In this 13 min video segment from a recent Virtual Leadership Network Leader Forum, Co-Founder Dave Town, shares insightful research on maintaining the human connection in remote working virtual and hybrid teams.
If someone asked you to rate from 1-10 how aligned your team is what might you say? If you are like most business leaders, you likely would reply with a relatively high rating and trust that the priorities of your team members mirror your own. The truth is that our optimistic assumptions regarding alignment often do not accurately reflect reality. This is especially true when dealing with virtual teams. This week’s blog will briefly explore this concept and discuss a method that helps leaders do a better job of monitoring their team’s alignment that is particularly helpful for teams working remotely.
Team alignment means being on the same page in terms of your team’s common purpose and highest priorities. Teams with high levels of alignment will have a clear and shared understanding around what is most important right now. This shared understanding will be reflected in team member’s daily tasks and activities. When teams are misaligned members will work in different directions to achieve what they believe is most important. This results in a group of busy individuals rather than a high performing team moving towards a common goal.
As business leaders, we often take for granted the concept of team alignment. Unfortunately, the level of team alignment is often difficult for leaders to accurately judge by themselves. Typically, when polled team leaders who have oversight of the team grade their alignment in the range of 90-100%. This estimation tends to be overly optimistic when investigated fully.
This phenomenon of unrealistic optimism was experienced first-hand when working with one of our past clients. The key contact for the client was a business leader that supported multiple teams. When asked to rate the alignment of teams, the client rated it at 90% or better. During the implementation of training on team alignment, team exercises were undertaken to explore the level of alignment before moving on to how to leverage what was perceived to be a strong sense of common understanding. Through the answers and input offered from team members, the level of alignment was determined to be closer to 70%. The key contact for the client was surprised by the questions people asked during the exercises and the lower level of alignment. In our experience, the actual level of alignment is typically lower than the team leader assumes. Without this exercise, our client would have continued to maintain an incorrect assumption about where team members placed their highest priorities. While this particular team worked in the same office, the discrepancy in alignment may have been far worse had they been working remotely because there would be fer cues to suggest misalignment.
Issues in team alignment become far more prominent when teams move to a virtual environment. This is because it is harder to monitor and maintain team alignment when working virtually compared to in the same workspace. This is due in part because of the higher levels of spontaneous interactions between the leaders and team members who share a common workspace. Spontaneous interactions can help reveal areas of misalignment and reinforce the key priorities/purpose of the team. It is harder for spontaneous interactions to occur when working remotely. Without these interactions, leaders may take longer to notice that their team members have not been working on what is most essential. This results in wasted time and energy that could have been directed elsewhere.
To mitigate this, leaders must take steps to actively engage team members to access their level of alignment to the priorities and purpose of the team. Begin by writing down the most important goals, projects of objectives in order of highest to least importance and follow up by scheduling time to independently survey each team member. Confirm team members’ understanding of their priorities and objectives in order of importance. We have assisted clients with an exercise to compare priorities for team members in order to reveal areas in which team members are placing too much attention and areas that require greater focus. The exercise of intentionally comparing priorities between team members is a great way to identify what is required to increase team alignment. By making this a regular part of your management process you will ensure that team members continue to work on the right things.
Team alignment is one of the common problems that will develop unnoticed when your teams move to a virtual environment. Without proper alignment, your team members may be busy working from home on the wrong things. Take action today by building a strategy to compare your key priorities to the list of priorities of each team member. For a more in-depth analysis of your team’s alignment as well as other common problems reach out to one of our expert consultants at Virtual Leadership Matters.
David Town, CHRL, ACC, is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effective leadership of virtual teams. David is a member of the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and is Co-Founder and Principal of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.
It has been one year since many leaders were forced to shift to frequent use of virtual platforms for meetings. It is likely that everyone has at one point this year felt “zoomed out”. Perhaps we have facilitated meetings that made us wonder if attendees were actively paying attention behind their screen or simply scrolling through their email. When poorly run, remote meetings are more susceptible to poor attendance, lower attention span and less efficient discussion than meetings held in person. It is easier for attendees to “check out” of virtual meetings to work on something else while the meeting is happening. It is much harder to “check out” when meeting face-to-face because everyone would see you playing with your phone during the meeting. Meetings held via virtual platforms are more susceptible to participant disengagement and require more diligence to avoid this pitfall.
Meetings held remotely also have their benefits. Attendees are participating at their workstation as opposed to going to a physical meeting room, and this means that they can easily access relevant documents from their computer during a meeting or move between meetings through a few clicks of a button, saving on valuable workday time. The key to running effective remote meetings is proper planning and organization. This blog will explore our best practices to run effective virtual meetings.
