Missed deadlines, low productivity, and high staff turnover. The hallmarks of a mediocre performance culture that threatens your company’s success.
At the CHRO Summit 2021, MindGym co-founder and President Sebastian Bailey PhD was joined by Anika Grant, Chief People Officer at Ubisoft, and MindGym Solutions Director MaryBeth Belka to reveal how employers can create a high-performance working environment.
This article will recap the seminar’s key insights.
Why are traditional performance management tools not working?
During the session, 80% of Chief Human Resources Officers said they have either recently changed or are looking to change their company’s performance approach.
Although performance ratings encourage managers to set regular, tangible goals and benchmarks for their employees, leniency bias1 and central tendency errors2 often distort their accuracy.
360-degree reviews provide a more holistic overview of an individual’s performance, pooling the opinions of professionals across their team and organisation. But this requires colleagues to know the individual well. Otherwise, 360-degree reviews can become diluted with generic feedback which offers little insight.3
Finding future leaders within your company is also difficult. Following Power’s Law, it’s likely that up to 20% of employees are making significant impact on business results.4 High potential identification programmes aim to find these talents early in their careers and provide support, training, and mentorship to climb the ladder quickly.
Understandably, employees who do not fit this category may feel neglected and excluded from career progression opportunities. Furthermore, the definition of a ‘high potential’ professional is liable to cultural bias. The criteria are likely to be different in America compared to Japan, for example, given their different working cultures.5
Six psychological conditions drive high-performance cultures
Beyond the many performance management tools and strategies used by companies, the relationship between managers and each of their employees is critical to cultivating a high-performance culture.
Employees that believe they have a good manager are likely to rate their manager’s performance management practices as successful, and vice versa, according to a Gallup study.6
Alongside on-going conversations with employees about their strategic goals, the best managers establish MindGym’s six psychological conditions in the workplace – purpose, challenge, attention, growth, recognition, and choice – to increase their productivity, innovation, and quality of work.
How to create the six psychological conditions of high performance
Purpose: People want to work on tasks that are meaningful. Managers must be strong communicators in connecting the importance of their work to the wider vision and goals of the company.
Challenge: From running in marathons to learning new skills, high performers thrive from overcoming stiff challenges. Similarly, great managers equip their team with what they need to achieve even the most challenging goals.
Attention: Regular feedback and constructive criticism helps employees take their performance to the next level. This requires attentive managers with the ability to monitor and hold them to account for their performance.
Growth: Mastering technical and soft skills removes blockers to better business outcomes. Top managers uncover opportunities for their team to develop these skills and achieve things in the future that they could not have done before.
Recognition: If you feel valued by your employer, you are more likely to feel happy, loyal, and engaged at work.7. To reap these rewards, managers must be clear and consistent on ‘who’ and ‘how’ they provide recognition to individuals and teams.
Choice: Today, high-performing employees want more control over how they work and what projects they work on.8 Rather than reject it, great managers empower people to make their own decisions and offer support in times of challenge.
For more information on how to apply the six psychological conditions to your organisation, read our Performance Management guide or contact us for a call back.
Want to read more insights from CHRO Summit 2021? Check out the highlights.
References:
- Cheng, Kevin H C, C Harry Hui, and Wayne F Cascio. “Leniency Bias in Performance Ratings: The Big-Five Correlates.” Frontiers in psychology. Frontiers Media S.A., April 10, 2017. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28443043.
- Lunenburg, Fred C., “Performance Appraisal: Methods and Rating Errors,” International Journal of Scholarly Academic Intellectual Diversity 14, no. 1 (2012).
- Greguras, Gary J., and Chet Robie. “A New Look at within-Source Interrater Reliability of 360-Degree Feedback Ratings.” Journal of Applied Psychology 83, no. 6 (1998): 960–68. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.83.6.960.
- O’Boyle Jr., Ernest, and Herman Aguinis. “The Best and the Rest: Revisiting the Norm of Normality of Individual Performance.” Personnel Psychology 65, no. 1 (2012): 79–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01239.x.
- Wahl, Michael, and Nell Tabor Hartley. “The New Global Corporate Culture: A Comparative Survey of the Corporate Cultures of Japan and the United States in the 21st Century.” International Business; Economics Research Journal (IBER) 7, no. 10 (2011). https://doi.org/10.19030/iber.v7i10.3300.
- Sutton, Robert, and Ben Wigert. “More Harm than Good: The Truth about Performance Reviews.” Gallup.com. Gallup, May 6, 2019. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/249332/harm-good-truth-performance-reviews.aspx.
- Mann, Annamarie, and Nate Dvorak. “Employee Recognition: Low Cost, High Impact.” Gallup.com. Gallup, June 28, 2016. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236441/employee-recognition-low-cost-high-impact.aspx.
- Meng, Liang, and Qingguo Ma. “Live as We Choose: The Role of Autonomy Support in Facilitating Intrinsic Motivation.” International Journal of Psychophysiology 98, no. 3 (2015): 441–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.08.009.
