Once you have hired good employees, the next step that successful people managers take is to develop the full potential of their employees. Performance management is a process that helps managers achieve the goal of getting the best from their employees. In this third course in the Human Resources for People Managers specialization, we will discuss the skills and key processes you will need to develop your employees to attain department and organizational goals. These skills will include setting clear expectations, providing positive and corrective feedback, and delivering an effective performance appraisal.
4.3.4."Walk the Talk": Model the Behavior Where You Are
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From the course by University of Minnesota
Managing Employee Performance
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University of Minnesota
594 ratings
Course 3 of 5 in the Specialization Human Resource Management: HR for People Managers
From the lesson
CREATING A POSITIVE PERFORMANCE CULTURE
You are now ready to bring things full circle. In this module you will learn how to create a positive performance culture in you organization. You will learn the fundamentals of creating civility in your organizational cultures, as well as ways to identify and correct incivility, which can weaken your organization's performance. Finally, you will learn about building a culture that focuses on values and strengths. A culture that creates and reinforces positive norms and values is a culture that helps your organization grow. It is important to "walk the talk" and model the behaviors of positive performance culture.
Meet the Instructors
Larry BourgerieSenior Lecturer
Carlson School of Management, Department of Work and Organizations
I'm so tired of listening to him present the same ineffective strategy
over and over.
I want to yell!
But, I will remain a model of civility
because I know that it's important to my team.
You know, this happens to be a person who went through my class.
She's learned her lessons well.
She could have reacted in a much different way but
she understands the points of civility on a team.
Not just for managers but as individuals on the team.
After this video you'll be able to understand the importance of modeling
behaviors that support a culture of civility.
Appreciate that creating a positive culture is not just the responsibility
of managers, but of everybody.
Couple of things I want you to think about in this video.
What leaders pay attention to, measure, and
control, says a lot about what I call the real cultural values.
We always put them on the wall, and we develop the norms.
We've talked about having a norms statement, articulating our values.
But it's the walking the talk.
It's what people do.
You might have heard the old phrase, walking the talk.
That's what we're talking about.
Do our deeds follow our words?
What would be an example, say you're in a meeting,
and we just look at style versus substance.
A slick presentation versus content.
That says a lot about what our organization looks at.
Into the depth, but if we can have that style and pizzaz, that's what's rewarded.
You may say you want depth.
But if that's what you're rewarding,
it's not what you're going to get from the people, they will look at what you do.
Another example might be costs versus investment.
This comes in a lot in natural,
we always talk about people are not costs, they're investments.
The more we invest in people and they grow, we get more of return investment,
if I merely look at individuals that cost my employees, I'm going to have
a different attitude of how I treat people then there's result behaviors.
We've mentioned this before.
If I look at just the results of my performance of my people and
I don't look at behavior it sends the message that I really care more about
the bottom line and not about the culture and civil behavior, so make sure you're
paying attention to probably all of these, because they're all important.
Another one is true test is how we react
to critical incidents in organizational crisis.
When we're in a crisis we tend to go back to what,
you know, what we really demonstrate our values.
Do we behave well?
Do we behave poorly?
We've all been in a situation where we wish you could do it over
that you would behave differently and you weren't really proud of it.
So let's look at a couple examples.
This guy's going okay, not ideal, but maybe a reorg is just what I needed.
Maybe when you look at things, you want to be calm, you want to be proactive,
not reactive.
Crisis brings out the organizations underlying core values
versus its rhetoric.
Most people are always talking about how I value people and positives.
You never hear anyone when they're talking about the organizational values
say negative things.
But what are they going to be doing as I say the rubber hits the road?
Leaders should see crisis as an opportunity to demonstrate the values.
This is where everybody's going to be watching whether you're an organization
or a country.
People look what you do in crises and
that's really going to tell me my true values.
How we act in the line with the values of the organization.
Am I in line with those values or am I out of line?
Let me give you a couple of examples.
There's one well known case about organization
They had a recall of our product.
It was a food product, drug product.
And when they found out something is wrong with it, they recalled everything.
That's a lot about the organization.
They working to try to pick and choose the markets.
They want to make sure that customer was primary value and people knew it.
Then they thought they had a similar one with auto product and
they decide to do more of a cost benefit analysis.
And say you know, it will probably will be a big problem and
the entries will be okay at that time.
That's left a whole different message about what the true value is worth.
The point is, the crisis will tell you if you're learned your values or not.
So make sure you remain calm during a crisis and
really think about my values before I act because people will be looking.
Another one is role modeling, I talked about walking the talk.
Everybody should be a role model and modeling the values and
the culture of our organization.
Nothing demonstrates culture more than leaders walking the talk.
And I would say individuals too.
Hypocrisy is not a taught value of most people.
Personal examples of leaders sends a powerful message.
Couple examples I have of that.
We had an organization I was with once, where there was a somewhat severe,
Harassment situation.
One leader circled the wagons and
protected the executive that was involved in that.
That sent a strong message that, you know, these policies are good but not for us.
It was good for their.
