Measuring your own personal growth, your team's growth and each team member's growth individually is critical to your organization's success. But how often do we see performance measured in a true sense? I am not talking about bland performance appraisals once a year that really provide no true feedback to an employee and is an dull HR exercise that noone really cares about. I am talking about realistic active real-time management and performance feedback. Is that part of your team's culture yet? If not, you need to start thinking about it. There certainly are ways to incorporate a real-time feedback mechanism into your team's culture, and as a leader, you are responsible for it.
Simple measures such as weekly team meetings (not just for the sake of it) where you take the time out to discuss the team's progress and performance politely, and in front of everyone, can help. Regular one on one time with your team members can help as well. Listen to what they say, If you talk to them enough and develop a relationship with them, they will tell you the truth and even if they don't, there's a better chance that you can read their minds and their real intentions better. That, in turn, can help you provide better feedback and measure performance subjectively, not just objectively, as in many performance appraisals.
Too often leaders and their subordinates alike, feel that they don’t need to measure their performance. ‘I know my job – I know what I need to do – you don’t need to measure me or my results’. Nothing could be further from the truth. How would you like to go to a basketball game where no one kept score or watch a Sunday golf tournament without a leader board? Not much fun, huh? Exactly there would be no real point of the game if we couldn’t keep or know the score or the final outcome. It would just be a bunch of people running up and down the court in funny pants or guys hitting a little white ball all over a grass playing field.
Whether we know it or not we all want to be measured in almost any endeavor we are involved with; either as a participant or a spectator or fan. The same logic applies to building high performance organizations. When team members are totally engaged in the team or themselves, and they are involved in setting the measures for the team or themselves, they will go to great lengths to ensure that the goals they helped set are reached – in many cases, in record time.
So don’t miss the great opportunity that measurements can be in building your team and its performance.
Jerry Haney is the author of the renowned book on Organizational Culture Change called Making Culture Pay. Download the book for free for a limited time at www.visionomics.com/Free-EBook-Offer.html.
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