The Difficult Conversation about Performance

Most workers abhor poor performance (at least, the poor performance of their co-workers).  More significantly, so do most managers.

But tackling poor performance requires having difficult conversations about work standards, and many managers prefer to avoid it.

In How to... address poor performance, published in the UK magazine, People Management, author Kate Russell explains why "Avoiding difficult conversations about work standards can demotivate other staff."

Although many have written about the issue of confronting poor performance, what sets this article apart is that it addresses the issue from the perspective of the other employees.

At the least, these other employees might feel that the poor performer is being appraised against an easier set of performance criteria than they are.

At the most, these other employees depend on their poor-performing co-workers to accomplish their jobs, and the failure of the manager to confront the issue prevents these workers from performing at their best.

Russell offers specific suggestions for preparing for the conversation about performance, conducting it and, most importantly, following up with coaching and feedback.

When a worker starts a job, a lack of ongoing coaching and feedback has the potential to reinforce and solidify poor performance.

And if the manager has effectively raised the concern about performance with the poor-performing worker, that workers needs the coaching and feedback to re-align his or her efforts with the manager's.  

Check out the article at: http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/11/how-to-address-poor-performance.htm?area=pm.

Some Random Thoughts on the ROI of Training

It's been an interesting period for demonstrating returns on training programs. The Phillipses sent out a call for cases for the latest volume on demonstrating the Return-on-Investment in training.

Not long before that, CLO Magazine published a press release Organizations Fail to Tie Learning to Business Impact from consulting firm ESI International about its "global survey," which reveals that "more than half of organizations (50.7 percent) do not measure the business impact of their learning programs." (Visit http://clomedia.com/articles/view/3965 to see the entire press release.)

The reasons aren't surprising:

a lack of resources and people qualified to track impact, as well as the need for a better understanding of measurement methodologies. Also, up to half of survey respondents in charge of learning program initiatives still do not believe measurement is a priority or a requirement.

ESI clearly does. And as a third-party provider, they do need to demonstrate that their training programs and services provide value to clients.

But the findings of ESI don't really differ from anyone else's results. In fact,
despite sustained interest in demonstrating a financial benefit to training, researchers repeatedly find that organizations rarely track the impact or return of training. In their 2003 article, Effectiveness of Training in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis of Design and Evaluation Features, researchers Winfred Arthur, Jr. (Texas A&M University), Winston Bennett, Jr, (Air Force Research Laboratory), Pamela S. Edens and Suzanne T. Bell (Texas A&M University) found that fewer than 10 percent of all training programs were evaluated for transfer of behavior or impact.

More recently, in their 2007 meta-analysis of 67 studies, A review and critique of research on training and organizational-level outcomes in Human Resource Management Review (volume 17, pages 251-273), researchers Phyllis Tharenou (University of South Australia), Alan Saks (University of Toronto), and Celia Moore (London Business School) found that "training is positively related to human resource outcomes and organizational performance but is only very weakly related to financial outcomes."

The work of researchers Lynnette Gillis and Allan Bailey, in their study of 12 cases for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, sheds light on why, even organizations that thought their training had a positive return-on-investment, often could not demonstrate it. In some cases, the programs had no clear business objectives. In other cases, the programs went off-track somewhere between request and implementation.

Although I recognize that demonstrating ROI is a cultural practice in business and that, for some projects, doing so makes a good idea, based on my reading and my own research, I'm reaching the conclusion that, for everyday purposes, we probably need a much different way to demonstrate the value of training programs. The measures definitely need to be practical and easily obtained, as well as credible. Most efforts to demonstrate ROI fall short on at least 1 of these criteria.

But perhaps the focus of assessment needs to shift from assessing the course to assessing the function of training. That won't necessarily be easier; for example, many organizations include training expenses into a number of budget categories other than training, including conferences, professional development, even marketing and general operations. As a result, simply finding all of the funds invested in training is an exercise in forensic accounting.

But maybe individual training programs, in isolation, do not have a complete impact on workers. Maybe it's the combined effect of all of the training that does. Furthermore, the mere process of inventorying out all of the training that an organization has invested in might, on its own, provide many sponsors with compelling data that their investment has indeed paid off.

Upcoming Workshops

Following are the workshops that I am scheduled to teach in the first half of 2011.

Highlighted workshops have a management or business focus.

Workshops

Workshop	Event	Location	Date
Advanced Design for e-Learning Certificate Program	Training 2011	San Diego, California	February 5-6, 2011
Writing Engaging eLearning Exercises and Test Questions	The User Assistance Conference by WritersUA	Long Beach, California	March 13, 2011
The Incredible Shrinking e-Learning Program	Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists Annual Conference	Chicago, Illinois	April 12, 2011
Technical Communication Manager Certificate Program	Society for Technical Communication Annual Summit	Sacramento, California	May 14-15, 2011
Developing the Business Case for a Major Project	American Society for Training and Development International Conference and Exposition	Orlando, Florida	May 21, 2011
Following Form: 13 Real-World Insights for Template-Based Writing	Metro New York chapter of the Society for Technical Communication	New York, New York	June 16, 2011
Additional Half-Day Workshop	Metro New York chapter of the Society for Technical Communication	New York, New York	June 16, 2011
Technical Communication Manager Certificate Program	Online Education by the Society for Technical Communication	Online	TBD

But Can the Team Be Friends?

Even if the boss manages to find a way to be caring, even close, without being friends, what types of relationships among the staff should the manager nurture?  When You Don’t Want Employees to Agree by Katie Loehrke and published in CLO Magazine, suggests that:

Harmony in the workplace is a good thing, but often conflict is needed to keep a team efficient and innovative.

Loehrke raises the concern that:

Most leaders are happy when a group reaches a consensus, but if a group arrives at a major decision without much discussion and with few variations in thought, consider what’s really going on. Did the team agree because their solution was truly the best option, or could one of these other sets of circumstances have occurred?

In other words, people confuse a seeming consensus because they prefer it to the conflict and delays that might ensue in reaching an actual consensus.

Several situations cause this: people choosing not to state their opinions for fear of disrupting group harmony, for lack of better solutions than the one proposed, or for fear of earning a reputation as a troublemaker.

The result is groupthink; although it creates short-term peace, it can disrupt long-term performance because important issues that team members could have raised never made their way into the discussion.

Loehrke suggests a couple of causes for group think:

• Intimidation by one or a small group of people, which prevents some people from speaking up for fear of consequences.  The dominator might be the manager but it might also result from team dynamics.  Fixing that dynamic involves exploring how it came to be and how it operates.  
• Hiring people who think alike because they have similar backgrounds and experiences.  Certainly hiring a more diverse workforce can address some of that, but it's amazing how people from diverse backgrounds can, at the core, think alike.  Hiring diversely also means hiring diverse personality types and opinions.  

Preventing group think also involves effective facilitation techniques for meetings, which can bring diverse opinions to the fore in a non-threatening way.

To learn more, check out the article at http://clomedia.com/articles/view/when-you-don-t-want-employees-to-agree/.

A Guide to Transferable Credentials--and a Certification Decoder--for Trainers

From Training magazine online:

Thinking about certifying as a training and development professional? You certainly have many choices. U.S.-based professionals can choose among the CPLP, CPT, and CTT and those living in Canada have national certifications.

In addition to spelling out those acronyms, this article identifies the certifications available to training and development professionals. But first, it places certification within the broader scope of external credentials, and describes the role of transferable credentials in attesting to the qualifications of training and development professionals.

Check out the entire article at http://tinyurl.com/4z9tdw7

Employment Issues and Keith Olberman's Firing.

I'll start by admitting--although I recognize that Keith Olberman's departure from MSNBC has stirred great passion among his supporters on the left and detractors on the left, as someone who never really got into his show, I don't really care about any of that. 

Rather, I am more interested in the relationship between Olberman and his employer, his motivation to work, his work ethic, and its broader implications for others, starting with my students, many of whom are just starting in their careers. 

An article in the New York Times, Monday, January 24, sheds light on what really happened.  According to the report (which you can find at  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/business/media/24olbermann.html?hp), Olberman had a pattern of enthusiastically starting a job, then becoming disillusioned.  In the process, he would often do something he shouldn't (like threatening to appear on a competitive network without permission) and exacerbate an increasingly fractured relationship with his bosses.  

Reading between the lines, it also sounds like he might have been a bit of a perfectionist and the workload needed to maintain perfectionism in any given job would ultimately get the best of him each time.  As what seems like burnout increased, so did the difficult behavior.  

That's not a recipe for long-term success. 

Some lessons that I'm taking away from this situation: 

For managers:  Watch out for superstar employees who seem to be going way above and beyond to impress.  At some point, they might crash and burn.  

That said, in some cases, the employee might not be "coach-able," that is, open to the constructive feedback that could save them from themselves.  Certainly the star system at networks doesn't help that process; it only feeds the ego.  

For workers:  Watch out for perfectionism and doing a lot of unnecessary additional work.  In the short run, it might impress someone.  But in the long-run, it will burn you out and turn you into a crabby person.  That crabby person will impress people as much as the superstar did--and will be as significant for your reputation as when you were a superstar.  

 

    

Can Bosses Be Friends?

Even above board relationships in the work place can be tricky. (Yes, I watch too many B-shows and movies.)

The next couple of posts offer some sound advice for navigating this territory from articles I recently read.

Can Bosses Be Friends?
The first, Be the boss, not a friend, published at Fortune/CNNMoney.com, is an excerpt from Linda Hill and Kent Lineback's book, Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback and suggests why seeking friendship from workers, or simply trying to be liked, isn't in the best interests of a productive work relationship.

Noting that the relationship between boss and worker "exists to accomplish work," they offer several reasons why seeking friendship with workers is a bad idea. All of the reasons come down to the basic issue: managers are responsible for achieving certain results. If those results are not achieved, managers need to counsel workers, put them on probation, and possibly even lay them off. But that's not easy if the manager and the worker are friends.

They also note that, if managers are friends with their staff, they're likely to be closer friends with some workers than others, only adding to tensions in the workplace.

To be honest, this article reminded me of one of my favorite topics from the old Ricki Lake show, "You used to be my friend, now you're my boss," which explored the transition from friends to manager and worker (albeit in a purposefully combative way).

Hill and Linebeck conclude that:

In a word, the boss–subordinate relationship is another paradox, one of the most profound you will encounter as a boss. It's a paradox because it must be genuinely human and caring—even close.

Check out the article at http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/18/be-the-boss-not-a-friend/.