An example of tracking positive performance and praise of an employee in an employee performance log
A great manager needs to know the good stuff that is happening on the team. What you track shouldn’t be only areas you’d like to correct. In fact, it should be mostly positive! People come to work and try to get good things done all the time. If the manager doesn’t know what those things are, then the manager is missing lots of opportunities to provide thanks and praise. Also, the manager is going to quickly get a reputation for ignoring good work.
I advocate for creating an employee performance log to track employee behaviors. In previous articles, I provide a beginner version, an intermediate version, and an advanced version. While such a log can and should be used for tracking corrective feedback and potential issues with an employee (an example is provided here), a great manager should exert a great amount of energy identifying and understanding the great behaviors that are observed on the job, and the impact the performance of the team.
So today I provide an example of how this can be done on the employee performance log – a positive example!
Employees leaving bad managers – what kind of actionable feedback does this provide the manager?
The Manager by Designsm blog advocates a new field, “Management Design” that encourages the creation and ongoing improvement of managers by design, rather than by accident. Today’s “designs” are usually a series of accidents and default efforts by individuals who have been put in the position to manage. Too frequently, managers are required to make up their own management practices, and these practices end up being highly variable and often result in common management mistakes and cost a lot to organizations and the economy.
One practice that rarely occurs when a manager is left to his or her own devices to develop management practices is the creation of a method for employees to provide feedback to the manager. The result is a series of default methods that managers use to get feedback on their managerial performance. This is the first in a series of blog entries on how managers receive feedback on their performance.
It is important that managers receive performance feedback on how they manage, as performance feedback provides the most immediate means for managers to change what they are doing for the better. Performance feedback can stop bad behaviors quickly, and encourage good behaviors over the long term. Because of this, the Manager by Designsm blog provides many tips on how to provide performance feedback to an employee, as this is a key skill in being a great manager.
But who provides the feedback to the manager? And who would be able to provide feedback on the effectiveness of a manager’s actions than the manager’s employees? Aren’t the employees receiving the “managerial service” from the managers to help them be more productive and be happier in their role?
However, there aren’t many channels for employees to give feedback to their manager.
In today’s discussion, we’ll explore a common way managers receive feedback on their management: The employee who leaves, also colloquially known as “voting with your feet.” How effective is this at providing feedback to a manager? Let’s see: Read more
An example of how to use a log to track performance of an employee
In previous entries of this blog, I advocate for managers to use a log to track performance incidents of notes. I provide a beginner version, an intermediate version, and an advanced version. This is a log that can be kept in a simple spreadsheet, and has many benefits to help you become a better manager – namely – you can remember what was going on with various people on your team! Other benefits and a discussion of the potential drawbacks and pitfalls are found here.
In today’s post, I provide an example for how to use the performance log. First, I don’t advocate using the log for everything that goes on with each of your employees. This is too much work and likely will create a lot of noise for what would have been a useful tool. Instead, I advocate to use it only for performance issues that you want to track and have an impact if the behavior changes. The focus in this article is on negative behaviors that need to be corrected, but a performance log should also be used for positive behaviors that need to be reinforced.
Here’s the scenario:
Trevor has been observed sleeping during meetings. In some instances, meeting participants wake him up, and in other incidents they just started throwing office supplies at his head. This hasn’t happened all the time, but he has been observed nodding off in other situations, and his previous boss from a year ago has mentioned it to you, in a joking manner. People have told you that he has said that he’s stayed out too late a few times lately. Read more
How to get out of really useless meetings
In my previous article, I propose a simple set of questions to determine the usefulness or uselessness of a given meeting. In it, I explore what to do when you can answer “Yes” to one or more of the questions. Today, I explore what to do when you answer “Yes” to NONE of the questions. That means it’s a really bad meeting and is worthless to you and probably a bunch of other people. You should get out of it.
First, let’s review the five questions for determining the meeting’s usefulness:
Do the other attendees bring some value to me? (Y/N)
Do I bring value to the other attendees? (Y/N)
Does the anticipated value of the meeting exceed what I can get accomplished if I don’t attend? (Y/N)
Will the meeting content get me un-stuck, make my work better, easier, more efficient, or compelling? (Y/N)
Will I have to do something differently in my job as a result of the meeting (Y/N)
Now think of a meeting that you are dreading to attend. Why are you dreading it? It’s because you answered “No” to all five questions. You should get out of that meeting. Here are some suggestions for how to do it: Read more
How to get out of what seem to be useless meetings
In previous blog entries, I propose a simple set of questions to determine the usefulness or uselessness of a meeting. In today’s post, I’ll help you use this framework to get out of the useless meetings! Ready? Let’s go!
