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Are You A Performance Stopper Manager? Check Yourself On These 5 Examples

By Leon Noone

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 17Dec2009 Word count: 566 Viewed: 221 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Introduction Demanding top performance from employees is every manager's right. But some managers demand high standards then put obstacles to achieving them in the path of employees. Put bluntly, these managers become "performance stoppers". Do any of these describe you?

1. The Slack Timekeeper. You schedule your weekly staff meeting for 8.45am. All but 2 of your team are on time. You don't start the meeting until they arrive at 9.10 am. The same occurs for the three consecutive weeks.

On the fourth week only 2 people arrive on time. Everyone else is at least 20 minutes late.

By holding up the meeting for the 2 latecomers in the first and subsequent weeks, you're virtually telling all your staff that lateness doesn't matter. And you're telling the punctual staff that you don't care if they're inconvenienced by others' unpunctuality.

2. The Deadline Breaker. You set a very specific deadline for a report from an employee. Your employee accepts the deadline. He submits the report three days late. You accept it.

You develop a reputation for not being serious about deadlines. After a while all your deadlines are ignored.

You've stopped the performance - meeting deadlines - that you previously demanded.

3. The Sloppy Record Keeper. You're unhappy about the slipshod methods of recording staff absences on leave. You insist that your staff fill out an absence form before they take leave. But you allow one or two of them to complete the form after they return.

In no time at all, everyone completes their absence form after they return from leave. Some don't even bother with that. Your records of staff absences are still slipshod. Your staff know that you're not serious about changing that.

4. The Crime Stopper. You're concerned about theft of handtools for private use. You have a procedure for borrowing tools. No one follows it.

You insist on it being followed but find that handtool usage almost doubles. You discover that staff are building up small personal collections of handtools so that they have access to them when they need them. You're surprised and confused.

The theft has increased and inventory costs have doubled. Was that the performance you wanted?

5. The Spurious Exemplar You insist on your staff keeping meticulous records of petty cash usage. You institute a "no receipt no repayment" policy. But you believe that as manager, you should personally have some discretion in claiming unsubstantiated expenses.

Following an audit check of petty cash records you discover that lots of staff are submitting "fudged" receipts or none at all.

As a manager, you can always be sure your performance example will be followed.

Conclusion. There are far more serious performance stoppers than these. All present the same message. You can unwittingly be stopping employees doing what you say you want them to do.

Be consistent. Start meetings at the appointed time no matter who's absent.

Be insistent. Insist that agreed deadlines are met

Be sensible. Do leave records deserve so much attention?

Be focused. When you introduce or change a system make sure you know exactly what you're trying to achieve.

Consider Consequences When you give instructions or order changes consider what the consequences of the new systems may be, both positive and negative.

Be a leader. Your staff will soon work out whether you practice what you preach. If you don't, they'll make you suffer for it.

Whatever you do, take care not to be a performance stopper.

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