Performance-challenged employees-II

If you are given feedback and you are perceived to be a poor performer, how would you deal with such a stressful situation and come out of it?  That’s what I am going to write about in this posting.  

First of all, Let us accept that even the best performers could have had a tough time in their career trying to scale up and improve their performance level. For instance, even Peter Drucker was a poor performer on his first job when he started his career.  However he became the Management Guru and whole corporate world knows him and his exceptional contributions. Let us not attach any guilty feeling to it. That’s the point.

My thoughts on how to deal with such scenario and emerge as a good performer.

1) Denial mode: Denial mode will not help and rather it will irritate your supervisor/ Manager and derail the performance enabling process.  As human being, we tend to look at ourselves from our “ideal self”, not actual self which is what we are, not what we want to be. So we tend to over-estimate ourselves and get into denial mode. 

2) Identify and understand your weak Link: Instead of denial, you should rather try to understand the performance gap which is your “Weak link”. That is the first step. Do ask for specific examples wherein your performance fell short of expectation. Look at the data and do a self-introspection.  Example – If you are rated as poor in technical writing, do understand what the gap is – Are you missing out some of the important things in your content (content coverage is incomplete) / is the content wrong due to wrong understanding / / Are you giving the reports late / the written communication in the report is not up to the standard etc., 

3) Set a specific goal/s on your weak link: Understanding the specific gaps without ambiguity will help you set the right goals OR appreciate the goals set mutually by you and your Manager. This can put you in the right direction.  Examples – If your content coverage is wrong in your technical writing, you should know that specifically and work on that in a focused manner.  As a technical recruiter, if you are required to learn and improve how to get niche skills OR basics of technologies that you need to know for effective screening, you need to be aware of that first and then take steps to learn that in a focused manner.

That’s how you can make your weaker muscles stronger and show results.

4) Build Visibility on your milestones related to your weak-link: One of the most important things that you should do is to build visibility on your progress and milestones. That’s how you can take your Manager into confidence that you are committed and working on the goals seriously. That’s how you can change your Managers perception about you. Example – If your target is to onboard 100 employees every month and hit 600 in 6 months, do update the status on a regular basis and your plans for the pending goals. So you don’t have to do any selling / convincing about your performance at the time of performance review.

5) Escalate the issues and on time: When you face any bottleneck in reaching your goal, do talk to your boss rather telling at the time of his following up with you. Example – In above example, if you cannot hire 100 nos in a particular month, you need to anticipate and update your Manager proactively.

6) Comfort zone: When you are on performance improvement plan, you need to show results and you cannot work from your comfort zone. You need to put in more than ordinary efforts. You cannot be leaving the office on time all the time. If you have to stretch to learn / complete something, be willing to do so.

7) Stress:  If you are not performing, you are bound to be under pressure. However, this can be due to various factors and may be you are not suitable for the current job.  It does not mean that you are unfit to for anything else in your life. While you are determined to give your best shots, do refuse to put yourself under pressure and to take the pressure from the others. Anything beyond optimum pressure will be detrimental to performance.

8) Don’t give up: And finally, don’t give up.  The easiest option is to give up and the toughest option is to prove (to your own self and others) that you can scale up and perform well.  

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO