3 Steps to Performance Improvement
By Cheri Torres, PhD. For more information on how to have conversations worth having in difficult or crucial situations, visit www.cwh.today. Download the free Conversation Toolkit; read Conversations Worth Having. Coming soon (September): CWH QuickStart Guide for Employee Evaluations and Performance Appraisals, will be available on Amazon and in digital format at www.cwh.today.
Have either of these or some variation ever happened to you?
- You try to help an employee improve their performance and instead of being grateful, they get defensive and justify their mistakes or blame someone else?
- It’s the third time you’re telling someone a better way to do something, and they just don’t seem to listen or get it.
If so, try these three simple steps for offering feedback.
Step 1. Tune in
First, tune in to your body-mindset. Are you feeling judgmental or irritated? If that’s the case, even if you try to be “gentle,” your tone, tenor, and body language will convey judgment, and your employee is going to feel criticized. When we feel criticized, we go into fight or flight mode, which makes it hard to take in feedback.
The first step is self-awareness and self-management
of your own mental and emotional state.
Before speaking with them, pause, breathe and get curious. Take a moment to remember that performance improvement is about learning and growth. Ask yourself:
- What might they need to learn?
- What do I and others know they don’t?
- What about their performance works well and what specifically needs improvement?
- Have I made the broader context of their work clear; do they understand the outcomes or importance of their work in the larger context?
- Are they aware of the problem and afraid to ask for help?
- What ideas might they have for improving their own performance?
- How can I best support them in being successful in their position?
Step 2. Make it about learning and growth
Make sure all your employees know you don’t expect perfection, and you do expect them to do their best, to ask questions for clarity, and to continuously learn and grow in their ability for excellence. Then make it real by establishing a safe environment where everyone can ask questions and make suggestions for improvement in processes. Make asking for clarity, coaching, or instructions a sign of competence instead of a sign of weakness or incompetence. Encourage people to ask for feedforward whenever appropriate. Feedforward is about sharing an idea, your work, or draft presentation and then asking others to tell you what they like about it—what resonates—and what suggestions they have to make it even better. Demonstrate yourself by asking your team for feedforward on something you are working on.
Next time you address poor performance, take a moment and pause. Breathe and remember, part of your job is coaching them for success.
CHERI TORRES
Step 3. Be outcomes-focused and inquiry-based
It’s critical to address poor performance and you can do so in a way that doesn’t trigger a fight or flight reaction. Begin by using a positive frame for the conversation. Instead of circling around what’s wrong, talk about desired outcomes. What is the performance you expect. Acknowledge areas of good performance and then inquire into the area(s) in question.
Ask generative questions, which are open-ended and come from genuine curiosity. They are not gotcha questions and they don’t offer solutions. Generative questions help make the invisible visible, create shared understanding, generate new knowledge, and inspire possibility.
Asking generative questions invites the employee to engage, to share any misguided assumptions or ideas they are holding, to clarify their thought processes, and to realize areas where they are confused or hold different understandings about what is expected.
Questions help employees self-discover where they need help and help you see how to best support their learning and growth.
Next time…
Next time you address poor performance, take a moment and pause. Breathe and remember, part of your job is coaching them for success. Adopt an attitude of curiosity, learning and growth. Get curious about the whole person in the context of this specific situation. Recall what they do well, their strengths, and contributions. Clarify for yourself what exactly the performance issue is and what outcome they need to achieve. Then invite a conversation worth having with them by asking questions, such as:
- How are doing with this assignment? What outcome(s) are you working toward?
- Did anyone ever show you how to do this?
- Do you have questions or are there areas that are not clear to you?
- What would excellence look like for you?
- What do you need to achieve that excellence?
Most people want to do a good job. Give them a chance and inspire them to do so!
CAREER ADVICE
GOV TALK