The need for establishing a clear purpose for every meeting has always been important. However, when meetings move to a virtual environment, clarity of purpose is critical. A clear understanding of why participants are coming together will not only help you better plan out your meeting agenda but will also help them better prepare and contribute during the discussion. In our experience, there are three basic types of meeting. They are categorized according to their end goal. They are:
Meetings can focus on one of the three categories or can have different parts that fit different categories (i.e. part of the meeting focuses on Input on an important topic and another part of the meeting involves decision making). During the planning of the meeting, it is important to decide which category each part of your meeting falls under. Knowing the end goal of your meeting will help you identify who should and should not attend. Also, once you have decided on the type of meeting you are holding, you can communicate this to participants ahead of time so that they understand the focus and expectations of their role in the meeting.
After you establish a clear purpose, invite only those people who can meaningfully contribute to, or benefit from, the meeting’s end goal. If the purpose is information sharing, invite only participants that would find the subject matter directly relevant to their role. Aim for all information shared to be relevant to at least 50% of meeting attendees. If the meeting purpose is to come to a decision, make sure that all relevant decision-makers are invited and present before beginning the meeting. For discussion input meetings, you can widen the participation pool beyond decision-makers to those that can provide additional relevant information. Avoid unnecessary participants from attending meetings by asking two questions:
If there is not a clear answer to both of these two questions, then attending the meeting is likely not the best use of their time and they should not be invited. Similarly, if there are people who get value from and/or give value to the meeting purpose, they should be included on the invitation list. Most importantly, if you are the organizer of the meeting, your invitees should know what you expect of them as you think about the answer to the two questions above.
The communication platform you use for your virtual meeting is another important factor to consider when planning your meetings. The more complex or sensitive the meeting agenda is the richer the communication platform should be. Richer communication platforms incorporate multiple senses (i.e. audio and visual) incorporating more than just words with tone and body language cues. Use platforms that have video capability (i.e., Zoom, MS Teams, WebEx, Google Meet, GoTo Meeting, etc.) for complex/sensitive meetings and leave more routine topics for audio conference calls. This will be covered in more detail in a future blog on virtual communication tips.
Get the most out of your meeting time by preparing in advance. Begin by writing out all of your agenda topics and allocate a time range to each (i.e, 5-10 mins). Be mindful of how many agenda items you include as they will often take longer than expected to complete and it is important to end on time. As part of your planning, assign priority levels to your meeting topics so that you can skip over lower priority items if you find yourself running short on time. Respect the time of your attendees by arriving fully prepared, a few minutes early. If possible, it is beneficial to end the meeting a few minutes before the hour or half-hour to help participants transition to their next commitment or scheduled meeting. Remember the adage – those who fail to plan, plan to fail.
Meetings in a virtual environment highlights the need for proper preparation. Begin by establishing a clear purpose for your meeting and communicate this with all attendees. Ensure all your meeting attendees have a clear role to play in the end goal of your meeting. Choose your communication platform based on the nature of the topics and feedback from participants. Organize your agenda items by time and priority level and respect the agreed-upon meeting start/end time. Proper preparation will not only make remote meeting more efficient which will save time in the long run by requiring fewer meetings to achieve the desired end goal.
David Town, CHRL, ACC, is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effective leadership of virtual teams. David is a member of the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and is Co-Founder and Principal of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.
Building healthy and productive relationships with co-workers is an essential aspect of managing employee performance. Nurturing a better professional relationship will make it easier to manage people remotely and achieve desired outcomes. The landscape of developing these relationships has changed as more employees continue to work remotely. In this blog we will discuss the key differences between building relationships remotely versus in person. Next, we will explore actionable steps you can use today to better develop your professional relationships with your employees working from home.
Let us begin by discussing the differences between building relationships with employees remotely versus in person at the office. The first difference is the regular occurrence of spontaneous encounters between colleagues that work in the same office building. This can occur while walking past each other in the hallway, meeting in common areas such as the lunchroom or simply dropping by a colleague’s office for a quick word. These mini-interactions compound overtime and progressively help develop interpersonal relationships between coworkers. These spontaneous interactions are more difficult or not possible when working remotely. As a result, employees may feel less connected to their remote team, their boss or their company when working from home.