The rank and file but not for us.
Sends a strong message of that.
Of another one where the same thing happened, and
the individual that committed the violation of policy, pretty severe.
The policy was, I believe, violated at noon, and
at one o'clock, they were no longer with the organization.
Two different dramatic examples.
Which one sends the message that we are in [INAUDIBLE] with our values and
no one is exempt.
We have zero tolerance.
Reinforcing examples of PM process.
For example, feedback and recognition.
That we're constantly recognizing good values.
Good behaviors.
That's important too because that's the every day things that we see.
So role modeling is crucial.
People are watching.
Reinforce the things that you want more of.
When you think back to psychology 101,
if you reinforce something you'll get more of it.
If you don't reinforce it or disincent it you'll get less of it.
Role modeling is crucial.
And finally, allow and learn from mistakes.
I love this piece of advice for everybody.
People will take more risks when they feel that you have their back, so to speak.
One of my favorite stories of all time, several of them.
One was an organization, we put up on the bulletin board mistakes people had made so
the rest of the team could learn from them.
We called it team learning.
And, what a great opportunity to turn a mistake, into a, positive thing.
Another organization that I worked with, had a similar one, where they,
it was an R&D organization.
And we looked at, every time we did, projects that didn't work,
we documented it, and we learn from each other.
So that whole, we can learn from our mistakes, is a great one.
I haven't got a chance to quote my favorite singer lately, Bob Dylan, but
he has a great line said, there's no success like failure, but
failure's no success at all.
So as long as we learn from mistakes, they're positive.
And my last story that I want to say,
is it was a story I had heard about a marketing exec who had
a big multimillion dollar campaign, and it didn't work well.
He'd always been a good marketing director, but he felt, you know,
I cost the company a lot of money.
I'm going to resign.
So he goes into the executive's office, hands in the resignation.
And the response was a very interesting one.
It wasn't, I'll accept your resignation.
He tore it up and said, why would I terminate you after I've just spent
several million dollars on your education?
Can you think about the impact that has on the organization?
That we're allowed to make mistakes as long as we're working hard and
trying to do the right thing.
Now, if that person made a mistake again, I'm guessing he'd accept the resignation.
So roll modeling is really important.
And watch what you reinforce.
Behavior reinforcement, a little bit of a psych 101 here.
Behaviors that are rewarded or punished can significantly influence the culture.
As I mentioned a little bit earlier, we reward behaviors that we want more of and
if they're punished, they will get less of it.
So make sure we're rewarding the right things, but make sure we don't
sweep under the rug the things that we want to diminish the behavior.
If an organization reacts to ideas by ridiculing the ideas, and those who
propose them, it won't take long before people believe new ideas are not welcome.
Another great example of how you want to make sure you're walking the talk.
I think a great example of this is an organization that I was once with,
I saw a very negative thing.
It was during a brainstorming session, and the leader of the group actually
took the idea that the person had, crumbled it up and
threw it in the garbage and said, anybody else have any good ideas?
You can probably imagine how many people were creative and
brought new ideas in that organization.
It's crucial we look at what message we're sending to people.
So I want to talk about modeling civility where you are.
One, it's a shared responsibility.
It's not just my managers to walk the talk, it's mine.
It's my teammates.
Everybody has a role in creating a civil culture.
Make it matter in everyday life.
This is not just something in meetings, everything we do,
if we're modeling the behavior, we're conducting ourselves in that way,
it becomes who we are, that fabric, very fabric.
Don't give civilian lip service, expect it.
I've seen too many times in my career where people talk about it but
it comes difficult times and we're not doing it,
except it, make it part of people's everyday performance.
Walk the talk, talked about this just so important.
Nothing is worse then when I say one thing and do another.
It'll destroy the impact of your attempts at implementing a civil positive culture.
And work within your circle of influence.
By that I mean, everybody can impact this,
whether I'm in the mail room, I'm the receptionist, I'm the manager, executive.
Everybody can be a part of this because we all have the responsibility
of creating the culture we want and the culture that we deserve.
Well, we've come to the end of our performance management journey.
Let me just us back a little bit.
We started with a section on strategy.
Talked about the importance of strategy and
aligning your strategy with performance management systems.
How important that was that performance management supports the goals and
objectives of the organization.
We then looked at the whole area of how do you measure and evaluate people.
We looked at some tools, some methods and gave you some options.
We even visited the performance cafe and
went to the buffet to give you some options.
We then talked about some tools that you'll need.
We had tools for performance reviews, and feedback when to conduct interviews,
we learned how to conduct them and the importance of effective feedback.
We call it the breakfast of champions.
We ended with a little about culture.
We said culture eats strategy for breakfast.
That underscores the importance of having a good culture to support your strategy
and your performance management systems.
I feel strongly about building a civil positive culture is just a key to good
performance management an organizational effectiveness.
So with that I'd like to wish you well in your careers,
hope that you enjoyed the program and you learn some good things that'll help
make you better people managers as you move on in your careers.
So with that I think I'll sign off now.
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