Growth tips 30 seconds to business enlightenment.

Accountability is meaningless without consequences

28-Jul-2011

Without a doubt, the most stressful times in my management career have involved dealing with poor performing employees.  What follows is an approach to help you turn things around for the better.

Building a high performance team starts with you looking in the mirror and asking yourself some tough questions: Did you follow a disciplined hiring process and hire the right person in the first place?  Does your company have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, how you behave (core values), and a compelling reason why you are doing this (core purpose)?  Does your company have a winning strategy in place that will set everyone in the team up for future success?  Does every person have clear priorities and key performance indicators that they are accountable for?  Have you provided them with the tools, training and support they need to take full ownership of their role, and do a good job?  Are you holding them firmly accountable for meeting the performance standards for their role every month?  

If you can hand-on-heart answer “Yes” to all of these questions and you still feel like the employee is the problem, my friend John Spence refers to his “3-Ts” approach (Train, Transfer or Terminate).  Here is my take:

People do things for their reasons - not yours.  Ask yourself:  What is driving their behavior? How can you align their interests with the company’s interests?  How can you make high performance at work something they are truly motivated by?  

At your weekly 1 on 1 meeting with your team members (you do have one don’t you?) – if you have an employee who seems to be struggling, try asking the following questions:

1. What support do you need from me in order to achieve your goals?
2. What sort of reward do you think you should get if you do achieve your goals?
3. What should the ramifications be if you cannot achieve your goals?

Typically, the reward they ask for will be something you can both agree on – and it doesn’t have to be money. 

Evidence suggests that intrinsic motivating factors like mastery (seeing progress), autonomy (ability to choose “how” to achieve the goal), and purpose (a compelling reason “why”) are more motivating that extrinsic rewards.  

Motivation is all well and good, but that does not negate the fact that we all still have a performance standard we need to reach in our roles.  Their answer to the 3rd question will be revealing, often they themselves will suggest transfer (to another role) or termination.  I always say, “Accountability is meaningless without consequences”.  It is important we both agree what the positive consequences and negative consequences for performance are.      

We find that using business execution software is a great tool for objectively measuring everyone’s progress every step of the way.  Everyone in the whole team can see those who are not performing – and it makes facilitating their removal from the team so much easier.  There are no surprises.  In fact, people who are unable to make the grade, tend to remove themselves with this approach.

On the plus side, everyone in the whole team can see who your “A” Players are, and it makes acknowledging and recognizing their good performance so much easier also.