Results, productivity, quality – all are ultimately dependent upon people and how well they perform.  We all know of places where highly skilled employees fail to perform up to their potential.  Why is that?  Perhaps the most important element impacting employee performance is how they are led.  Middle managers play a critical role in driving results, yet many are caught in the trap of spending most of their effort managing day to day necessities, leaving little time to coach and lead their employees to high performance.  Here are three best practices for building better managers who will engage, encourage and empower employees to perform at their best.

1. Teach the fine art of giving feedback

Every system needs feedback in order to calibrate and improve performance.  The human performer is no different, and yet even when they can find the time to do it, managers are often reluctant or unskilled in giving effective feedback to their employees.  As a result, employees don’t know how they are doing or how they can improve and may continue unproductive behaviours until a failure occurs.  An organisation that provides managers with the time and tools to effectively coach their employees will see a dividend not only in performance but in employee engagement.  Quite simply, employees want to know what is expected of them and how to succeed. 

Here are some elements of effective performance feedback and coaching:

• It is based on mutually understood performance standards that are focused on business priorities.
• It is frequent and occurs soon after the performance occurs.  Performance coaching should be an ongoing part of the routine, not a once-a-year review.
• It is based on objective observation of employee behaviour or from input gathered from those who regularly see the employee in action.
• It describes the specific behaviour in question and does not assume motivations (which can trigger a defensive reaction).  For example, “last week you were more than ten minutes late to meetings three times,” not “you are always late – you just don’t care that the rest of us have to wait for you.”
• It doesn’t tolerate poor performance but is improvement and solution-oriented, engaging the employee as a partner in removing barriers and identifying and implementing best practises.

2. Build on success

• Positive feedback.  Managers should give positive feedback at least three times more often than negative feedback, although the opposite is more often the case.  If the only time employees hear from their manager is with a criticism, they will spend more time trying to defend themselves (or hide!) than improving their performance.
• Make time to debrief team and individual initiatives to recognise and celebrate success.
• Coach for performance enhancement. According to researcher and author David Antonioni, performance management typically focuses on the gaps between actual and expected performance while performance enhancement coaching focuses on helping an already-successful performer achieve new performance levels or build new skills.  Whereas performance management is almost always initiated by the manager, in performance enhancement the employee is just as likely as the manager to initiate the discussion and request feedback.
• Tap into strengths.  A key aspect of engaging employees to high performance is helping them to identify, build on and use their strengths rather than just strengthening their weaknesses.  To do this, managers have to understand their employees’ strengths, skills and preferred working conditions, then give them opportunities to make contributions in the areas that best match.  An organisation-wide talent management programme can help managers assist employees in finding that sweet spot where their passions, skills and career aspirations intersect with organisational needs, even if it is in another department.

3. Walk the talk

Especially for managers newly promoted from the ranks, the comfort of directing operational procedures and the urgency of dealing with emergencies will probably always tend to call them away from the long-term work of leading, inspiring and coaching their subordinates.  That is why accountability and modelling are so important.  Senior leaders must themselves practise the effective coaching and leading techniques outlined above.  If they do that while equipping and holding managers accountable for the way they lead and develop their people, they will build the culture of employee engagement and high performance that creates outstanding business results, productivity and quality.

Scott Russell is a regional manager with Halogen Software in the UK. A certified human capital strategist, Scott writes about employee performance and talent management trends and issues. He’s worked closely with human resources professionals across the UK to plan and implement integrated talent management systems in support of their organizations’ strategic plans. Scott applies his expertise in performance management, succession planning, pay for performance and performance based learning solutions to help clients build solid business cases for investing in cloud-based talent management solutions.