Another difference that impacts building relationships remotely versus in person is scheduling. Colleagues have a more common schedule when working in the same building compared to working separately from home. This is because working from home offers more flexibility and autonomy over how employees go about their workday. For example, a parent working full time in the office will schedule activities with their family later in the evening when they come back from work. However, when working from home they may choose to schedule some quality time with their family during the day and work later in the evening. The disparity between work schedules in a remote team can hinder communication. You may call a colleague only to go to voice mail because they have adjusted their lunch or discover multiple emails that arrive in the morning because a co-worker was working later in the evening. To mitigate these challenges, managers would be better served to set up a schedule with predetermined times to check in with their employees.
A check-in can begin by discussing with your employee what a successful week looks like while working from home. Once this outline of the week is created, identify times throughout the week for each check-in. Include your employees in the process of setting these meetings to accommodate a degree of autonomy for the employee’s scheduling strategy and to avoid any differences in your schedules. These check-ins can be as brief as 10-15 minutes while still providing enough time to address key issues and build a professional relationship.
The next step is to structure these scheduled interactions in a way that builds the relationship and helps employees succeed. One common mistake some managers make is to focus solely on verifying that assigned tasks have been completed. Establishing accountability is important, however it may not contribute very much to building the relationship. Checking up on employees too frequently can be taken as a sign of mistrust by those you manage. As a result, your relationship may actually weaken over time. The difference can be as simple as focusing on checking in as opposed to checking up.
Check-ins go beyond simply having employees account for their activities during the time since you last spoke to them. It is more important to ensure they are achieving outcomes as opposed to keeping busy. Building a strong relationship will build commitment to the desired expectations and outcomes. When you check-in, connect with the intention of building the relationship rather than just demanding accountability. During check-ins, go beyond work topics and inquire into other areas. This might involve asking about their family, their hobbies outside of work or something as simple as their favourite sports team. Inquire into what is happening for them on a personal level rather than what they have been doing for you as your subordinate.
Check-ins should also include finding ways to help your employee succeed. Deliberately inquire into what obstacles your employees are currently facing in their assigned work and explore possible solutions together. Additionally, seek to discover tasks/areas of work your employee has an innate interest in. Look for opportunities to assign work that they naturally find more interesting. Doing so will often increase the employee’s enjoyment and productivity.
This approach was used successfully by one of our clients and resulted in a 50% increase in the output of two employees. Our client worked in a financial services company and was managing two employees that worked remotely. After some discussion regarding the value of identifying each employee’s interests in the work they do, the manager connected virtually with the employees to explore their level of interest in their assigned work. Our client soon discovered that each employee had an innate interest in the other’s tasks. By simply swapping the roles and tasks between the two employees, output was dramatically increased. This change was only possible after the manager made a deliberate effort to listen to their employees and discover opportunities to help them succeed.
Investing in building relationships with your employees will not only improve your ability to manage remotely but also increase the output of your employees. Managing in a virtual environment does not allow for spontaneous interactions so it is the responsibility of the manager to set deliberate times to connect their employees. Check-in on how your employees are doing, rather than just what tasks they have completed. Discover their interests and look for opportunities to assign roles and tasks in accordance with their interests where possible. It is helpful to approach each conversation with the goal of being “soft on style” without being “soft on expectations”. Frequent check-ins will build over time and help develop productive professional relationships.
David Town, CHRL, ACC, is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effective leadership of virtual teams. David is a member of the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and is Co-Founder and Principal of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.
Setting proper expectations for employees working remotely is critical to managing performance. One of the most well-known methods used today is the setting of SMART goals. While this framework can be helpful, there is a more comprehensive model better suited for managing a remote team. This preferred model for setting expectations is outlined using what we call the 4 C’s: Context, Clarity, Conditions and Commitment. In this blog, we will explore each component of the 4 C’s and provide actionable steps you can take today to improve your ability to manage employees remotely.
Context is the overall purpose of an assigned role and how it fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Context gives meaning to the work and promotes more commitment from the employee. Work is more meaningful when you understand the value it contributes to the overall success of the team/organization. The more an employee sees value in what they do, the more committed they will be their work. For example, the employee in the accounting department is tasked with producing a quarterly budget report. When assigning this role, begin by describing how the report will help the leadership team make more informed decisions. This context shows the employee’s efforts as a contribution to strategic decision making rather than merely a collection of data.
Clarity is the understanding of what is expected in an assigned role. A useful framework for providing clarity to employees is to set goals that are action oriented, inspiring, measurable, and shared. We will can call this AIMS for short.
Action oriented – The first step is to outline all of the tasks and activities involved in achieving the end goal. Think of this as the job description for a particular role. For instance, if the goal set by a leader is “get better at financial reporting” potential action-oriented activities could be to scan reports for errors, obtain data on time and offer suggestions on how to improve the report. Describing these activities and connecting them to the end goal brings clarity to broad goals that come across as too vague.
