4 Actions to Increase the Performance of Your Team

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Here's 4 quick steps to think more clearly about performance management in your organization.

1. Articulate your goals clearly

Goals need to be, at minimum, measurable and time bound and owned by someone

Take an extra moment to ensure the goals being tracked are the ones that make the most difference to the business.

2. Shorten the feedback loop

Manager and employee conversations should happen regularly.

• Weekly is ideal for check-ins and status reporting.

• Monthly is fine for taking a little extra time to talk about how the work is being done and keeps the performance management conversation from feeling like it’s a “big deal.”

• Quarterly post-mortems and evaluations help mark progress and allow for a new set of goals to be established.

• Annual performance reviews suffer from being difficult, cumbersome, and slow. There is little benefit in talking about February’s outcomes in December.

3. Make the progress visible

People play the game differently when there is a clear scorecard.

4. Deliver corrective feedback professionally

Sharp criticism, name-calling, yelling at and berating team members rarely promotes the kind of future performance desired by the organization. There is a way todeliver feedback gracefully. The goal of any conversation about behavior should be to increase the kind of behavior you want to see in the future.