Time to think about what comes next

Are you postponing  thinking about performance management until the world has settled into a ‘new normal’?

I urge you to think again.

If ever there was a time that individual actions by employees could change the future for your organisation, your clients and even society – it is now.

Every one of your people needs to be talking to their manager about the things that really matter.

• If your organisation needs to re-think how to deliver services or products  – then performance conversations need to focus on stimulating fresh ideas and new ways of working.
• If cutting costs is critical – then every employee needs to examine their opportunity to reduce costs or even change entire cost structures.
• If finding new customers is critical …. You get the idea.

Too many employees at all levels believe there is little they or anyone else can do to impact organisation performance.  And the larger the organisation, the harder it is to feel one can make a difference.  So it is easy to feel helpless.  But of course, it’s only your people who can change things.  Because it is your people, working together, sharing ideas with each other and turning ideas into action who will create the future.

A conversation to motivate your colleagues

How are you going to move people from feeling powerless to taking action?  Here is a simple conversation plan – use it, adapt it, share it.

Focus on skills and strengths

• What skills have helped you get through the last year?  Which skills really made a difference to you?
• What strengths have helped you – perhaps you have developed high levels of patience, or become brilliant at improvising solutions at speed, or learnt how to motivate people you can’t be with in person.
• Thinking about the future, how can you use these skills and strengths to work out what comes next?

Overall, encourage your colleague to reflect on how they have already coped with challenges.

Show your colleague that they already had, or developed the skills they needed to cope over the past year.  Then help them see that they can do that again:   they know how to acquire new skills, so they can acquire more skills if they need them in future.   Use this observation to boost your colleague’s confidence that they can thrive in future no matter what happens.

Performance Conversations are critical right now!