Performance Management

“How do great managers turn the last three Keys every day, with every employee?”

The exemplary managers Gallup interviewed described a variety of ideas for turning the final three Keys. But their real challenge lay in disciplining themselves to implement these ideas with each of their people, despite the day-to-day pressures of getting the actual work done. They met this challenge by following a routine, a “performance management” routine. This routine, of meetings and conversations, forced them to keep focused on the progress of each person’s performance, even though many other business demands were competing for their attention.

Each manager’s routine was different, reflecting his or her unique style. Nonetheless, hidden within this diversity we found four characteristics common to the “performance management” routines of great managers.

First, the routine is simple. Great managers dislike the complexity of most company-sponsored performance appraisal schemes. They don’t want to waste their time trying to decipher the alien terms and to fill out bureaucratic forms. Instead they prefer a simple format that allows them to concentrate on the truly difficult work: what to say to each employee and how to say it.

Second, the routine forces frequent interaction between the manager and the employee. It is no good meeting once a year, or even twice a year, to discuss an employee’s performance, style, and goals. The secret to helping an employee excel lies in the details: the details of his particular recognition needs, of his relationship needs, of his goals, and of his talents/nontalents. A yearly meeting misses these details. It degenerates into a bland discussion about “potential” and “opportunities for improvement.” The only way to capture the details is to meet at a minimum once a quarter, sometimes even more frequently. At these meetings the specifics of a success or a disappointment are fresh in the memory. The employee can talk about how a particular meeting or interaction made him “feel.” The manager can recall the same meeting and suggest subtle changes in approach or a different way of interpreting the same event. The conversation can be vivid, the advice practical. Furthermore, in the intervening weeks between meetings the manager and the employee are motivated to concentrate on events as they occur, because each knows that a forum for discussing these events will soon arise. Frequent performance meetings force both manager and employee to pay attention. (If you are worried about the time drain inherent in frequent performance meetings, remember that the best managers spend, on average, only one hour per quarter per person discussing performance.)

Furthermore, frequent performance meetings make it so much easier to raise the always sensitive subject of the employee’s areas of poor performance. If you meet only once or twice a year, you are forced to drop your criticisms on the employee all at once, like a bomb. When the employee inevitably recoils, you then have to dredge your memory for examples to support your argument. But by meeting frequently, you can avoid this battle of wills. You can introduce areas of poor performance little by little over time, and each time you raise the subject, you can refer to recent, vivid examples. Your criticisms will be easier to swallow and the conversation more productive.

Third, the routine is focused on the future. Great managers do use a review of past performance to highlight discoveries about the person’s style or needs. However, their natural inclination is to focus on the future. They want to discuss what “could be,” rather than allowing the conversation to descend into recriminations and postmortems that lead nowhere. Therefore, while the first ten minutes of the meeting may be used for review, the rest of the time is devoted to the truly creative work: “What do you want to accomplish in the next few months? What measuring sticks will we use? What is your most efficient route toward those goals? How can I help?” In their view, these kinds of conversations are more energetic, more productive, and more satisfying.

Last, the routine asks the employee to keep track of his own performance and learnings. In many companies “performance appraisal” is something that happens to an employee. She is a passive observer, waiting to receive the judgment of her manager. If she is lucky, she may be asked to rate herself before she sees how the company rates her. But even here she is still reactive. She knows that the purpose of her self-assessment is to serve as a counterpoint or comparison with the assessment of her manager. So her self-assessment becomes a negotiating tool — “I’ll pitch mine high and we’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle” — rather than an honest evaluation of her own performance.

The best managers reject this. They want a routine that asks each employee to keep track of her own performance and learnings. They want her to write down her goals, her successes, and her discoveries. This record is not designed to be evaluated or critiqued by her manager. Rather, its purpose is to help each employee take responsibility for her performance. It serves as her mirror. It is a way to step outside herself. Using this record, she can see how she plans to affect the world. She can weigh the effectiveness of those plans. She can be accountable to herself.

Naturally, great managers want to discuss and agree to each employee’s short-term performance goals, but the rest of the record — her discoveries about herself, the descriptions of new skills she has learned, the letters of recognition she may have received — are part of a private document. If the employee is fortunate enough to have a trusting relationship with her manager, she may feel comfortable sharing the whole record — successes, failures, perceived strengths. But this is not the point of it. The point is to encourage the employee to keep track of her own performance and learnings. The point is self-discovery.

Recent research into adult learning reveals that students stay in school longer and learn more if they are expected to direct and record their progress. Great managers realized this long ago and now apply it with their employees.

These four characteristics — simplicity, frequent interaction, focus on the future, and self-tracking — are the foundation for a successful “performance management” routine. In the basic routine below we describe some of the questions many great managers ask to learn about their employees and the format they usually follow. Our purpose is not to tell you exactly what to say, or how to say it, or to whom, because that would be cumbersome and artificial — you will of course want to adapt the questions and tools to your own talent and experience.

However, if you follow this basic routine and incorporate it successfully into your own style, you will give yourself the best chance possible to define the right outcomes, to focus on strengths, and to help each person find the right fit.

THE BASIC ROUTINE

The Strengths Interview

At the beginning of each year, or a week or two after the person has been hired, spend about an hour with him asking the following ten questions:

Q.l What did you enjoy most about your previous work experience?

What brought you here?

(If an existing employee) What keeps you here?

Q.2 What do you think your strengths are? (skills, knowledge, talent)

Q.3 What about your weaknesses?

Q.4 What are your goals for your current role? (Ask for scores and timelines)

Q.5 How often do you like to meet with me to discuss your progress?

