Quick Tips to Identify Performance Needs
Sharon Feltham, Excellerate
Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
How many times have you asked these two questions in conversations with your team?
They run like an automated script in workplaces around the world. We hear them in every team meeting, throughout the business planning cycle, during improvement and change management projects and each time a manager meets with a team member to begin performance planning. And we ask them so we can define the gap to develop “the plan” to get to where we need to be. Then we continue to ask the same questions as we evaluate our progress - adjusting our plans and strategy based on the answers. It’s familiar territory for most of us.
It’s no different with coaching.
The manager/coach’s role is to help their employees ask and then answer these questions as part of an objective and balanced self-evaluation process. When employee's can do this well, their assessment of their current situation is more accurate. They create more compelling goals, achieve clarity on how these will be accomplished which generates higher levels of motivation and commitment.
Guiding others through a self-evaluation process can be challenging though. Most of us find it difficult to be objective about our own strengths, weaknesses and potential. The following five points offer suggestions to help you coach your team and employees through this process.
1. Ask then Offer
Ask your team member first what they want to work on. Ask them why they want it and what steps they feel would help them to achieve this. Only offer your ideas and suggestions after going through these steps
2. Gain the Buy In
Asking your team member to evaluate his or her own performance first not only helps them to identify the gaps but it helps you to determine if they recognize the areas that need improvement. Without this recognition, you will find it very difficult to secure their commitment to any action.
3. Use Specific Examples
It’s often easier for someone to self evaluate their performance after they have completed a specific project or task. This provides a more tangible point of reference, compared to reflecting generally on overall performance. Ask them to analyse the situation, to identify what they did well, ineffective actions or behaviours and what they might try differently in the future.
4. Provide a Balanced View
We are often our own worst critics. If a team member’s self-evaluation is overly critical and fails to identify improvements or their strengths ask, “‘What did you do/achieve that you are proud of?” Then take the time to reinforce their feedback by praising their achievements and offering your own observations.
5. Eliminate Fuzzy Thinking with Simple Sentences
Use the team member’s self-evaluation to begin the process of goal setting. Ask them to define their goals and summarise their problems into single, simple sentences. This helps them to crystallise their thinking. Then they can clearly articulate their goals for themselves and to others, define critical factors to be addressed, which in turn provides information to begin building better action plans.
Bonus Tip! Dealing with Resistance
If a team member is resisting addressing an issue or responding to a request you may have made, help them to examine the value they are receiving from resisting. Try asking, "By avoiding what you said you were going to do suggests that you're receiving some value in resisting. What might that be?”
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