Retail Observer

December 2017

The Retail Observer is an industry leading magazine for INDEPENDENT RETAILERS in Major Appliances, Consumer Electronics and Home Furnishings

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RETAILOBSERVER.COM DECEMBER 2017 46 Libby Wagner Culture Coach Libby Wagner, author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, works with clients to help them create and sustain profit cultures www.libbywagner.com RO M ost of the time, I'm helping people be courageous, honest and direct with another person or group. I've coached hundreds of leaders to talk with respectful candor about performance, communication, follow-through, interpersonal skills, behaviors, and betrayals in the context of good news and bad news, and things that fall under the category of other. In our management classes, we nearly always spend time on how hard it is to let someone go—to send them on their way because it's not a good fit, or they can't perform or are unwilling to be consistent. Even when we have become exhausted by the efforts and the situation, and all the tactics we think we've tried (or thought about trying), it's still really hard. It takes a lot of courage to have that conversation with someone else, and for a bit of comic relief in our class, I always ask each manager/supervisor to raise their right hand and repeat after me: "I do not terminate employees. Employees earn termination through consistent non-performance and overwhelming feedback." Oh! If it were only true! This gets a lot of smiles and laughs, but what's most likely not true is that last line: we've hesitated to give the honest, "overwhelming" feedback because we don't have the discipline of practice to do so. Often, we aren't meeting regularly with our people (i.e. "overwhelming") to talk about performance. Remember, just talking to someone every day about the day-to-day activities is not a performance conversation! A performance conversation is short (20- 30 min), focused, and has some follow-up action commitments. The even more tricky part about getting real in these work conversa- tions is that you must begin with you. The critical conversation, the penultimate conversation, is with yourself. In the dramatic situation of deciding to terminate an employee (I find that term sort of terrible, by the way), you must first look at yourself in the mirror: have I done everything I can to set this person up for success? Sadly, many times the answer is "no," and this causes pain and distress for everyone. You're not responsible for whether or not someone does succeed, but you are responsible for setting them up to do so. If you provide yourself with a quick diagnostic, the Six Keys to Managing Performance can help: 1. Hire for talent. Hiring the right person is the most proactive thing you can do to manage performance. Make sure the person is the right technical, interpersonal, and cultural fit for your team. 2. Provide clear written performance expectations. This is different from a job description. Performance expectations are clear and can be measured for success. 3. Teach or coach to ableness (the demonstrated ability to perform tasks to set standards) and provide the training, mentoring, job shadowing, etc. to do the work you need. Don't be fooled that someone in a high-level position won't need this, too. 4. Give frequent, small-dose feedback. Regularly scheduled perfor- mance conversations, or the one-on-one, helps to provide praise and recognition, corrective counseling and re-calibration for performance, and it increases trust in your essential supervisory relationship! 5. Clear the swamp! Regularly assess and discuss the obstacles to motivation. 6. Provide development opportunities for your people by looking at career development, specialized training or skill development, on-the-job projects or leadership opportunities. The important thing to note is that before you get real with someone else about their performance, you must get real with yourself. If the answer to the above question is "yes, I have done everything I can to set this person up for success," then the compassionate and smart thing to do is to let them go — for your team, your organization, for them to find their next opportunity that's a better fit, and for you. But make sure you've been honest with yourself first! GETTING REAL: AN HONEST EXPLORATION OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

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