"Research carried out on full time employees born after 1980 reported – 74% frequently feel 'in the dark' about how their managers and peers think they're performing at work."
Wakefield Research 2015
WHAT IS PRACTICAL PERFORMANCE CONVERSATIONS?
Practical Performance Conversations is a program designed for participants to learn and practice the four skills and four conversations aimed at improving and increasing confidence and trust in conversations regarding performance whilst reducing perceptions of blame and judgement.
Many current performance conversations focus too much on holding people accountable for past behaviour at the expense of improving current performance and to grow people for the future. In contrast, regular and consistent conversations discussing performance and development changes the focus to one focused on the future for building capabilities in people.
Highlighting the gaps in what people want from their managers and what they receive in terms of performance management, Blanchard (2016) reported the following results:
|
Employees… |
Want |
Receive |
|
Want to have goal setting conversations often or all the time |
70% |
36% |
|
Want to have goal review conversations often or all the time |
73% |
26% |
|
Want performance feedback conversations often or all the time |
67% |
29% |
|
Would like to solicit support on their projects from their manager |
63% |
18% |
In addition, research carried out on full time employees born after 1980 (Wakefield Research 2015) reported:
- 74% frequently feel ‘in the dark’ about how their managers and peers think they’re performing at work;
- 47% feel that receiving a performance review makes them feel like they can’t do anything right;
- 69% see their company’s performance process as flawed and yet they acknowledge they depend on it for their future growth and development.
With this background, the morning program provides participants with the knowledge and skills for carrying out the four essential conversations predictably and consistently. Participants learn and practice the four performance conversations skills:
- Listen to Learn – focus on what the other person is saying;
- Inquire for Understanding – ask open ended questions and focus the person on moving forward;
- Tell Your Truth – avoiding blame or judgement as you focus the person on moving forward; and
- Express Confidence – highlight strengths, previous successes, qualities and skills aligning to the goal/task.
Then in the afternoon, we build capability by combining 2 aligning performance conversation skills (noted above) we then practice the performance conversations as outlined below:
- Goal setting – collaboratively discussing and refining ‘what a good job looks like’;
- Praising – ensuring recognition is provided for correct behaviours and results related to a specific goal/task;
- Redirecting – providing a path to shift back towards the goal, when behaviours or results are not meeting expectations; and
- Wrapping Up – the process of discussing what happened and what have we learnt from the experience, in essence a continuous improvement performance conversation.