Leader's Beacon | The Leadership Experts » Performance Management

Employee Performance: Terminate or Rehabilitate?

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:30:28 +0000

Today we look at the one or two bottom performing employees you might have on your team or in your company. It could be job performance related or it could be negativity or behavior problems. Can they be ‘fixed’ or should you let them go and move forward with hiring a replacement? An HR Manager [...]

How Leadership Impacts Profitability

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:30:21 +0000

At a gut level we know that leadership is important and necessary. As I think back over the many bosses I worked for, only a small fraction exhibited good leadership skills. And those good bosses… I still think back fondly on how they helped me along my career path. Even the good ones were far [...]

Managing Prima Donnas at Work

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:30:58 +0000

Do you have some employees or co-workers who think of themselves as extra special, indispensible and untouchable? Their superior attitude often ticks off the people who work with them. So today we look at the right and wrong way to deal with prima donnas in the workplace. Dealing With Prima Donnas at Work Employees and [...]

Leadership Malpractice

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:30:33 +0000

I was teaching a session to front line leaders this past week on how to coach, confront and correct employees when there is a gap between expected behavior and performance and the actual behavior and performance. Understandably, confronting and correcting conversations are not easy on the leader or the employee which can result in procrastination, [...]

Shift–From Evaluation to Coaching

Ian Cook — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:30:02 +0000

Gary Ridge, CEO of the highly successful company, WD-40 (the lubrication folks) believes that everyone in his firm should get an ‘A’ in goal achievement. Their performance management process reflects this emphasis… They begin by annually setting individual goals and performance standards (nothing new here) They mandate quarterly performance conversations with each employee (nice, but [...]

Coaching a Manager Who is Too Tough

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:30:45 +0000

In a previous post we examined a manager who was too easy on his team. In many cases an assignment will come in to work with a manager who has the opposite challenge – he or she is too tough on employees. Often these hard-nosed managers tend to work long hours, do the work his [...]

Pause to Reload

Ian Cook — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:30:54 +0000

Busy, busy, busy. Rush, rush, rush. Meet with team–call shipping–update spread sheet–check emails–meet with boss–finalize report–make two more calls–work on client presentation–attend strategy update meeting–write up the minutes–analyze production data–read market trend report–and on and on and on. If you are right now saying to yourself this “this is my life,” you’re not alone. But [...]

Coaching a Manager Who is Too Easy

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:30:42 +0000

The Plant Manager was becoming increasingly frustrated. His production manager was struggling to meet plant performance targets and was not getting his team to take ownership of achieving results. The initial diagnosis was that the production manager was being too easy on his team. As with most management problems, only two or three behaviours cause [...]

When Achievers Stall

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:30:33 +0000

High achievers are prone to enter a time in their career where they plateau or stall. Perhaps promotions are not coming as fast and furious as they once did or in some cases, they have achieved every goal they have set and have run out of challenges. Achievers will ask themselves, “Is this all there [...]

Accountability creates results and job satisfaction

Greg Schinkel — Tue, 31 May 2011 13:30:46 +0000

Accountability becomes mission-critical in challenging times. We need everyone in our organization to take ownership of results and make things happen. Creating an environment of accountability rests with management. Based on our 22 years of experience in organizational development and leadership training, we have discovered that managers systematically remove accountability. As a result the manager [...]

4 ways great leaders use the 4-Drive Model to impact employee’s motivation

Kurt Nelson — Sat, 21 May 2011 03:08:55 +0000

How leaders can impact employee’s motivation using the 4-Drive Theory The 4-Drive Theory of Employee Motivation states that there are four main drives that motivate employees, these are the drives to: Acquire & Achieve, to Bond & Belong, to be Challenged & Comprehend, and to Define & Defend. In order to maximize motivation leaders need [...]

Stressing Metrics Has a Downside

Ian Cook — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:30:33 +0000

A client organization of mine has a culture that values measuring everything. This makes good business sense. It enables you to monitor, recalibrate and optimize your processes and results. The downside is that too great an emphasis on numbers at every level breeds compliance,especially at the front line. People complete the required audits and checklists [...]

Caught in the Chaos?

Greg Schinkel — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:30:12 +0000

A manager or supervisor’s job should be easier. After all, as long as you have the right people, the right materials, the right information and the right equipment, everything goes smoothly. For most of us this fairy tale scenario only happens on occasion. The rest of the time we are scrambling because one or two [...]

Don’t Neglect Team Maintenance

Ian Cook — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:30:47 +0000

You plan to drive your car from Boston to Denver. It’s a long trip so, before departing, you take your vehicle into your local service center for a tune-up. You have them check your tires and battery, top up the oil and brake fluid and take it for a spin on the highway listening for [...]

Does Job Satisfaction Lead to Better Results?

Ian Cook — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:30:04 +0000

This question has been studied for decades and no direct relationship has been established. Despite what would seem to be a slam-dunk connection, happier workers don’t necessarily result in a bumped up bottom line. A recent study by researchers at Cornell, however, has mapped a path between the two. It is not a direct route. [...]

A Framework For Performance Management

Eric Douglas — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:46:46 +0000

City councils, boards of administrators and other governing systems demand a performance management framework that focuses on what outcomes employees will achieve, and how success is going to be measured. This tool reveals how to construct an integrated performance management framework that takes into account the many different functions which a city or a county [...]