Driving High Performance Culture

During my 25+ years in human resources I’ve spent an unmeasurable amount of time talking to leaders about performance improvement and performance management.  Unfortunately, despite all this talk and focus many managers still aren’t doing either thing well. As a result I get asked (ad nauseum) to deliver performance management training or feedback training or both. 

If you peel back the onion on any problem it usually takes 3-5 layers before you actually get to the root of the problem.  If you have a team of leaders who aren’t driving performance, aren’t delivering feedback or simply aren’t “doing” performance management 9 times out of 10, lack of training is not the problem. So instead of saying yes to another training, my first response is to ask “what problem are we trying to solve?”. 

If you consider the lack of performance management as a symptom of a bigger problem, then you can drive to root cause.  In the case of performance management, the problem is almost always your culture.  Here are a few of my favorite culture root causes for why managers aren’t driving high performance. 

Culture Problem #1.  Your company has a “nice” culture. 

In a nice culture your managers are so busy trying to be nice that even when they do give feedback it is so watered down that the employee misses the opportunity to identify what they are personally doing wrong.  In a nice culture managers say things like “We really need to do a better job paying attention to details” when what they really need to say is “You need to do a better job paying attention to details. 

One of the leaders I work with quotes Radical Candor by Kim Malone Scott saying “clear is kind”.  Ironically, in a nice culture employees are confused and surprised when they end up being put on a performance improvement plan or when they get a low performance rating because they never heard the feedback they needed.

Culture Problem #2.  A close cousin to the nice culture is the “psychologically safe” culture. 

In this culture managers believe that you can’t hold people to a high standard without sacrificing psychological safety.  They mistakenly believe that if you give people difficult feedback they won’t trust you and they won’t feel safe.  Ironically one of the most feedback free cultures I’ve ever worked in also had the highest percentage of scared employees.  In this type of company, leaders deal with low performers through “reorganizations” or position eliminations and avoid giving critical performance feedback.  The resulting culture is one where employees are afraid that they could be fired without warning.  They perceive that people are let go without ever knowing what they did wrong or how they could have improved. 

On the other hand in high performing cultures there is a continuous feedback loop between managers and employees that leads to deep trust because both positive and critical feedback is part of the everyday.  There is transparency in combination with trust and therefore less surprises. 

Culture Problem #3.  The “feedback is a gift” culture. 

In a feedback is a gift culture managers deliver feedback only after wrapping it up in what I like to call a “turd sandwich”.  I’m going to tell you something bad, but I’m going to wrap it in a “positive sandwich” first.  I don’t care how positive the outside of the sandwich is, if the meat of the sandwich is a turd, I’m not going to eat it.  In this culture the manager leaves a feedback conversation feeling like they nailed it, but so does the employee.  The employee eats up the positive bread and the inside of the sandwich ends up left untouched on the plate.

So how do you deliver a high performance culture where employees get the feedback that they need?  Follows these 4 rules to get a high performing culture with high trust and high safety.

Rule #1 Focus on building trust. 

Get to know your employees and show them you care.  Building trust through vulnerability and empathy earns you the right to give your employees feedback.  Be clear to be kind.  Agree early and often what the rules of the game are when it comes to the feedback loop.  Set the expectation by being the type of leader who gives positive and negative feedback in real time.  Ask for feedback from your team regularly and show them what it looks like to learn and grow through acceptance.  Acknowledge what you are personally working on as a way to build trust and show what good looks like. 

Rule #2 Be brave. 

As a leader, delivering difficult feedback means you could hurt someone’s feelings.  Giving tough feedback sucks.  It takes courage to be honest with someone right away as soon as you notice they’ve messed up.  Don’t “wait” for it to get better and don’t assume that your employee knows what to do next time.  Most people genuinely want to do a good job, but to give them a chance to improve you have to give them a chance hear the feedback and consider a change. 

When you give clear feedback you are giving the employee power.  Your honesty gives them the power to be better.  The employee gets the power to decide what to do with the feedback and you get to feel good knowing that you gave them every opportunity to improve.

Rule #3 “PIP” early. 

The performance improvement plan (“PIP”) gets a bad wrap as a tool to fire people.  The reason is because at some companies a PIP is only used when it is time to fire someone.  Instead, I tell leaders to make the use of performance improvement plans business as usual.  A well-documented written action plan is a great way to align on expectations, clearly explain gaps and outline plans to improve.  If performance improvement plans are used regularly resulting in improved performance (and not always termination) employees won’t be scared when they hear “PIP”.  Call it an EIP…early intervention plan, if the name is a problem.  Early documented intervention ensures the rules are clear and drives a high performance culture.

Rule #4 Don’t PIP stupid. 

Just hear me out.  This is something a General Counsel I once worked with would say (not a recent company).  While her articulation of the advice was crass, the sentiment isn’t all bad.  If someone can’t do the job because of a capability gap that they can’t close through coaching, then a performance improvement plan is unlikely to help and most certainly will hurt.  If someone can’t do the job because of ability they probably already know (and they are probably making themselves miserable trying to hide what they think you don’t know).  Putting someone who can’t succeed on a performance improvement plan just adds to their pain and the stress.  Get help from your HR partner before this type of conversation but know that sometimes an honest conversation can lead to a voluntary and mutually beneficial departure without the pain of a pointless performance improvement plan.   

Regardless of what you do, get to the root of the problem before you jump straight to another performance management training and cultivate a culture where high performance and employees can thrive.