identify barriers, and determine next steps.  Because employees sometimes feel threatened when discussing their performance, it’s especially important to pay extra attention to how the message is being delivered and received.  Keeping an on-going and consistent dialogue going related to performance, will also make the conversations easier to have and less threatening to the individual.

Does Your Culture Embrace Measurement?

Photo by Charles 🇵🇭 on Unsplash

If you ask your employees to rank how important measurement is in your organization, how would most respond?  Would they perceive measurement is important but also feel their own performance isn’t measured?

The plain fact is that some companies are culturally resistant to change and resistant to measurement.  It’s possible that resistance comes from a fear of accountability.  But without accurate measurement, decisions are often made on how a program ‘feels’ or how much an initiative is liked by employees.

If your organization doesn’t currently have a measurement culture, it’s important to first educate employees on the importance of metrics to facilitate growth and innovation.  Gaining buy-in at the emotional level is an important first step to gaining acceptance and participation.

In Sales—We Get What We Pay For

Photo by Aidan Bartos on Unsplash

I talk to a lot of business owners about their sales process and sales teams as part of our planning and performance work and I sometimes hear the complaint that the sales team is not focused on the right things. 

What I have found as a common theme among these organizations regardless of industry, is that in sales, we get what we pay for. 

Determining a comp plan for a sales team can be tricky and there are specialists who can help work out the finer points of a plan.  But it’s helpful to start with the simple question: “what are the most important activities and behaviors you need from your sales team?” 

If you’re only paying commission on new sales, don’t expect your sales people to spend a lot of time servicing existing customers.  If your sales people have a large book of business that produces enough repeat sales to sustain their income, then don’t expect them to go out prospecting for new accounts.  The key is to create alignment between your expectations, the activities you want and the behavior you’re rewarding.

Why Do We Plan?

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Why do we plan?  It’s a simple question, with multiple answers, all of them correct.  We plan because we need a roadmap for where we’re headed and what our preferred future state should look like.  We plan because we need goals—concrete outcomes that we want to achieve.  And we plan because it helps us to create focus around what is important.

All those reasons are valid and correct, but when it comes right down to it, the most important reason we plan, is to change behavior.  Without a plan we’re most likely to continue the behaviors we’re currently exhibiting and that won’t get us to a different outcome!  Lack of behavior change is also why the benefit of most planning exercises is not realized.  Organizations put 90% of their effort into creating the plans and 10% or less of their effort towards changing the behaviors that will be necessary to implement the plan.  Remembering “why we plan” can change the way you organize your next planning session.

Strong Performance Management Requires ‘Soft’ Leadership

Photo by timJ on Unsplash

Strong performance management requires soft leadership.  Soft meaning the ability to be empathetic, listen, reflect and ask clarifying questions as in ‘soft skills’ rather than soft meaning squishy or ineffective.  Strong performance management requires more than just intellect and technical knowledge--emotional and social intelligence are what make the difference.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to process emotional informational quickly and accurately, to recognize one’s own emotions as they happen, and to immediately understand their effects on oneself and on others.  Effective performance management is instrumental in insuring that the critical projects in your organization get implemented in a timely basis.  But intelligently using emotion to consistently build relationships and achieve group goals is far more difficult than say, learning how to read a balance sheet or do financial forecasting.  An organization needs to first recognize this fact, and then make a concerted effort to develop and nurture the skill of emotional intelligence in its leaders.