Performance Leadership™

Karen Moustafa Leonard, Fatma Pakdil

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781631570131
• eBook ISBN: 9781631570148
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

A fearsome aspect of management is the performance appraisal. It has become a byword for unfairness and irritation among employees. Some management writers are even proposing in doing away with it. We agree that the current method of appraisal is unsustainable and counterproductive. In this book, we discuss Performance LeadershipTM – the idea of leading employee performance, which should be the focus of management. Just doing appraisal or evaluation is not enough. Managers must incorporate the entire model of performance management and use it to lead within their workgroup, department, or organization. We walk managers through the steps of Performance Leadership, discussing the benefits and pitfalls of each step. The idea of making performance management work as a leadership style is new and simple, but it takes dedication to complete the task. This book is valuable for supervisors, managers, human resource staff, and others – anyone who needs to manage performance!

CHAPTER 1

How Is Management Success Created?

“Management style [means] a manager gives clear directions and actually stays pretty hands-off, but is ready and available to jump in to offer guidance, expertise, and help when needed.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2014/10/16/how-to-answer-whats-your-management-style/)

“Leadership is less about your needs and more about the needs of the people and the organization you are leading. Leadership styles . . . should be adapted to the particular demands of the situation, the particular requirements of the people involved, and the particular challenges facing the organization.” (http://guides.wsj.com/management/developing-a-leadership-style/how-to-develop-a-leadership-style/)

From the employee perspective: Sally’s¹ stomach was full of butterflies. “Annual review time,” she thought. “Once again, someone who knows nothing about my job will try to tell me what I’m doing wrong. When can we stop pretending that this is doing any good?”

From the manager perspective: John looked at the calendar and sighed. Twenty performance appraisals due to the human resource department in a week. In the cafeteria, he saw Alicia, and sat with her to eat his sandwich. “I just don’t know how I’m going to get all of those appraisals done in time,” he said. “I have to do all of the measurements, write the evaluation, and then talk to each employee, added to my regular duties that already keep me working overtime. How have you managed over the 10 years you’ve been here?”

“It is the training that they gave me, but they don’t do it any longer. Performance leadership is a comprehensive, organization-wide management system, and appraisals are just a part of the whole system,” Alicia replied. “All managers need training on the entire system, not just on how to do appraisals.”

Why Are Management and Leadership Styles an Issue?

How managers approach employees is important. At its essence, management style is an exhibition of the attitude that the manager has toward the employees and the goals of the department and/or organization.² Management style is demonstrated by the way that the manager treats employees and the work activities of the department or organization.³ It might be formal, democratic, paternalistic, participatory, or other styles suitable to the way that the manager views the employee group and the goals to be achieved. It is rarely defined in the research, but many of the general books and textbooks on management use this phrase in this way.

Management styles vary, and some are dependent upon the situation. Unfortunately, this often leaves employees uncertain about their level of performance or their status in regard to continuing employment. Some managers are aggressive, believing that employees are lazy and looking for ways out of work. Others believe that employees are willing to work and they need direction to be successful. One of the most successful ways to manage employees is to be concerned about their welfare and to point their effort toward goal achievement, rather than micromanaging them.⁴

Why Should Performance Leadership™ Be a Management Style?

Performance Leadership as a leadership style is a new concept presented in this book. When concentrating on Performance Leadership, the manager’s focus is on achieving departmental and organizational goals and in dealing fairly and equitably with employees. This is, in essence, the job of the manager. Making it a style allows the concentration of focus on behaviors that are directed toward goal achievement. When concern for employees’ well-being is added to this, it is a management combination that designates a person as a top manager and leader.⁵

Using this style allows the employee to determine the force, direction, and persistence of effort. A consistent Performance Leadership style, as perceived by the employee, will prevent employees from losing focus on the departmental or organizational goals and help them deal with uncertainty.⁶ Poor management and leadership styles leave employees feeling powerless,⁷ resulting in negative employee behaviors in the workplace that are seen by employees as the appropriate method of retaliation for bad management.⁸ This happens when managers and leaders see their subordinates as lazy and unwilling to contribute (Theory X managers/leaders).

