Improving Performance is as easy as 123
Ok, maybe not! But it doesn’t take a business guru to tell you that if you want your company to thrive, you need to make sure that your staff are firing on all cylinders. Of course, though, as is often the case when it comes to the tricky business of managing people, this can be much easier said than done.
If you want to achieve big things, you need clear and effective processes in place to help you to get there. Your line managers play a huge role in creating a productive and high-performing culture, and you need to ensure that you’re driving them in the right direction.
Here, I share some of my top tips for encouraging your line managers to step into their roles and play an active part in improving their team’s performance.
- Create procedures that underpin your objectives
Your line managers can often only operate within the constraints that you provide them with. If you want them to excel in particular areas, you need to create a framework that allows them to do so. For this reason, it’s important that you consider what you already have in place that helps staff to reach their full potential.
Do you have a policy that outlines how often and in what format performance discussion should happen? Is there something in place that ensures the work is being carried out? Who ultimately chases things up to ensure that procedures are being followed? It’s not necessarily about ticking boxes, but you do need to create systems that encourage the day-to-day tasks to be carried out.
- Give your managers the confidence and skills they need to have meaningful discussions
Unfortunately, making sure that performance discussions are taking place is only the first hurdle. It’s not so much about frequency, as it is about the quality of the conversations that are happening.
At the end of the day, talking about performance and addressing areas of concern can be daunting, even for the most experienced line managers. It’s important that you give them the opportunity to hone their skills, and to keep developing them on a regular basis. Consider how you can do this within your business. It may be the case that you need to roll out some training sessions, or perhaps you need to have your own one-to-one discussions with your management team so you can better understand how you can support them.
- Encourage your managers to facilitate career development in their teams
Performance management isn’t just about fixing problems and making sure that the work gets done within a specified frame of time. It’s about looking ahead towards the future and ensuring that your business has the right kind of talent to drive operations forward and achieve growth.
The key takeaway here is that if your employees aren’t being given a chance to flourish, they’re likely to start looking elsewhere. Do you really want to lose your talented members of staff to your competitors? Be sure that your line managers are having open and honest conversations with their direct reports about where they see themselves in the next five years, and that information is taken seriously and considered when it comes to planning the direction of the business as a whole.
If line management capability is something that you want to improve, I can help. I believe that a successful business is created when leadership teams are given the tools they need to excel.
With just this in mind I’ve just launched my new High Performing Business Programme, which is designed to help business owners and leaders succeed through their people.
I’ve found a way ‘to bottle’ my 30+ years (I think that bottle would be finest Scotch whiskey by the way) of HR and People Management experiences and insights and distil them into one neatly wrapped package that will guide you right through from getting the right people on board, to implementing the right people practices and processes. So, if any of the following sounds familiar to you, I would highly recommend you swing along to one of my exclusive workshops in September and October:
- Are you about to embark on your growth plan and recognise the need to get some expert help and advice?
- Are you a business owner or MD of a business that’s struggling to achieve its goals?
- Do you question yourself day after day about why your people aren’t delivering the results you need?
- Are you worried that you just don’t have the right people in your leadership and management team to deliver the results you want?
- Are you a successful business that’s growing and things are just beginning to go wrong, and you don’t know why?
Prices for each workshop are £75 per person, but a limited number of early bird tickets are exclusively available for FREE to my newsletter subscribers. But beware, once these early bird free tickets have gone, they are gone, so don’t risk it – book it.
Alternatively, if you can’t make it to my workshop, then drop me a line, give me a call or book an appointment at one of my Summer HR Clinics and HR Director strategy sessions and we can have an initial discussion about how I could bring your management team the skills they need to take your business to the next level.
