Over the past few years coaching managers in organisations, I have been privileged to assist managers on their growth journeys towards increased effectiveness. Below are some of the valuable lessons and observations they have shared with me on their journeys.

Managing performance has been an ongoing challenge for even the most experienced managers due to the “typical thinking” about performance management discussions.

The typical thinking about performance discussions, which create pitfalls and set the manager as well as the employee up for failure, is:

• A task-oriented company culture emphasising mainly the tracking of target deliverables during the performance discussion;
• Managers feeling safe with quantitative measures only and don’t attempt to even look at qualitative measures for more people-oriented KPI’s;
• Development plans normally consisting of “computer courses” to be pursued, no real indication of personal growth endeavours based on self awareness;
• No developmental element in discussion, unless raised by employee or when Personal Development Plan must be submitted to Human Resources;
• Managers lack the skills to venture into self awareness discussion with employees, which create a one-sided approach to the employee’s development;
• One-to-one discussions constantly rescheduled or cancelled by the manager communicating to the employee that ongoing coaching and performance feedback is not a priority for the manager and is thus highly de-motivating for the employee;
• Laborious and constantly changing “performance management templates” to be completed during the discussion and submitted to Human Resources;
• Managers requesting employees to complete the performance management template before the discussion – this creates endless debate about ratings between manager and employees and removes the focus on development from the discussion;
• More effective method in preparing for the performance management discussion is to ask employees to list their successes in various key performance areas being measured, which will then be discussed;
• Performance management discussions normally not prioritised and “squeezed” into the manager’s day, allowing a mere 30 minutes per employee at times;
• Employee often leave feeling de-motivated and disengaged;

Managers often leave feeling relieved, having completed a “tick-box” exercise.

 “If you do not invest time in employee feedback, you may spend twice the time solving problems that otherwise would not have developed. So in the end it pays off.”

Managing Director, Synergy Incorporated