Inspiring – The goal should connect to the intrinsic motivation of the employee and feel like an impressive accomplishment once completed. Inspiring goals are not so difficult that they seem unachievable. They should, however, require the employee to move beyond their current comfort zone and develop in the process of achieving their goal. Inspiring goals are best set with the participation of the employee for increased commitment.
Measurable – Metrics that enable an assessment of the level of achievement of a goal are important. Metrics can be tangle or intangible. The metrics should also include the timeframe over which they are calculated. Let us return to our previous example and bring clarity by including measures of progress. The goal “get better at financial reporting” can be measured by tracking the frequency of errors found in reports, the date of submission relative to set deadlines or the number of suggestions offered by the employee each quarter.
Shared – A shared goal includes other team members in the pursuit of a set goal. Research published out of Stanford University concluded that feeling part of a team increased people’s engagement and performance when completing difficult tasks. One method of sharing goals is the use of accountability partners. All feedback given between partners should be specific and focus only on the behaviour and not the person themselves. For example, “you did – (specific action done) – really well because it achieved – (describe impact)” versus making a statement such as “you’re smart”.
The AIMS framework can be used when setting expectations to create clarity for those you manage. Doing so will improve the focus and productivity of your team members. AIMS will also make delivering feedback easier as employees will already clearly understand how they are being measured.
Conditions describe the level of autonomy that an employee is given to perform their work and make decisions without needing to check-in for approval. Outlining conditions are especially important when managing employees that work remotely. The conditions you set will directly impact your employee’s ability to operate independently and provide discretionary effort.
An outline of conditions includes a discussion on topics such as:
Process Requirements
First, outline the process requirements that cannot be changed. Process requirements are often mandatory steps set by legislative regulation, through a collective agreement, by an ISO standard or other standards body. Many organizations and industries have mandatory processes that cannot be changed. The more process requirements there are, the less autonomy and degrees of freedom will be available to the employee. Ideally, a leader wants to provide more decision-making freedom to employees rather than less in regards to how they accomplish their tasks. However, it is our responsibility to ensure that employees are aware of and respect all requirements (legal, necessary policy, etc.) in their work process. Identify process requirements by asking “is this a process requirement that simply cannot be changed?” and discuss each with those you manage.
Process requirements may be set according to the preferred methodology of the leader or organization. Perhaps years of experience has revealed to a leader an ideal method of completing a task that their employees are unaware of or there may exist a company policy that outlines required steps in a given activity. In cases such as these where the requirement is not a mandatory process outlined in legislative regulation or by a standards body, there is an opportunity for dialogue with the employees tasked with the work, so that they can provide their input on ways to modify the steps taken while still achieving the desired results in a more efficient or effective way. The more you can involve people in deciding how the work gets done, the greater the payback in commitment, discretionary effort and productivity.
Monitoring and Reporting
Outlining conditions also requires monitoring and reporting. Create a plan to follow up on the progress of the employee. The frequency of follow ups impacts perceptions of trust. A manager that checks in every day on a highly capable and committed employee might be inadvertently signalling a lack of trust in the employee’s ability. On the other hand, frequent follow ups with very inexperienced employees may be necessary for them to learn the ropes and avoid serious errors. Involve your employee in developing a plan for monitoring and reporting their progress. Employees will be more accountable for meeting deadlines and expectations that they helped set.
Build employee commitment by assigning them to roles/tasks they find more interesting. Identify areas of interest by involving them in discussions regarding the first three C’s. Listening to their input will likely highlight tasks that they have a strong interest in and what ones they do not particularly enjoy doing. Finding work that the employee enjoys doing is especially important if they are working remotely. Employees working remotely are more likely to only do the bare minimum that is required of them when they have no interest in their assigned work.
Use the 4 C’s model to better manage the performance of your employees working remotely. Make tasks meaningful by providing context on how it fits into the bigger picture of the organization’s goals. Use the AIMS framework to help employees understand exactly what is expected of them. Discuss process requirements and a monitoring plan with your employees to establish the right level of Autonomy. Lastly, look for opportunities to match your employee with work they find more interesting.
David Town, HBA, CHRL, ACC, is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effective leadership of virtual teams. David is a member of the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and is Co-Founder and Principal of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.
Setting expectations is an essential step in managing employee performance. This is especially important for business leaders who manage employees that are working from home. There are multiple approaches in setting expectations, this article will explore two methods commonly practiced today. The first method bases expectations on employee activity while the second method focuses on outcomes. This article will discuss why focusing on outcomes rather than activities will produce greater results for you and the people you lead.
