Poorly performing employees cost the economy around $500 billion every year.
When organisational goals are not being met, the first place leaders usually look for answers is in data.
They poke around in MAT, YTD, growth, market share, employee satisfaction surveys etc, searching for trends that will shine the spotlight on something they can fix.
They may find it. Usually, they don't. But they do have an attack of confirmation bias which will often leads them to see things in the data that aren't really there.
And off they go, trying to fix a problem that doesn't really exist or a problem that does exist but, if fixed, isn't isn't going to generate revenue or drive market share.
So what's the answer?
People.
Consider this:
A brilliant strategy, poorly executed, generates poor results.
However, a mediocre strategy brilliantly executed will generate strong results.
If you try to fix the strategy, but the performance still sucks, you lose.
Focus on improving performance and you win either way. Plus, it's much faster than going through the process of re-writing strategy.
Most leaders know WHAT to do to improve performance, but so few know HOW to do it effectively.
That's not their fault. How many of us were trained to be effective leaders?
Here are three key things to do, and do well, to drive performance and results (without destroying morale and burning people out):
1️. Focus on leveraging people's strengths, not fixing their weaknesses.
Attention follows intention. So, if you focus on people's weaknesses, they'll put their energy into fixing them. That doesn't increase performance; it exhausts, discourages, and demoralises people. Leveraging strengths energises people and boosts performance.
2️. Address unhelpful behaviour the first time you see it
If you ignore it the first time - for whatever reason - the behaviour will be repeated. That's setting someone up to fail.
Get really good at giving effective feedback. Done well, feedback takes a matter of minutes to deliver and can be acted on immediately (nb. The 'sandwich' is not an effective way of giving feedback!).
3️. Set CLEAR expectations and confirm understanding
Ensure people understood what you said. Never assume their understanding and then complain when they fail to meet your expectations.
Use clear, plain, simple language. No jargon. No fancy corporate speak. Get to the point.
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