Improvement starts with understanding In my last post, I told you about the first step to joyful performance management: aligned expectations. Now it's time to do what was agreed upon and observe. Observing means viewing the expectations you've aligned on in action. When training leaders, I often found that they felt like they had to observe everything. If you lead a sales team, for example, there's so much you can observe: from initial prospecting interactions through needs

If you lead people, you've been here. You've had the same conversation three times now. Same associate, same issue, same patient explanation from you. And every time, they nod that they understand and they mean it. Two weeks later, you're having the same conversation again. So you start wondering whether you hired wrong, whether they care, whether it's time to have a harder conversation. Before you go there, consider a less comfortable possibility: they may have never known e

When I tell people what I do, helping organizations improve performance through developing behaviors and systems that engage employees and bring more joy to work, there are a few typical responses. The most common is, "So you help companies with the annual review cycle?" Yes and no. Yes, if an organization doesn't have a working yearly goal and review cycle, then yes, I can help with that. Frankly, any HCM can facilitate that type of yearly check-in on long-term goals. No, in

Most managers I work with come to me frustrated about an employee. Someone isn't hitting their numbers. Someone keeps making the same mistakes. Someone just doesn't seem to care. And the first question I always ask is: Have they ever actually done what you're asking them to do? The answer, more often than people expect, is no. There's a difference between an employee who can't perform and one who won't, and there's a third category that gets missed almost entirely: an employe