HR Connection blog

 

Research consistently finds that employees across the generational spectrum believe that one of a manager’s fundamental roles is to support the development of his or her employees. And yet, in most organizations, the level of satisfaction with that development remains relatively low.

 

Managers rate performance reviews right behind firing someone as their top two most disliked activities. How bizarre is that? Giving constructive feedback, mentoring, training, and improving the performance of their staff should be their number one motivation.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a company is only as strong as its lowest-performing employees. At first, this analogy may appear to be an overreach–after all, how can one or even a handful of poorly performing workers affect the success of an entire organization?

Corporate value is increasingly dependent on employees, and talent optimization is becoming a serious business issue.

One of the central themes I write about is the tremendous power of recognition and reward to increase engagement, drive behavior, and motivate employees. Rewards, praise, and community all play a role in this process—and the basic principles of social psychology, positive feedback, and operant conditioning make it clear why this works.

In the late 1990s, bestselling-authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman partnered with Gallup to figure out what makes great managers great. Twenty-five years of cumulative data and more than 80,000 manager interviews later, they found that while great managers differed in everything from rank to gender, age, race, location and more, they also had a common thread: Every single one excelled at transforming employee talent into employee performance.

Question: My employee sent me a scathing email in response to a performance evaluation I just gave her. She has contacted her attorney and has threatened to quit. At this point I just want to fire her. How should I respond?

Most leaders receive surprisingly little development before assuming their first supervisory roles. In fact, many get no leadership training at all until they’ve been in the executive ranks for nearly a decade–reaching, on average, age 42.