More often than not, Team leaders tend to approach their team’s performance in a piece meal manner.

When they need to conduct the 1 to 1 conversation, or to provide feedback, they will schedule time to do so. How one activity connects to another, only a few would actually know or understand.

Instead, I offer a different way of looking at things.

 

A performance management system.

Performance management is not a piece meal set of activities, but rather a series of components working together within a ‘system’.

You see. On 13 Jan 2025, I ran my 4^th Performance management workshop for an organisation from the Semi-conductor industry, and along the way, summarised the insights of the day for my participants.

1 – Vision: Your boss’ KPI becomes your team vision. Your job, as the team

leader, is to bring that Vision to life in a way that is compelling, concrete, with clear targets, timeline, a communication channel, and with processes that your team can work with to be efficient and effective.

2 – Delegation: When your delegation is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound), you make giving and receiving feedback from your team a lot easier. Why? Because your conversation is grounded in specifics, rather than generalities unbounded by individual interpretations.

3 – 1 on 1 conversations: There are at least 7 different types of 1 on 1 conversations you can have with your team, and they are all there to trigger information gathering by you, checking for alignment on expectations, probing for understanding from the team member, and to ensure all is realistically on track. 1 on 1 conversation is not limited to the formal ones conducted for performance appraisal, but rather informal conversations as well. Each type of 1 on 1 has its own set of questions as well.

4 – Feedback: Giving feedback (a type of conversation) can be tricky, but when you give it using a framework (an acronym I called SBIRA) within the Feedback sandwich method, it becomes easier. The same SBIRA framework is used to drive accountability and action taking in receive constructive feedback to change behaviour, and Acknowledgements to reinforce desired behaviour.

5 – Coaching: Team leaders create micro-coaching moments (a type of questions-led conversation) to guide and motivate the team to take the next step with increased ownership and critical thinking. Micro-coaching, unlike usual coaching of between 30 to 60 mins, is short and sweet of around 5 mins each, and only focused on enabling the team member to overcome one specific challenge at a time.

Work the system. Repeatedly.

Referring to the image, you can see that besides the 5 points mentioned, there are also associated activities that a team leader has to perform.

When all of these are done continuously, you create Performance momentum.

Like a fan that spins its blades rapidly to create win, the more frequency in which you go through the 5 points, the more momentum you create, which increases the chances of your team performing at a higher level.

What do you think?

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