Have you ever heard yourself say something like one of the bullets below about one of your employees?
- Susan is one of our best supervisors, but she rarely shows up on time.
- Rick is such a great employee, but he often comes to work with a negative attitude.
- Michelle is our best receptionist, but anytime we make a change she throws a fit and is the last to conform.
- Ben is our highest performing salesperson, but he takes personal calls at work and stays on break longer than we allow.
If you have to say “but,” when acknowledging high performers, the truth is the employee may actually fall into the solid performance level, or even a low performer, depending on the characteristic or behavior that comes after the “but.” If we don’t correctly identify the level our team member, we miss the opportunity to develop that person in the best way.
As leaders, it’s important to be honest with yourself about where an employee may stand. High performers don’t have any characteristics of a solid or a low performer. High performers always display behaviors associated with the organization’s standards, mission, values, and goals. Some characteristics of high performers include:
- Comes to work on time
- Has a positive attitude
- Problem-solves and brings solutions to the table
- Role models of the organization’s values and behaviors, positively influence other employees
- Takes responsibility and ownership for their work and mistakes
- Strives for continuous personal and professional development
- Thrives in an objective, goal-oriented environment
- Meets and exceeds deadlines
- Demonstrates a high commitment to the team and organization.
When referring to low performers, we can usually place performance issue into one of two categories: Low Will or Low Skill. For example, an employee who meets their sales goals, but comes to work with a bad attitude has low will. An employee who has a positive attitude and goes out of their way to be a good team member, but who’s own projects fall short of expectations may have a lack of ability, or low skill. It’s important to know if the performance is a result of low skill or low will so that you can coach the team member the most productive way. This Will & Skill Matrix can help leaders differentiate between low will and low skill to improve performance.
Support for each performance level varies. Once we have identified what level of performance each employee truly belongs to, we can begin coaching employees to move up in performance levels which in turn moves the organization to excellence. Every employee deserves the chance to be developed in the right way. The chart below shows the different ways to provide support to each level: