Our senior consulting staff had an interesting conversation about performance management the other day. We all agreed that, to a large degree, the success or failure of performance management rests with how well (and even, if) a supervisor is able to work with employees to establish goals, monitor goal achievement, help employees develop professionally and evaluate goal achievement. We also all acknowledged that supervisory training on how to do these things is critical to the successful implementation of a performance management approach.
However, after many years working for, and consulting with, organizations, I have concluded that there’s another point to be made here – for a variety of reasons, some people who happen to hold a supervisory or management title, simply are not good at performance management, despite training. And I would submit, therefore, that they should NOT be supervising people. Performance management is too important – it is probably at least 95% of the people management role.
We in HR can train and train some supervisors who, as a result of our efforts, may move from terrible at the job to barely competent.
Why is this the case and what can we do about it?
The reasons are varied, including that the supervisor:
- was a great individual contributor and so was promoted to supervisor as a reward – but the person’s fundamental skill set does not include supervisory ability
- doesn’t value the supervisory role, even though it’s technically a key part of his or her accountabilities
- would rather be “one of the gang” than have to discuss performance with employees
- is either overly requiring (e.g., focused solely on goal achievement) and not sufficiently caring toward employees (e.g., concerned about professional development and about the person as a whole) or the other way around
- does not display the discipline and organization skills to do the job
- avoids conflict and can’t deal with tough performance issues
- is a poor communicator and epitomizes the “mushroom” theory of management
- is so focused on his or her own career advancement that he/she doesn’t help people who need supervisory time and attention
You may have encountered these and other reasons for an individual’s failure to do a good job of performance management. Unfortunately, these problems are not easily solved with training alone and may not be fixable at all.
In my view, organizations need to take several steps to overcome the mismatch between the person and the role requirements that too often occurs, including:
- Use a rigorous selection process in determining individuals who are suited to the supervisory role and who will take performance management seriously. Often organizations that employ a rigorous process in recruiting and staffing an individual contributor role from outside the organization do not use a similar approach in selecting supervisors from within the organization
- Observe employees prior to moving them into supervision — do they appear to “have what it takes”?
- When a mismatch does occur, do not ignore it, but take steps to remedy the problem, including moving the individual out of the supervisory role
– Margaret Bentson, Principal Consultant
CompTalk 