How To Build Performance

I'll tell you how. How to create the conditions for motivation, engagement, retention, and performance. 

If you are a manager giving an assignment, be crystal clear about the what--then let your people deliver on how it will be done. 

Why?

 Because you hired them for the how. Think about it. You looked at resumes and carefully selected people who had something that seemed unique or different from the others. 

When you tell people how to do their jobs you take away their identity. We all want to contribute. And that contribution is in the form of the unique way--how--we do our jobs.

Action: Define and get commitment on what you want done, then let people use their unique talents to decide how to do it. 

Does this mean you walk away and totally ignore how things are getting done? No. Your payoff comes when you orchestrate quality, deadlines, and feedback. 

There are certain jobs, especially those related to safety, that don't offer much variation on the "how.": airline pilot, nuclear power plant operator, brain surgeon. For most of us, though, trial-and-error works well to perfect our methodologies and offer a sense of accomplishment. 

This is why more and more employees are looking for managers who coach. If you are unsure of how to do that, go ahead and download the free guide available in the right-hand column. More than a thousand readers have found it helpful and I hope you do, too.

photo source: blog.modernmechanix.com/

Comments

[kavita]

I agree, people shouldn’t be told ‘how’ to do their job. Everybody has a unique approach in which they get things done. In order to fully engage and motivate employees, few steps must be taken. Firstly, employees need to be comfortable with the present state of the company. Decision-making in an organization needs to be decentralized so that employees can create value. An environment of trust is also important in an organization. Trust can be encouraged through transparency in communication and information-sharing. All these steps will go a long way in motivating employees to perform better. These tenets have been put forward by Vineet Nayar of HCL Technologies in his book ‘Employees First, Customers Second’.