It’s no secret by now that the days of command-and-control management are over. After enduring a global pandemic and now going through The Great Resignation, today’s managers can no longer bark orders and expect people to stay. Today’s new generation of workers want leaders who care about their professional development and well-being. In other words, they want to be coached, not commanded.
Are you wasting time on the wrong things?
When you’re managing the performance of others, there are three elements to the job: planning, day-to-day coaching and evaluation.
- Performance planning is when the manager works with the person to set goals, discuss and prioritize job functions and clarify performance standards. When managers do performance planning well, the person knows exactly what to do and what a good job will look like on each task.
- Day-to-day coaching involves the everyday interactions managers have with their direct reports. This is where leaders help people reach their targets by monitoring performance, providing direction and support and cheering them on. When managers do this well, people feel empowered and motivated.
- Performance evaluation is when the manager conducts a formal performance review and evaluates the person’s performance against yearly goals.
When I ask managers which of these elements takes the most time, they almost always say performance evaluation. Sometimes, I hear complaints and frustration about the forms, red tape and deadlines involved in the evaluation process. There’s way too much emphasis on the process, rather than on what’s important: the person’s performance.
Invest most of your time in day-to-day coaching
To be effective, managers should spend most of their time on the day-to-day coaching aspect of performance management.
It’s true that you must take some time up front on performance planning, because all good performance starts with clear goals. And performance evaluation can’t be overlooked. As my friend Peter Drucker used to say, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
But those elements of performance management are like two slices of bread — it’s what you put in between them that makes a good sandwich!
The best managers know that once goals are set, their job is to turn the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside down, so that now they work for their people — clarifying tasks, asking smart questions and checking in to see how they can help them move forward to reach their goals.
Unfortunately, the day-to-day coaching step in the performance management system is missing in most organizations. Our company recently conducted a study that revealed significant gaps between what direct reports want, and need from their leaders and what they are receiving.
Typically, goals are set during the annual performance review. But all too often, managers simply file these goals away and forget them. Leaving their direct reports to sink or swim, they go to an abdicating style until the next annual performance review— or until a problem develops. That’s when too many leaders become seagull managers — they fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everybody and fly out. This is exactly the kind of management behavior that lowers morale and leads to employee resignations.
People generally come to work wanting to do a good job. If they aren’t doing the job the way a manager wants them to, it’s usually because something is getting in the way. Perhaps the goals and priorities aren’t clear. Maybe the direct report needs more training. Regardless of the cause, it’s the manager’s job to discover what’s wrong and help the person overcome that barrier.
Give people what they can’t give themselves
Madeleine Homan Blanchard, our company’s chief coaching architect, helps leaders improve their day-to-day coaching skills. She describes it this way: I ask questions that help leaders put themselves in their people’s shoes and realize that if their people knew how to do it the way the leader wanted it, they would be doing it. One leader got the “a-ha” this morning that “just because it is apparent to me, does not mean it is apparent to anyone else.”
That’s exactly right. To boost performance, managers need to give people what they can’t give themselves and provide the direction and support they need to succeed. When managers focus on day-to-day coaching, the once-dreaded performance evaluation becomes an occasion to celebrate accomplishments. Their people win, they win, their department wins and their organization wins.
