Being a Performance-Based Leader in any Bureaucracy

We’ve all seen it or experienced it!  You are working your hardest and your Manager says that he wants to see you (or your buddy) in his office at 4pm today…

 

You wonder what it could be about, but you go on with your day not expecting anything.

 

THEN, the meeting comes and you find yourself escorted to your car! You’ve been laid off!

 

What happened???

 

Well, of course it could be any number of things, but in this article we will focus on a dismissal due to poor job performance. Prior to a dismissal for cause, any good Manager would have done the following:

 

A performance based layoff should be the culmination of a series of poor performance on the job and multiple documented and signed one-on-one sessions with you to identify the poor behavior and discuss a plan of action to solve the problem. (NOTE: There must already be a standard to judge all the employees behavior, and that standard must be discussed with the employees as they walk into their positions.) When your employees  know what to expect, you can easily lay out the particulars of any discrepancies. Be specific in identifying the actions needed to correct the deficiency. This should not be a punishment, just a candid discussion as to what comes next to improve their performance.

 

No plan of action is perfect, and in order to ensure that what you discussed at the meeting gets implemented, the Manager has to check on the employee to be sure that the poor performance is not repeated, or to help adjust the employee’s behavior on the spot as the employee lapses back into poor habits. And when the time comes for the follow up meeting, the Manager should have a written record of improvements and new or recurring deficiencies because he has been watching the employee and hoping for a better performance. And there is no set time for these meetings. If you are satisfied with a quarterly evaluation, and it allows for sufficient time to change behaviors, then I encourage it. But if you find that the behavior has not changed, or has gotten worse, even in a shorter time period, then you should re-address the issue in another formal session. And then document the session again.

 

As the Manager, you have a responsibility to be diligent in your efforts to ensure that your employees are doing the best they can to be productive and that they are following the rules of the company. Lateness and too many coffee breaks are a problem if the work is not getting done. If you take the Fish philosophy to heart, you will agree that FUN is as much a part of a productive workplace as sitting in meetings… but regardless, there has to be a standard that all should follow. I call my wife the “Fairness Police” because she is always concerned with how some people at work get treated differently than others. And there isn’t really a fair way to decide everything for everyone, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for each person in your charge. However, there is a responsibility to all to treat everyone as fairly as possible while insisting on a high quality of work being accomplished. During this process, you will see a pattern – improvement or degradation – of performance. This should be the basis of a discussion on the possibility of dismissal. A dismissal for cause should never be a spur of the moment decision; it should have a pattern of misbehavior and documented counseling sessions attempting to improve an employee before they are removed.

 

Even when everyone is working as diligently as they can, there may be some who just can’t complete their tasks at the level they are expected to perform. When this occurs, it is only fair to the others that the “weakest link” on the team be removed. It really only slows the rest of the team down to have one non-performing person in the midst of a crew who is doing everything they can to be highly productive. I have found that when many people are fired, they ask themselves, “What did I do wrong?” That should never be the case! By following a simple pattern of performance evaluation, it should be no surprise to the employee by the time you decide to fire them that they have been heading for this day all along. And they should know exactly where they have failed to meet their job performance standards.

 

Managers have to be leaders! When a person is fired and doesn’t expect it, it is almost always because their leadership has not been honest with them from the beginning. Sometimes administrators set policies that are somewhat unrealistic, but are nonetheless expected to be followed. When that happens, a Manager should be a leader and try to help correct that policy… however, many times administrators don’t change for the Manager, and the Manager has to adhere to policies regardless of what they think. While this is another problem altogether, until the policy can be modified, it is easy to enforce policies that you cannot change as long as it is enforced across the board. Leaders will find a way to make the law enforceable so that everyone is clear on how they are expected to perform. And they will communicate those policies to their employees universally. There are no big secrets to being a great leader, just simple practices.

 

Basic Leadership Guidelines: Be Honest with your employees, Set the Standard for your own and their performance, Have an Open Door Policy to discuss bottom-fed suggestions for improvement in performance, and Enforce the Rules and Standards set in place!

 

Peak Performance Guidelines: People perform their best when they are allowed to offer input, they feel that they are a productive member of the team, and they are rewarded for at least meeting, or – even better – exceeding the standards.