If you don’t like the title of this article, read on.
By ‘boss’ here, I am referring to a person that an employee
(or self-employed) reports to. That
reporting boss can be a customer, the shareholders, superior and in some cases,
the government.
Today I shall focus on your superior, that is, someone that
you report to in your work. Most of the
time this person is a manager or supervisor.
Whenever an employee has a performance issue, most managers
will assume it is the lack of training.
As a trainer with 16 years of experience training 81,131 people in 13 countries since 1996, I know that many a times it is not the lack of training. It may
not even be the lack of skills or attitude.
The biggest obstacle to performing well
is not about knowing what to do. The
biggest obstacle is not doing what we know we should be doing, due
to Interferences by Bosses.
The following are the 5 most common interferences by bosses
that are causing the performance problem.
Remove them and you’ll see your employees’ performance soar.
1.
Having systems that encourages lousy performance while punishing good
performance.
Many companies give difficult
assignments to those good performing staff and give easy jobs to those that
don’t perform. Many a times performers
are asked to clean up the ‘shit’ done by the trouble makers, like service
recovery. This really demotivate the
good performers as it is against the simple principle of motivation - reward to reinforce positive behavior and
punish to eliminate negative behavior.
Another common system problem
is remuneration, where everyone gets the same 13th month bonus (or 5% annual
increment) regardless of their performance.
High performers often don’t get much more than another month bonus,
which is telling everyone that it is okay to under-perform.
2.
Too
much pressure, especially instructions that are based on the past situations
and ignore the present situation.
Imagine you are at the tennis court
when you are trying hard to remember all the instructions that you have been
given. When the ball is coming to you at
150 km per hour, you try to recall past instructions on what to do. The outcome is that you will definitely miss
the ball. You simply can’t focus on the past and the present in the same moment.
This is what is happening in the
workplace every day. Bosses always
insists that staff follow company’s policies, many of which are based on what
have happened in the past. When a new
situation occurs (like commuters stuck in the underground tunnel), the staff
are trying to focus on the present and act accordingly, like give out
information immediately to the stuck commuters.
But the staff remembered that under company policy, only the top
management can give out information to the public.
Torn
between doing what they should be doing and doing what they were told, the
staff will reach a state of inertia - not doing anything.
This pressure to follow past
instructions, which are no longer valid as we are dealing with a new situation
now, is causing big problems. Some
bosses may even blamed the staff lack of skills as the reason for the
under-performance. Unbelievable but
true!
3.
Wrong
Strategy or Tactic
A good example is the famous Kodak
company, which has filed for bankruptcy in January 2012, after being in
business for 131 years. Kodak adopted the wrong strategy of sticking to its
film business instead of moving into digital photography and saw its business
declined by 99% in a decade!
The strange thing is that it is so
obvious to everyone in this world that digital photography and not film
photography will do well, and I am sure all the employees in Kodak know this
too. Yet Kodak management did not know or listen to the public or its own staff and stick on to the wrong
strategy.
If you are in top
management, ask yourself this question: have you asked your staff, especially
the people closest to the market, how valid is your current strategy?
The
truth is not if you have a wrong strategy and you pushed your employees hard to
pursue that strategy, you are the one that is really causing the poor
performance!
4.
Protecting
their Own Turf
We know that it is not easy for bosses
to rise to their current position and as such they will do whatever it takes to
protect their own turf. And in doing so
they may be causing harm to the organization.
Worse still, the boss punishes staff that don’t toe their line. Look at the many office politics happening
now and you’ll know what I am talking about.
This point is very obvious but many
people refuse to face it. Like some may
not even want to circulate this article for fear of being seen as bad in their
employees’ eyes.
We know that the first purpose of a
boss is to achieve the organization’s goals. If he cannot do so, why have him
in the first place?
If the boss, in protecting his own turf, downplays achievement
of the organization’s goals, in no time he will be played-out by his own boss
(the shareholders in business or voters in politics).
5.
Lack
of management and supervision skills.
We know that it is very common for the
top performer to be promoted to management position, like the best performing
salesperson is promoted to the post of Sales Manager.
The
reality is that management calls for different skills and they are often in
conflict with the technical skills that a manager was previously good at.
The lack of management and supervision
skills will make the manager unable to focus on management and instead focus on
technical aspects of the work. We often
see Sales Managers unable to motivate and inspire their sales team to hit their
sales targets and have to do the sales himself to make up for the shortfall. In fact by him doing more sales than his
salespeople, he is causing his sales team to under-perform!
In short, the above 5 interferences are blocking the road to
higher performance. Remove them and
you’ll be have a more effective, successful and happy team. Happy management! For list of our courses (eg How to Be a Great Boss), click here. Related articles:
- Manage by Wisdom, not Authority
- 6 Reasons why some companies fare badly in 2014
- The more confused you are, the faster you learn
- Leadership by example is the most scary thing ever
- Working hard and laughing it out loud
- Don't crush the bird and other ways to be a good boss
- Doing the 6 things that you should be doing at work
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