Performance Management | upstartHR

I was sitting in a session during the Human Resources Management Conference about employee engagement recently, and someone brought up an amazing quote.

As a little background, business leaderÂ Jack Welch advocated firing the bottom 10% of poor performers in order to maintain a high performance organization.

You can replace the bottom 10-20% of poor performers, but a bad manager can keep that poor performance going indefinitely.

I thought that was a fantastic insight. Even if you’re tossing the lowest ranked employees, a bad manager can hire more. A bad manager can turn a great employee into a bad one with enough inattention and mismanagement. A bad manager can hire B performers instead of A performers because he is afraid to hire someone capable of replacing him.

Replacing poor performers might not work if your supervisors are the real problem.

Good stuff, huh?

I think one responsibility leaders have is asking tough questions. Getting your people to think about what their roles are and how they can best fill them is a challenge all managers face.

Recently my own manager asked a series of difficult questions in a department meeting. In responding to the questions, I felt like my opinion was valued and I worked through some thorny issues I’ve dealt with lately. It was really a fantastic exercise. I won’t reproduce my answers here, but it won’t hurt to share the thought-provoking questions with you, right?

1) What’s one think you want to improve? This could be whatever you like. It’s pretty open. Think of something.

2) What’s one thing you want to do that you’ve never done before? My list for this could be a mile long. Asking this question shows that you want to help your people advance in their careers.

3) What’s one thing for the department to improve? What would make yours better? Help your people uncover those issues that may be invisible to you as a manager. Or maybe you can see if the same problems you’ve observed are visible to them. So many possibilities for this one!

4) What’s something I (the manager) am not doing/providing for you (the employee)? Admit that you don’t know everything. Maybe you’ve missed something. Go for it. Who knows what you’ll find out?

These aren’t magic questions. They don’t really solve any problems. They do, however, provide a means of uncovering hidden issues and addressing them. And all it takes is actually asking your people. Funny how that works, huh?