Ok, so the first thing to do is to become familiar with the set of questions you need to ask before accepting or walking into the meeting:
Do the other attendees bring some value to me? (Y/N)
Do I bring value to the other attendees? (Y/N)
Does the anticipated value of the meeting exceed what I can get accomplished if I don’t attend? (Y/N)
Will the meeting content get me un-stuck, make my work better, easier, more efficient, or compelling? (Y/N)
Will I have to do something differently in my job as a result of the meeting (Y/N)
Now think of a meeting that you consider worthless and ask yourself these five questions in regards to this meeting.
Management Design: The “designs” we have now: Send them to training (part 2)
This is the second part of my examination of Management Training Programs as a management design. In the first part of this series, I describe how the impact of a management training class inevitably fades or never even takes hold in the first place. In today’s article, I examine a few forces outside of the training class that have the possibility, if not the likelihood, of creating different or even the exact opposite behaviors from what was covered in management training.
The scenario is this: A new or existing manager attends a management training program. This program can range from a few hours to several days. Then what happens? In many programs, nothing. The manager is expected to go and apply what was learned in training. In others, a mentor might be assigned. While I’m supportive of training and mentoring as a component of management design, current management design tends to be too weak to achieve this goal, often to detrimental effect. See if these conditions apply to your organization:
Is it possible for the manager to do something different (or even the opposite) from was covered in management training class?
Management Design: The “designs” we have now: Send them to training (part 1)
The Manager by Design blog advocates for a new field called Management Design. The idea is that the creation of great and effective Managers in organizations should not occur by accident, but by design. Currently, the creation of great managers falls under diverse, mostly organic methods, which create mixed results at best and disasters at worst. This is the latest of a series that explores the existing designs that create managers in organizations.
Today I discuss a common and consciously-created current design to create managers: The Management Development Training Class.
In this design, the new or existing manager goes to a training class to learn the skills necessary to be a better manager. Awesome! This is very much needed, as there are many mistakes that managers make, and something needs to be done to make sure both new and existing managers don’t make them.
The training classes for teaching management practices can be internal (developed inside the organization), or external (developed and perhaps delivered outside the organization). They can take place over the course of a few hours, or perhaps over several days. Some management development programs very consciously take place over a series of months and have regular check-ins on how it is going with the new manager. More sophisticated management development programs will have mentor programs.
I’ve very supportive of any effort to improve the quality of management skills, and the management development class is a great way to start, and should be a cornerstone of any management design. So as a start, let’s give cheers to the management development programs out there!
But how does a management training program stack up as design? Read more
Let’s clarify what “dealing with ambiguity” means
Managers should help bring clarity to their team and make decisions on the best available information. That is a key role of managers. But somehow this gets lost. Let’s look at the concept of “dealing with ambiguity” and see how this can happen:
In many work environments, one of the key competencies managers and employees are expected to have is “dealing with ambiguity.” For example, if you look at Microsoft’s education competencies (listed here), “dealing with ambiguity” is defined as follows:
Dealing with Ambiguity: Can effectively cope with change; can shift gears comfortably; can decide and act without having the total picture; can comfortably handle risk and uncertainty.
With this definition, it appears that one who “deals with ambiguity” could be someone who accepts the ongoing state of ambiguity. That is, “dealing with ambiguity” means “living such that ambiguous things stayed ambiguous.” Or in other words, “Keep things ambiguous—that’s OK.”
Nowhere in the description of this competency, surprisingly, is the ongoing effort to reduce ambiguity.
Tenets of Management Design: Identify and reward employees who do good work
In this post, I continue to explore the tenets of the new field this blog pioneers, “Management Design.” Management Design is a response to the poorly performing existing designs that are currently used in creating managers. These current designs describe how managers tend to be created by accident, rather than by design, or that efforts to develop quality and effective managers fall short.
So today’s tenet of Management Design: Design ways that managers consistently identify and reward employees who do good work
This seems like a somewhat obvious tenet that should occur naturally in any organization. The employees who do good work should be identified and rewarded. However, it doesn’t seem to work out that way enough. How many times have we seen it that underperforming employees jockey for visibility and accolades, while the high performing employees feel like they are being ignored or taken for granted? How many times have we seen managers not give thanks or offer praise when it is well earned?
Examples of when to offer thanks and when to offer praise
Here are some thoughts on when to thank your employees and when to praise your employees:
Thanks is connected to acknowledgement of work being done
You thank your employees when they do something that is within the regular job duties, and it marks some delivered item by the employee.
The threshold for earning thanks can be very, very low. Showing up to a meeting can earn thanks. An email that responds to your question can earn thanks. An employee who followed up on something for you can earns thanks. An employee who is simply does their job – and the moment they finish the part of the job they worked on – can earn thanks. Someone completing a car repair. That can earn a “Thank you for completing that repair” from the manager. Someone returning from a sales call. That can earn a “Thank your for doing that sales call.”
When you become a manager, expect to be giving a lot of “Thanks” to your employees. Unless it is already obvious what you are thanking them for, you will want to specify what you are thanking your employee for:
“Thanks for completing that job.”
“Thanks for your input.”
“Thanks for getting here on time.”