Are you the kind of person who will tell me how you are feeling, or will I have to ask?

Q.6 Do you have any personal goals or commitment you would like to tell me about?

Q.7 What is the best praise you have ever received?

What made it so good?

Q.8 Have you had any really productive partnerships or mentors?

Why do you think these relationships worked so well for you?

Q.9 What are your future growth goals, your career goals?

Are there any particular skills you want to learn?

Are there some specific challenges you want to experience?

How can I help?

Q.10 Is there anything else you want to talk about that might help us work well together?

The main purpose of this session is to learn about his strengths, his goals, and his needs, as he perceives them. Whatever he says, even if you disagree with him, jot it down. If you want to help him be productive, you have to know where he is starting from. His answers will tell you where he thinks he is. During the course of the year it may be appropriate to help him change his opinions, but initially you are interested in seeing his world through his eyes.

During the course of the strengths interview he will tell you how often he wants to meet to discuss his progress with you (Q.5). Schedule the first performance planning meeting of the year at the interval he indicated. For the purposes of this description, we will assume he said, “Once every three months.”

The Performance Planning Meetings

To help him prepare, ask him to write down answers to these three questions before each meeting:

A. What actions have you taken? These should be the details of his performance over the last three months. He should include scores, rankings, ratings, and timelines, if available.

B. What discoveries have you made? These discoveries might be in the form of training classes he attended, or they might simply be new insights derived from an internal presentation he made, or a job-shadowing session in which he participated, or even a book that he read. Wherever they came from, encourage him to keep track of his own learning.

C. What partnerships have you built? These partnerships are the relationships he has formed. They might be new relationships or the strengthening of existing relationships. They might be relationships with colleagues or clients, professional relationships or personal ones. It is up to him to decide. Whatever he decides, it is important that he take responsibility for building his constituency, inside and outside the company.

At the beginning of the meeting ask him A, B, and C. Jot down his answers and keep a copy. He should keep his written copy. If he wants to share all of his written answers with you, wonderful, but don’t demand it. Either way, use his answers as a jumping-off point to discuss his performance over the last three months.

After about ten minutes direct the conversation toward the future, drawing on the following questions:

D. What is your main focus? What is his primary goal(s) for the next three months?

E. What new discoveries are you planning? What specific discoveries is he hoping to make over the next three months?

F. What new partnerships are you hoping to build? How is he planning to grow his constituency over the next three months?

Terms such as “discovery” or “partnership” may not fit your style or your company’s culture. You will know the right words to choose. But whatever your word choices, make sure that your conversation about his next three months extends beyond simple achievement goals. Suggest that he write down his answers. You should discuss his answers, agree to them, and then keep your copy. His answers will now serve as your specific expectations of him for the next three months.

After another three months have elapsed, ask him to write down his answers to A, B, and C, and once again, at your second performance planning meeting, ask him these three questions and use his answers to spur discussion about his performance. Then quickly move into a discussion about the future and ask him D, E, and F — once again, it will be helpful if you and he write down what he says and keep copies. As you talk through his successes, his struggles, and his goals, try to keep focusing on his strengths by setting expectations that are right for him, by helping him to perfect his style, and by discussing how you can run interference for him.

Repeat this routine at the next three-month interval, and the next, until the year cycle is complete.

By the end of the year you will have met at least four times. You will have reviewed his past and planned in detail his future progress. You will have learned more about his idiosyncrasies and, perhaps, have used what you learned to help him identify his true strengths and weaknesses more accurately. Perhaps he will have changed his mind about some of his opinions and some of his needs. You will have been close to him through some difficult times and through some successes. You will have disagreed on some things and agreed on much. But whatever happens, you will now be stronger partners. By meeting frequently, by listening, by paying attention, by advising, and by planning in detail, you will have developed a shared and realistic interest in his success. And, important, he will have a record of it all.

Career Discovery Questions

At some point during your performance planning meetings, the employee may want to talk about his career options. He may want to know where you think he should go next. A healthy career discussion rarely happens all at once. Instead it is a product of many different conversations, at many different times. However you choose to handle these conversations — and each will be unique, according to the potential and the performance of the individual employee — you need to ensure that, over time, two things happen. First, the employee needs to become increasingly clear about his skills, knowledge, and talents. Lacking this kind of clarity, he will be a poor partner as you and he together plan out his next career steps. Second, he needs to understand, in detail, what this next step would entail and why he thinks he would excel at it.

He must come to these understandings by himself. But you can help. You can use these five career discovery questions, at different times, to prompt his thinking:

Q.1 How would you describe success in your current role?

Can you measure it?

Here is what I think. (Add your own comments.)

Q.2 What do you actually do that makes you as good as you are?

What does this tell you about your skills, knowledge, and talents?

Here is what I think. (Add your own comments.)

Q.3 Which part of your current role do you enjoy the most?

Why?

Q.4 Which part of your current role are you struggling with?

What does this tell you about your skills, knowledge, and talent?

What can we do to manage around this?

Training? Positioning? Support system? Partnering?

Q.5 What would be the perfect role for you?

Imagine you are in that role. It’s three p.m. on a Thursday. What are you doing?

Why would you like it so much?

Here is what I think. (Add your own comments.)

These questions, scattered throughout the year, will function as cues to get the employee thinking in detail about his performance. Does he want to build his career by growing within his current role? Does he want to move into a new role? If so, what strength and satisfaction would he derive from it? These five questions won’t necessarily provide the answers. But, asked in the right way, at the right time, they will help the employee focus his thoughts, and he will come to know your thoughts. Together you will form a few firm conclusions about his present performance and his potential. Together you will now make better decisions about his future.