Outcomes are the desired end result of your team’s work. This can take the form of a physical product, a rendered service, or any other team project. Examples of a team’s outcomes could be submitting a proposal, meeting a sales quota or completing the internal budget by a specified deadline date. While outcomes are the what, activity is the how. Activity includes all the tasks, steps and actions that are involved in completing the product/project. If the outcome was a proposal for a company client, activity would be conducting research, organizing data or writing the first draft. The “what” would be a description of what the final proposal should contain.
Some leaders set expectations based on employee activity. In this method, employees are expected to follow a prescribed process to produce results. The leader will decide how the employees are to complete their work, telling their employees what to do and when to do it. Leaders who are focused on Compliance and Control of how things are done will supervise team members to make sure they do not deviate from instructions and complete each task the way it was explained. While this method does produce results, it carries multiple drawbacks.
Focusing on monitoring people’s activity is very time consuming and requires more work on the part of the leader. Frequent check-ins will be required to ensure the tasks are accurately performed to instructions because the employees may not know where they are headed as a final outcome, they only know the task they are to complete. Policing the activity of employees is especially difficult while working remotely due to the physical distance separating individuals. Team members will likely pause working until they can get answers to any roadblocks encountered. The process of “waiting for permission” is a result of the leader owning the responsibility to decide what additional steps should be taken. This can cause significant delays and erode efficiency.
Additionally, the Compliance Control Trap™ approach to leadership does not effectively engage or develop team members. There is little or no problem solving or decision making required when the employee does not control the process of how to achieve the desired results. When something does not work right, employees will feel less responsible for solving the problem because they were simply following the orders of their leader. This results in the leader addressing each problem that comes up rather than the employee learning how to solves problems themselves. It is important to note that the level of employee commitment to the work is what’s at stake her. Numerous studies have been published the last decade outlining the gap in productivity between employees who are highly committed to the work and those that are not.
Creativity and problem-solving are essential indicators of top-performing individuals and must be developed through practice over time. When leaders control how employees work, they limit their development as business professionals and future leaders within the organization. The result becomes mini versions of the leader rather than a team of engaged individuals with unique insights and expertise. In the professional services industries this is called leveraging and it’s vital for success.
The solution to many of the issues that arise when the leader mandates how a task is to be done is to set expectations around outcomes rather than activities. This is done by clearly outlining what you expect the end product/project to look like and providing tangible benchmarks to guide the efforts of team members. Communicate to team members their autonomy and decision-making authority over the process of achieving the desired outcome. Seek to support their efforts by providing any tools they may need to work more effectively. Deliver feedback when appropriate and provide clarity to team members that have additional questions regarding what the end product/project should be.
A common objection to this method voiced by leaders, is the fear of mistakes that might be made by employees when the employees control the decisions regarding their activity and how to do things. It is important to realize that mistakes are a predictable part of learning, development and innovation. When setbacks do inevitably occur, provide employees with the opportunity to identify what went wrong and engage in coaching conversations to enable employees to make better decisions moving forward. Tolerance for employee mistakes must of course be balanced against the potential consequences of the mistake. As the employee builds competence, the leader can provide more decision-making latitude on how to achieve the desired outcomes. The level of autonomy given to the employee must be a function of their demonstrated competence in completing the task and meeting expected outcomes. Regular check-ins to reinforce the desired outcomes and monitor progress against the outcome will help ensure that any mistakes made by team members do not cause major damage to a project or jeopardize the organization.
When you lead with the Commitment Empowerment Model, your team members take responsibility for how to produce an outcome, and you will have more time and energy to invest elsewhere. Team members will become more engaged in the process when they are deciding the best way to produce the desired outcome. They will problem-solve so you do not have to when tasks encounter unexpected roadblocks. More efficient methods of completing tasks may be developed by team members that otherwise would have been undiscovered by you alone.
Bring out the best in those you lead/manage by setting expectations around the desired outcomes. Establish clarity in the minds of your employees with respect to what the end product will look like and allow them to decide how best to achieve it. Rather than telling them what to do, allow them to figure it out for out themselves. Focusing your time on providing feedback, clarity and support, will enable you to shift time and energy to work on value-added endeavours that help you grow as a leader and that provide greater benefit to the organization. This will not only reduce the need to constantly monitor people, it will also result in the growth and development of those you manage, leading to increased productivity.
David Town, HBA, CHRL, ACC, is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effective leadership of virtual teams. David is a member of the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and is Co-Founder and Principal of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.
