First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

by Gallup Press

The Performance Planning Meetings To help him prepare, ask him to write down answers to these three questions before each meeting: A. What actions have you taken? His response should reflect the details of his performance over the last six months. He should include scores, rankings, ratings and timelines, if available. B. What discoveries have you made? These discoveries might be the result of training classes he attended, or they might simply be new insights he derived from an internal presentation he made, a job-shadowing session he participated in or even a book he read. Wherever they came from, encourage him to keep track of his own learning. C. What partnerships have you built? He might have formed new partnerships or strengthened existing relationships. These partnerships might be professional or personal relationships with colleagues or clients. It is up to him to decide. Whatever he decides, it is important that he take responsibility for building his constituency, inside and outside the company.

After about 10 minutes, direct the conversation toward the future, using the following questions: D. What is your main focus? What are his primary goal(s) for the next six months? E. What new discoveries are you planning? What specific discoveries is he hoping to make over the next six months? F. What new partnerships are you hoping to build? How is he planning to grow his constituency over the next six months?

If your manager is just too busy to talk with you about your performance or your goals … schedule a performance planning meeting with him. Remove the planning burden from his shoulders and tell him that you will provide the structure for the meeting in advance so that you can use your time together most efficiently.

As much as possible, define every role using outcome terms. • Find a way to rate, rank or count as many of those outcomes as possible. Measurement always improves performance. • The four most important emotional outcomes for a customer are accuracy, availability, partnership and advice. Examine each role in the company and identify what actually needs to happen to create these outcomes. In training classes, explain how the standardized steps of the role lead to one or more of these emotional outcomes. Also explain where, how and why employees are expected to use their discretion to create these outcomes. • Hold managers accountable for their employees’ responses to the Q12 items presented in Chapter 1. Employees’ responses to these 12 items are a very important outcome measure. Although we would not advise paying managers based on their employees’ responses, managers should use the 12 items as part of their overall performance scorecard.