In addition to having performance management skills, sometimes you have to be a bit of a detective. You have to get out your magnifying glass and really dig deep into identifying sources of performance problems. They're not always evident. After this video, you'll be able to identify or assess source of poor performance and identify factors needed to diagnose performance problems. Managers must really look deep at the sources of the actual problem and not assume they know what the issue is. This performance management system's must, one, define and measure performance. We've talked about definitions today, we'll talk about measurement more in future sessions. It also must indicate and find the sources of the performance problem. Let me give you a few examples. We talked about some of the influencing factors of individual characteristics a moment ago. And we talked about procedural knowledge, we talked about declarative knowledge, and we talked about motivation. So when I'm looking at issues, I gotta look at what is the root cause. We also will look at organizational support, that pedestal that we talked about earlier. This is from HR practices and this is from the work environment itself. So, lets move from being a detective and we'll give you another career change here. You also have to be a doctor. You want to diagnose before you prescribe. So I've got an employee problem. When I'm looking into it, I'm going to look at is it procedural knowledge that we discussed earlier. Is it declarative knowledge or is it motivation, for example? So if it's declarative knowledge, I might send them into a class to get some more education on the facts. If it's a procedural one, I might give them some opportunity to practice their skills. If it's a motivation one, I would handle that differently and get to the bottom of the motivational issue. So the key issue on these is you really, to be effective performance manager, you have to diagnose the real issue. Prescribe the right prescription so that we're not wasting our time sending people to classes when it's a motivational issue. And waste time, money, and is not effective. The other thing that we'll talk about a little bit in more detail in future sessions are the HR practices in the work environment. Those are important to support the individual characteristics. because you can have some great individual performances, but if you don't have the organization support, it tends to be less effective than it would be with that. Some of the HR practice we're talking about you've probably seen many, many times in your careers. Are we hiring the right people so they actually have the skills? Do we have good training programs? Are we developing our people through performance management? Are we rewarding them appropriately to keep good people? Do we have an inclusive environment where people feel they can ask questions and they have a voice? Are we doing the right things to engage our employees? And do we give them a work-life balance? So these tend to be some best practices that support the individual performance. As well as creating an overall good environment. Motivation. We talked a little about motivation. So I just want to give a few thoughts on that. In some classes I've taught on motivation, there's some that always stick out as some of the top motivators. Goal setting always is one of them. People really get motivated by setting goals. So if you tell me I can't do something, for example, I'm more likely to go after that because that's sort of my personality and make-up. I'm going to rise to that challenge. When setting goals, you want to make them challenging, but not too challenging where I can't achieve them. Autonomy is another wonderful motivator. People like to have some autonomy, some decision making. And again, when appropriate this is a great motivating tool. I wouldn't recommend it on day one perhaps, but is certainly one tool that you have. Overall recognition, I think we all know this is a great motivator. People will like to be recognized for what they do. And this is one of those that I'll say over and over again and that mini recognition has no cost on your budget. It's just recognizing and doing a good job by giving people recognition for a job well done. And in any motivational or any tool, you always think about the rewards. People want rewards, some cash and some not. Some of the most popular ones that I've used over the years. A day off with pay, wonderful reward, letting someone go home early. Having a party with food. Food is a wonderful reward. So there's many, many tools at your disposal that again, are not on your bottom line budget that you can use to motivate people and improve their performance. And often as I've said many times, make them more effective and the organization more effective.