Gabriel Olver, BComm, recently graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a degree in Business Management. He has worked with multiple businesses to expand and maintain their operations as a business counsellor. Gabriel works alongside the team at Virtual Leadership Matters Inc. to offer virtual leadership solutions to business leaders across Canada.
This blog is a continuation of the topic of “Managing Employee Performance Remotely”. This blog will explore the question of “who owns the management of employee performance” in an organization. It will also explore how this drives the mindset required to be more effective at the management of employee performance in today’s “new normal”.
Throughout my career, I’ve had many conversations with managers about who owns the management of employee performance. I can recall a specific conversation I had with the Vice President in a division where worked. I was the senior HR leader and had been recently promoted to the role. Within the first week, one of the Vice-Presidents, who was a fellow member of the executive team, dropped into my office to tell me how happy he was that I was there. He wanted me to make sure that all his managers completed and submitted their forms from the annual performance review meeting.
The look on his face was priceless when I told him that the management of employee performance was not my responsibility. Rather, it was his. I suggested that he was responsible for ensuring that every employee in his department received feedback. It was also his responsibility to ensure that the managers reporting to him who had employees reporting to them, were also responsible for having ongoing dialogue and completing an annual review with their direct reports.
Of course, my remarks were followed by an assurance that I was happy to help support him and his staff in any way I could in the achievement of fulfilling their responsibility to assess the performance of the employees who reported to them. This conversation ended with his assertion that I was responsible for making sure that the forms were collected and that the interviews took place. The Vice President then left my office so that he could speak to the head of the division to straighten things out.
My suspicions are that the conversation he had with the head of the division surprised him. I had already had a conversation with the head of the division regarding who owns performance management to confirm that he agreed with the idea that ownership of employee performance management belongs to the managers who the employees report to. He explained to the Vice President that what I had told him was correct. The Vice President returned to my office and asked “what do I do now?”
We had a really good conversation about the role of human resources management and how they are responsible for owning the administration of a performance process and for helping managers with performance management by coaching them on how to have good conversations with the employees regarding their performance.
My intention was to land a key message which is that people who manage the performance of others own the relationship between the manager and the employee. They are responsible for helping the employee succeed. It would be a mistake for the human resources practitioner to try to take over ownership of that relationship and the responsibility for making it work. Certainly, there is a responsibility for the HR practitioner to train and/or coach managers to assist them with the management of those relationships. However, the manager is responsible for making the relationship work and providing ongoing feedback to the employee.
Owning the management of employee performance is especially important when employees work at a distance. The process and conversations involved in managing the performance of remote workers present unique challenges and the person that the employees report to is best positioned for overcoming these added barriers.
When both parties work in the same workspace, it is easier a manager to observe an employee’s performance and initiate a conversation. These in-person conversations are a great way to build employee engagement and ongoing meaningful dialogue. When working remotely, it is more difficult to observe performance. Managers must observe the measures of performance – the outcomes and achievements resulting from the job description activities of the employee. In-person conversations must be replaced by other channels of communication such as the phone or a video-based communication platform. Managing employee performance remotely requires additional diligence and energy to achieve to same level of employee engagement. Ongoing conversations to get agreement on how to measure success will enable better performance and make it easier for the manager to give feedback relative to expectations that are co-created.
With all of the challenges relating to managing performance remotely, ownership of the process must rest on manager’s shoulders because managers are best positioned for this job. Managing performance goes go hand in hand with managing the relationship between a manager and their employees. Managers often have a clearer sense of the specific needs, challenges and expectations that go along with the roles their employees fill compared to an HR practitioner in the same company. This insight is crucial to understanding and managing performance. As a manager, you can only manage what you know and often the person that knows the most about the employee’s performance is the manager they report to.
Managers who understand that they own the relationship with employees who report to them and that they are responsible for helping the employees succeed, are motivated to make the process work because of the benefits they can provide to the employee, to themselves as the manager, and to the whole team and organization. Managers who believe that this is a paper chase often don’t commit to the process because they don’t believe that they own it and/or they don’t see the benefits of doing it well.
As the first blog in the series states, the entire performance management process should be focused on helping employees succeed. So, when it comes to managing employee performance, managers that adopt an “ownership” mindset will be more committed to the process of setting expectations, observing performance/outcomes, providing regular, timely feedback and building the employee’s competence and confidence.
A second important mindset is to embrace the concept that people make their own choices. In order to maximize employee success, you need to tap into intrinsic motivation. This inspires great performance as opposed to relying solely on external motivation. Performance is better when people act out of inspiration versus responding to consequences. As a manager, you want to light the fire inside as opposed to light the fire behind. Employees will achieve greater success where there is commitment as opposed to compliance.