McGregor⁹ identified two types of managers: those who believe in Theory X and those who believe in Theory Y. Theory X suggests that workers are lazy and unwilling to work, making the control and command system of management essential to management. Theory X managers try to constrain subordinate performance within the so-called bell curve; that is, a few need to be rated 1 and 5, a few more rated 2 and 4, but most should be rated as 3, for average performance. Of course, many do not know what actual ratings look like—they are ranking the employees, not rating or evaluating their performance.

This is a game that is played in many organizations by the top management team. To have an excellent organization, you must have excellent people. But excellent people may require raises, which the organization cannot afford. This is the catch-22 for managers, when the top management wants to play chicken management—using a poor evaluation as a reason not to give a raise. It is better to be honest with the evaluations, even if the raises across the board must be smaller.

McGregor suggested another theory, which he called Theory Y: People enjoy work and will be committed to meaningful work if treated well and rewarded with higher level rewards such as praise and recognition—not just money. Mary Parker Follett identified power with people as being much more effective than power over others.¹⁰ Having a strong focus on goals prevents the employee from thinking that the manager has power over her. Instead, a Performance Leadership style stresses that everyone is needed to make the organization work.

The Performance Leadership style uses the concepts developed in this book as a way to manage goals and employee accountability. When goals are set with the employees, it is possible to monitor their success and their constraints within the work environment. Employees also begin to understand the role that their tasks and duties play in achieving broader departmental and organizational goals. The emphasis in the Performance Leadership style is on employees as capable, competent (efficient and effective) adults with the ability to decide the amount of effort to provide, how to direct their efforts, and how long to provide the effort. Being able to understand and use Performance Leadership as a personal style and the Performance Leadership System as a management tool is a valuable and needed skill for all managers in every industry as well as every nonprofit organization. In the next chapters, the steps in using the Performance Leadership System to pursue Performance Leadership are discussed in detail, with exhibits and examples to demonstrate their use.

Why Use the Performance Leadership System?

Managing performance is the primary job of managers. It requires measurement.

Over the years of our work in industry and academia, managers and employees have said that they dread employee evaluations. In searching to find out why, we find that research and practice show that often managers and employees see the evaluation as a time for gotcha, where employees report that they feel that evaluation is simply a way to find their mistakes, not their successes.¹¹ This is why gotcha management is used in this book as a phrase for a management style consisting of finding mistakes at the end of the year, without helping employees during the year to overcome them.

“Improving employee performance requires employees throughout the organization accepting responsibility for achieving organizational objectives, managers having complete confidence in their subordinates, information flowing effectively throughout the organization, and employees receiving honest task and performance feedback in short cycles.”¹²

One study¹³ found that only 3 out of 10 employees said that their evaluation helped improve their performance. Many employees believe that managers use it as an excuse not to give raises, even when they are deserved. Others find the process humiliating and embarrassing, particularly those being measured by a manager and a system that they consider illogical, inconsistent, contradictory, unscientific, or uncaring.¹⁴ Culbert¹⁵ reflects this feeling when he writes in the Wall Street Journal:

“. . . I see nothing constructive about an annual pay and performance review. It’s a mainstream practice that has baffled me for years. To my way of thinking, a one-side-accountable, boss- administered review is little more than a dysfunctional pretense. It’s a negative to corporate performance, an obstacle to straight-talk relationships, and a prime cause of low morale at work. Even the mere knowledge that such an event will take place damages daily communications and teamwork (author’s italics).”

However, managing performance means managing behaviors. Failure to deal with substandard performance or problem employees causes disruption, so dealing with the behaviors is essential. Otherwise, decreases in productivity and morale will occur, which will be reflected in the organization’s bottom line.¹⁶ On the other hand, failure to encourage high-performing employees can also cause drastic reductions in productivity and morale.

The solution is the simple, but effective, Performance Leadership System. Research shows that 86 percent of firms are not happy with their current performance management systems. Many, in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 How Is Management Success Created?
• Chapter 2 What Is Performance?
• Chapter 3 Are Job Analysis and Job Design Really Necessary?
• Chapter 4 How Are Job Descriptions and Job Specifications Created?
• Chapter 5 Why Use Goal Setting?
• Chapter 6 What Is the Performance Appraisal Process?
• Chapter 7 Why and How Should Feedback Be Given?
• Chapter 8 What Are Major Issues In Performance Leadership™?
• References
• Index