Performance review time in organisations are usually regarded by both managers and staff as stressful.
A well-designed people development strategy and plan leads to a less stressful process that is beneficial for staff and management.
Most times, the zeal, energy, time and money investment required to discover, develop and deliver a strategy for achieving a high-performance workforce is usually lacking in most organisations.
The Lockdown situation has made it even more challenging as Managers that rely on physical monitoring to assess performance would have struggled with the lack of control and inability to closely monitor staff, to impact results.
When performance issues arise, staff and managers are sent off to design a plan for improvement. Sometimes managers design a plan with very little input from the staff concerned.
Once a plan is in place, staff and managers set about to execute it and hope that the outcomes are positive
However, the question is not is there a plan, but is the plan an effective one?
There are 3 critical elements to achieving organic business growth
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- Strong effective management and leadership to execute vision and mission
- Planning and execution of profit-making strategy
- People development strategy,
Of the 3, companies and organisations fail to invest enough in No 3, their people strategy. This impacts on the ability to achieve No1 and 2
When staff know your business inside and out and operate like a well-oiled machine, your business is agile, innovative, responsive and able to take advantage of changes in the marketplace.
You can experience the satisfaction of seeing your vision come to fruition.
This is achieved by taking care of your most important assets, which is your people.
The most effective way to achieve this is through Personal Effectiveness Training.
Personal Effectiveness training is the organic, long term people empowerment strategy that will get you sustainable results through your workforce
Professional development focuses on skill acquisition and is very important, this is what most companies would rather invest in, but what do you do with the overqualified and under-delivering staff?
You may decide personal development is the answer. You may let staff suggest what they need, then hope that once you give it to them that should resolve it.
It truly depends on the person’s level of self-awareness of the root cause of their underperformance.
Most times, they don’t have the insight and answers. They may have some insights but don’t know where to begin.
Rather than focus either on professional or personal development alone, choosing a hybrid option is the way forward. This hybrid option is found in Personal effectiveness training. This allows you to integrate professional and soft skills training, with training in behaviours, utilisation of strengths, and leadership to achieve a holistic approach that enhances performance.
Here are some reasons why personal effectiveness is the way to go:
Starts with a systematic approach to people strategy
Workforce planning goes beyond forecasting headcount and can provide agile people solutions to complement the future direction of your business.
You need people with technical skills and soft skills, people who think creatively and analytically, some people who thrive on repetition and others who constantly seek a new challenge. You need introverts and extroverts and people in between.
The focus from recruitment needs to be on the strengths and personalities, not just talents or skill as is the default in most organisations.
There are many companies that employ staff with lots of skills and talents. However, these skills and capacity get underutilised.
Job satisfaction comes from using your gifts and talents to execute work to a high standard. The reward of this goes beyond money as people find fulfilment in doing what they love. When the approach goes beyond personal development to personal effectiveness, this can be achieved.
Empowerment is the focus for personal effectiveness
The focus of personal effectiveness training is empowerment. Empowerment is defined as the process of becoming stronger and more confident, having the knowledge, confidence, means, or ability to do things or make decisions for oneself.
Empowered employees are able to make decisions that help the customer, they contribute to the strategy and business objectives of the organisation. For instance, if an employee is dealing with an angry customer, they should have the tools and authority to make things right.
Components of personal effectiveness training that could empower an employee to take independent and confident action are emotional intelligence and leadership.
Personal Effectiveness is the implementation piece of the puzzle that leads to the empowerment of staff. This is a hybrid way of helping staff become high performers by combining Professional Development, Personal Development and Coaching techniques. Personal Effectiveness Training creates awareness and provides insights to understand where staff are, what is required to get them to the next level.
Agility and Independence
An important component of personal effectiveness training is coaching. In coaching, fundamentally, the coach is helping the individual to improve their own performance: in other words, helping them to learn. Coaching reduces and can eliminate the need for a highly bureaucratic system.
Intentional action to empower staff with agility and independence by a leader, manager or supervisor creates a win-win for everyone.
One other area that I include within my personal effectiveness training focuses on tools and strategies for self-leadership. I believe leadership training should be provided to staff as standard.
Here is why!
Let’s say, for example, a staff member that is not in a management position will not immediately think “leadership skills can improve my performance”. More often than not, if they are self-aware and put forward a request for leadership training, the organisation will look at their grade and turn them down.
Yet the right leadership training equips the participant with effective self-leadership skills which can go a long way to resolving performance issues
This is where the focus should be on helping to develop talents and strengths (empowerment) not on just overcoming weaknesses and gaps (skills training).
The whole aim behind performance management is to get staff to maximise effectiveness and get to their next level.
These are just 3 examples of how Personal Effectiveness Training can make a huge impact in your business or organisation.
I have created a Personal Effectiveness Programme titled Increase your Personal Effectiveness and Influence. It is an 8 weeks programme designed for managers and those in leadership positions in organisations to help train and coach their staff to achieve peak performance, increase their self-esteem and ability to increase their contributions in their work and teams. This programme can also be taken by individuals in a group setting and entrepreneurs looking to develop themselves and up-level their personal effectiveness and ability to influence others.
I would love to bring this to your business and organisation.
To find out how best to help your staff achieve results,
Get in touch with me to discuss your needs