Until next time,
Dave
This blog is the first in a series focusing on the topic of “Managing Employee Performance Remotely”. This is a hot topic with many organizations because, for many organizations, the process often creates more problems than it solves. Additionally, there are unique challenges to managing employee performance while they work remotely from home.
Research indicates that many organizations have chosen to abandon what they describe as the “annual performance appraisal” process because of the problems it seems to create. This blog will address some of the key challenges faced by organizations today in managing employee performance remotely.
The first step in an organization’s need to better manage employee performance remotely is to understand the purpose of the process. The primary purpose should not be focused on filling out forms or creating a perception that a documented, numerical rating is the main driver of compensation.
With the rise of remote working we see more companies focusing on including additional forms in their performance management process. When the process focuses too heavily on the completion of forms, it becomes a paper chase where managers often do not feel responsible or accountable for the process and the potential value it can bring. No matter how many additional teleworking forms your employees fill out, this alone will never be enough to effectively manage their performance.
Other companies incorrectly focus their process on compensation. This approach often devolves into a focus on the “annual performance appraisal” meeting. This is where managers and employees seem to debate a performance rating because it is so closely connected to how much of a pay increase an employee will receive. Even the language of describing the annual meeting as a “performance appraisal” is problematic because managers should not be “appraising” performance on an annual basis. They should be appraising performance on an ongoing basis – every day or at least every week. To get the most value out of a performance management process, organizations need to ensure that it’s not about the forms, it’s about the conversations that help an employee succeed.
The entire performance management process should be focused on helping employees succeed. The definition of employee success combines the achievement of the organization’s expectations that have been communicated to them as well as the achievement of the goals and expectations that employees have set for themselves. It is important to note that documentation of performance is important and there is nothing wrong with connecting pay with performance. Having said that, the key is to focus on conversations that help success.
The documentation and compensation are by-products of quality conversations and quality performance assessments as opposed to being the main focus. A key opportunity for many organizations is to shift the internal mindset and the focus of the system and language relating to managing employee performance. For some organizations, the first step in shifting the mindset may be as simple as changing their language from “annual performance appraisals” to “annual performance reviews”. This ensures that managers understand that feedback is an ongoing process and the annual meeting is a review – sort of like a highlight reel – that focuses on performance feedback that has already been shared with the employee.
These review meetings can take place more frequently than once a year, however, the purpose is still to review the collective dialogue that is taken place during the performance review period.
If an organization focuses its attention on equipping managers to engage in regular dialogue with employees, they will be much more likely to achieve the objective of helping employees succeed. In-person dialogue is the ideal method to promote employee engagement during conversation. This of course may not be possible when your employee works from home. A Hierarchy of communication methods based on levels of engagement is shown below.
Utilize live video platforms such as zoom (with all cameras on) to achieve higher engagement during conversations with your employees working from home. Leave phone calls and emails for communications that do not require meaningful dialogue. By focusing on regular dialogue, the organization will reinforce that the process is not about the forms.
The forms that organizations use as part of their employee performance management process should assist the manager in capturing an overview of the ongoing performance feedback discussions that the manager has had with the employee. These discussions will focus on the employee achieving their full potential by offering reinforcement of desired behaviours and constructive analysis of what needs to be corrected. The forms can offer a process for capturing performance feedback throughout the year to avoid issues such as recency bias. The forms can also be used to hold managers accountable for their performance assessments to reduce or eliminate other forms of rater bias.
Once the organization has embraced that the purpose of managing employee performance is to help employees succeed in meeting their accountabilities, the execution of the process will improve. Subsequent blogs will address each of the component parts of an effective program for managing employee performance.
Until next time,
Dave
There was much I could identify with in the 2017 Harvard Business Review article by Jesse Sostrin called, ‘To Be a Great Leader, You Have to Learn How to Delegate Well’. After 30 years in organizational leadership and executive coaching/mentoring roles, I can vouch that delegation has been the most second-guessed management activity. That was then, this is now! We are six months into a global pandemic that promptly moved 40% of the workforce into remote mode using virtual technologies to stay connected. (Stats Can) They expect that likely 25% of the workforce will remain working remote into the future. How does this impact long proven tips, like Sostrin’s, on effective delegation?
Sostrin wrote that one of the most difficult transitions for leaders to make is the shift from ‘doing’ to ‘leading’. As a rookie manager you may get away with holding on to work and peers and bosses may even admire your willingness to keep “rolling up your sleeves” to make things happen. This is where the drowning begins which may be invisible in the remote working environment. With greater dependency on virtual connections to our valued team members, delegation becomes more complex. Not only must we master proven delegation process skills and our interpersonal and personal skills, we need to transition into a leadership style of trusting others ‘to do’ focusing less on activity monitoring and more on outcomes.
