Thoughtfully Create and Communicate Expectations to Lead Your Team to Success

?Performance management begins with understanding what performance looks like. What results are important? What outcomes are sought in terms of service, work products, quality, timeliness, etc.? What separates “good” from “bad” results? How will you know the difference? You will need to determine what results to focus on. Sometimes these are apparent based upon goals that have already been set for you and your team. They may also stem from your own review of strategic business goals and near-term operational objectives.

Past performance data is a good starting point as it indicates which goals the business believed were most important and how the organization and your team performed to them previously. You may or may not have latitude to determine what goals to set to support strategic organizational objectives. Whether you do or not, you should have an understanding of the organization’s aims and how your team’s work affects them. This provides meaning to the team’s work.

When you set team objectives, consider their alignment with the company’s larger goals. There’s no sense setting expectations that don’t contribute to the greater good somehow. You’ll be wasting your people’s time and resources and be ineffective in supporting the aims that your boss, and your boss’ boss, believe are vital.

When choosing objectives, pay thought to whether you can accurately determine your degree of success in reaching them. If you can’t quantify or otherwise apply metrics to the objective, it diminishes it as a performance management tool. Staff “try their best” without knowing whether it’s resulted in acceptable performance. Performance is rationalized to be “successful” without any real basis, and the contribution to the organization’s goals can’t be measured or justified. Since what gets measured gets done, consider this factor in choosing your objectives.

Once you’ve chosen objectives, determine which supporting metrics will be most useful in gauging progress and achievement. Ideally the metrics will have benchmarks, so success can be determined against either past performance within the organization or some external standard. You can graphically represent objective metrics, which helps display trend data. You should also consider how easy it’s going to be to gather and analyze information as well as the quality of the source data. There’s little use choosing complex, hard-to-understand metrics that are so time-consuming to administer that the costs outweigh their benefits. Weigh whether the metric chosen is the most meaningful measure of success for the objective.

Some words of caution about KPIs: If the ability and intent to hold the team accountable for performance against metrics doesn’t exist then don’t use KPIs as they will serve no useful purpose. If you aren’t going to gain, and use, knowledge about the performance of your business relative to the goals set, then don’t attempt using metrics. You lose credibility with your employees, management, and customers when you commit to achievement efforts via KPIs in theory but not in practice.

If you do establish metrics and audit against them, don’t keep the information to yourself as if it’s a precious secret. Get information out to your people to create the sense of urgency and motivation to perform that makes a real difference to results. This also creates a culture of accountability and is the very foundation for performance.

Performance metrics, even if well-chosen and regularly measured, can be inappropriately applied in practice. In extreme cases, organizations have used a few objective metrics solely to determine pay raises, bonuses, eligibility for promotions, and performance appraisal results. This is a perversion of the idea of performance assessment, and obstinate organizations that insist on doing this risk alienating staff and plummeting morale as employees head for the door. It’s also an emotionally unintelligent means of attempting to manage performance.

No one likes the sum total of their work contributions watered down to a handful of statistical metrics only at the expense of the variety of ways they add value at work that can’t easily be worked out on a calculator. With statistical measures only, how do you measure generally valued competencies—including those related to leadership potential (i.e., influencing, motivating, planning, follow-through, managing change, etc.)? How do you evaluate how well cultural values in the organization are upheld?

As much as people seek a fair process of evaluating their contributions and results, don’t mistake this for their desire to be assessed via only objective metrics. The boss’s opinion—and those of other stakeholders—do matter, and subjective evaluations based upon some defensible rationale are a valid part of the performance management process. Procedural fairness does not mean exclusive use of objective metrics. Plenty of ways, from purely subjective opinion to use of behavioral anchors and 360-degree evaluations, can be injected into performance management and still be viewed by others as fundamentally fair and appropriate.

Having set team goals and determined metrics for them, you should review how those goals will cascade down to the expectations you have for individual team members. It may be that the team goals translate directly into individual expectations in some cases, where a specific position may be responsible for one of the team goals, among others, that they are given. This may also require you to create specific goals distinct from the group goals themselves.

For instance, if the HR team goal is to decrease first year turnover by 10 percent, there may be metrics specific to the role of recruiter to ensure that good process is followed in making hiring decisions (i.e., random audit results on compliance with the hiring procedure) and ninety-day turnover is lowered. There may also be metrics for the training team related to compliance with onboarding procedure, new hire onboarding survey results, or six-month productivity metrics. For management staff, it could be an indicator of productivity of new hires in their roles during the first six or twelve months, as this could also be an indicator of hiring quality and potential for staff retention.

If you can, involve your staff in goal setting, choosing supporting metrics, and setting benchmarks for various levels of performance (meeting expectations, exceeding expectations, needs improvement, etc.). They’ll be more committed to goal attainment if you do. In addition, they’ll be more likely to understand how performance in their roles affects team objectives and how team goals in turn support the company’s strategic aims.

Clearly form objectives and supporting metrics so they’re concise and easy for team members to understand. Goal attainment is often tied to compensation adjustments and incentives. If staff views their goals as unreasonable and metrics as complex, they’ll come to believe the system lacks fairness and transparency and that they are being taken advantage of. This won’t bode well for their productivity, motivation, or retention.

Once you’ve clearly formed individual objectives and metrics, record them. This allows you to carefully review them and make adjustments. In addition, set the benchmarks for performance within the metrics, including what constitutes meeting expectations, exceeding them, and falling short. For statistical measures, this is the “scorecard” you use to keep track of progress and results. Not all goals will be statistically based, and for the others you’ll need to be clear about the quality and timeliness of the work products you expect. Using behavioral anchors—describing behaviors that demonstrate what falling short of, meeting, or exceeding expectations are—will help you.

Once you’ve documented the individual objectives and supporting metrics, communicate them to the team. Individual discussions are ideal because any role-specific questions or concerns can be addressed. Make sure each team member receives a copy of the documented objectives and metrics they’re accountable for. Record the goals and metrics in your HR information system, annual performance appraisal document, or other tool if you can too. Staff view verbal goals with the healthy skepticism they deserve as memories may easily fade, minds can be changed, and disagreement over wording and translation can arise. Documentation produces increased mutual commitment, trust and clarity.

When you communicate goals and metrics, pay thought to the “why” of the conversation. Team members will want to understand the reasons the objectives should be important to them. They need to see the benefit to themselves, the team, and the organization. This speaks to motivation. If a team member is looking for the next promotion, to expand their skills further, deliver excellent service to customers, or feel valued, explain the connection between those drivers and reaching the objectives set for them.

·????????Do you review available historic information to help determine what, and what level of, goals are appropriate for your team and its members?

·????????How do you ensure today that the KPIs you choose are the most appropriate indicators to support achievement of company objectives?

·????????Do you make appropriate use of objective and subjective goals set for team members?

·????????Do you clearly document the goals and KPIs set so your team members have a reference tool and are clear about how success will be measured?

·????????Do you try to connect the goals to individual motivators to help drive performance?

*This article contains excerpts from the book The Leadership Core

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