There was much I could identify with in the 2017 Harvard Business Review article by Jesse Sostrin called, ‘To Be a Great Leader, You Have to Learn How to Delegate Well’. After 30 years in organizational leadership and executive coaching/mentoring roles, I can vouch that delegation has been the most second-guessed management activity. That was then, this is now! We are six months into a global pandemic that promptly moved 40% of the workforce into remote mode using virtual technologies to stay connected. (Stats Can) They expect that likely 25% of the workforce will remain working remote into the future. How does this impact long proven tips, like Sostrin’s, on effective delegation?
Sostrin wrote that one of the most difficult transitions for leaders to make is the shift from ‘doing’ to ‘leading’. As a rookie manager you may get away with holding on to work and peers and bosses may even admire your willingness to keep “rolling up your sleeves” to make things happen. This is where the drowning begins which may be invisible in the remote working environment. With greater dependency on virtual connections to our valued team members, delegation becomes more complex. Not only must we master proven delegation process skills and our interpersonal and personal skills, we need to transition into a leadership style of trusting others ‘to do’ focusing less on activity monitoring and more on outcomes.
The learning curves integrating process and personal skills into your competency repertoire include…
Process skills such as performance management, culture building, leading communications and meetings (including interactive webinar sessions), change management, rewards management, feedback and yes, delegation.
Personal skills for executives or owners include strategic thinking, negotiation, and advanced communication skills such as active listening and speak charismatically and passionately about corporate mission, vision and corporate values.
Both of these vital skill sets will take a backseat to doing vast amounts of familiar technical work by yourself in the virtual climate unless delegation is working well.
Through connecting with dozens of organizations and our own coaching clients across North America since COVID-19 arrived, it has become clear that in the virtual environment, leaders must avoid what we call The Compliance Control Trap™. This style relies on positional power and hard tactics with an inclination to tell people what to do, then enforce compliance. This approach has a long history of delivering results where activity monitoring is feasible, but it will not maximize productivity in a virtual environment where people work independently, especially in-home working environments. Our experiences show that the contrasting Commitment Empowerment Model™, is more suited to the virtual environment. It relies on relational power and soft tactics that focus on outcomes i.e. ‘What to achieve’ vs ‘How to achieve’ foster great engagement and commitment to activities that produce clear outcomes.
A few years ago, I was introduced to the ‘First, Break all the Rules’ by Gallup’s, Buckingham and Coffman. They conducted in-depth interviews with more than 80,000 managers at all levels (in companies of all sizes). Their work revealed what great managers do differently from ordinary managers to inspire world class performance in their teams. What follows is the synthesis of what great managers do to ‘break all the rules’ and leverage conventional wisdom in mature leadership practices, including delegation. This has been adapted to include our vast experience and learnings at Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.™ in leading successful virtual teams.
| First, in delegation you must select the right people that ‘can do’ and ‘will do’ the job. Fit is most vital in the virtual environment. They need to have skill, will and horsepower to get the job done. Horsepower refers to the potential to grow into a role. |
Then, you must navigate through the following Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.™ methodology that functions as an easy to use mental checklist to maximize the probability of successful delegation. This works well in person and with team members working remotely.
Finally, it is important to consider other factors that may impact the motivation and sense of empowerment of the delegatee. This could include a sensitivity to individual personal profiles, personal stress factors (isolations, distractions, ergonomics) communication style preferences, stages in career development, career objectives, organizational &/or team goals and so much more.
Leaders must practice the art and science of delegation and make it a strong personal competency. As they assume expanded leadership roles, they will be compelled to delegate more often and strive to do it right the first time, therefore spending less time and money on needless fixes. The COVID-19 workplace is significantly more complicated because it includes the reality of interacting with remote teams using virtual technology. In the busy life of a leader, it is essential to… Delegate or Drown.
David Smith, BComm, CMC, ACC, RPM has over 30 years of experience as an organizational leader and a decade as certified executive coach, facilitator and management consultant. He has served as a corporate executive (CEO), business owner and entrepreneur in multiple start-ups in different industries including one of Canada’s ‘50 Best Managed Companies’ and is Co-Founder of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.
In October of 2020, the Founders of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc. were interviewed by Canadian SME Magazine. The interview provides the back story behind our passion for the mission at Virtual Leadership Matters Inc. and answers some key questions on the glaring differences between Virtual Leadership and Face-to-Face, In-person Leadership. Have a look to find out what it takes to be successful when leading teams that work remotely.