60 – 70% of individuals in our organizations are solid performers, making them the backbone of every organization. When we give them our best, they will give their best to us and our organizations. This week, Dr. Pilcher discusses how to connect with your solid performers. When you give solid performers feedback the right way, a relationship is built that will retain, motivate, and inspire your direct reports.
This episode addresses questions, such as:
Connecting with Solid Performers is the seventh episode in a series describing the performance curve and performance conversations, beginning with Ep. #16 High Performers: Who Are They?.
Recommended Reading: The Feedback Fallacy By: Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall
Recommended Learning: What High Performers Look Like – How to spot them & not them &
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60 – 70% of individuals in our organizations are solid performers, making them the backbone of every organization. When we give them our best, they will give their best to us and our organizations. This week, Dr. Pilcher discusses how to connect with your solid performers. When you give solid performers feedback the right way, a relationship is built that will retain, motivate, and inspire your direct reports.
This episode addresses questions, such as:
Connecting with Solid Performers is the seventh episode in a series describing the performance curve and performance conversations, beginning with Ep. #16 High Performers: Who Are They?.
Recommended Reading: The Feedback Fallacy By: Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall
Recommended Learning: What High Performers Look Like – How to spot them & not them &
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Thank you for joining today’s Accelerate Your Performance Podcast. And thank you for having a desire to be your best at work and helping your organization achieve success. This podcast focuses on tactical actions to improve workplace culture and these tactics align to our Nine Principles® for Organizational Excellence.
Today, we’ll focus on “Solid Performer Conversations.” About 60 to 70% of individuals in our organizations fall into this solid performing range. Also, all of us have been in this place. When we experience something new or a change, we initially engage as a solid performer until we gain better skills from experiences to move from solid to high.
Think about it. We seldom live in a particular performance level 100% of the time. As I’ve gained experience over the years as a leader, I feel more confident and skilled than I did when I first became a leader. In 2011, I made a major leadership shift. I began leading our team at Studer Education. I shifted from being an experienced higher education leader to a leader in business and industry. The expectation was high for me. And, I had no idea what I was doing. How was I going to start a business that I knew nothing about? My job was to take some of the best practices from a leadership framework applied in healthcare and transfer those practices to education and other professions.
Q uint Studer, the founder of Studer Group, hired me to do this work. When I first came on board, Quint spent some time showing me the ropes, so to speak.
Within my first 60 days, Quint took time with me. In fact, we had two clients to attend to at the onset. First, Quint was scheduled to speak in the northside of Chicago one morning and then in a town close to St. Paul Minnesota the next day. We were scheduled to fly from Chicago to St. Paul after the morning session of our first client.
When we concluded the morning, Quint said – “you have a car, right?” I said, “yes.” He said, “let’s drive.” I asked – “is it far?” He said, “not at all.”
We drove through the back roads of Wisconsin and the next thing I knew we were in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He wanted to show me how beautiful this town was and boy, was it. Then, we traveled to Janesville, Wisconsin. It happened to be where his daughter and grandchildren lived. And, he talked a lot about Katie Grace – the youngest grandchild of a slew of boys. Quint said, “you don’t mind if we go to Mac’s Pizza, do you?” I said, “of course not.” Now, I’m beginning to wonder – are we close to St. Paul?
Into Mac’s pizza we go and there she was – Katie Grace with her parents and brothers. After the pizza, he said, “I want to get to the Dells before dark.” So, we traveled down HWY 90 until we came to the Dells – the place known for their world class water park. Just a side note – at this time in my life, I had limited exposure to the great state of Wisconsin. So, I had no idea where I was and where we had been. I was realizing quickly; we are touring the state of Wisconsin – a place where Quint spent much of his childhood and early adulthood.
We took a detour off the highway. Quint talked about his years camping in the Dells – his wonderful memories of time with his family – when he was a child and, camping as a father. Quint says, “I have to take you to one more place and then we will be on our way to St. Paul.” He pulled in McDonalds on Wisconsin Dell’s Pkwy. He said, “this is the coolest McDonalds ever.” And he wasn’t kidding. We pulled into the McDonalds that looked like a log cabin in the wilderness. We popped in and out to say we had been there. and quickly we were on our way back to Highway 90. Ok, I have to admit. This was a cool McDonalds and worth a visit.
Off we traveled back onto 90 headed to St. Paul and by midnight that evening we made it to our destination. The next day he presented in hopes of partnering with this school district. He modeled how to build relationships that last. He taught me a great deal on that trip. We developed a deeper relationship and he taught me that the most important thing to do with clients is to listen to them, understand their needs, and let them know how important their work is. And, when we left, our new friends let us know they wanted to work with us. I will always be thankful to Patty Phillips, the superintendent in MN District 622, for being patient with me as I learned. Patty is now retired, enjoying life with her family and grandchildren. She was a great superintendent in Minnesota – one of the all-time best.
Quint knew I needed guidance. He gave me that and more with many laughs and adventures. I will always remember this time with him – he gave me a valuable, precious, and memorable time.
What did Quint do to help me? To teach me, he developed a relationship with me. He did it by spending time with me driving in a long car ride and introducing me to his family and to him. He opened his life to me. And paved the way for me to open my life to him. He has been my mentor and continues to be my friend.
As Quint modeled with me, solid performers need guidance – someone to show them what right looks like, help them understand expectations of the job and ask them questions on why things are working well. When things aren’t working, we coach people and ask them these types of questions - Why do you think that didn’t work so well? Do you see a way to change what you are doing to shift the negative outcome to a positive one? Guiding solid performers is less about telling and more about asking questions to help people work through issues and solve problems.
Remember, solid performers want to do a good job. They may be able to identify a problem and they need help finding a solution. Most solid performers align their behaviors to the organizational values. At times, as we all do, they may stray. If they do, they are quick to get back on track. Also, solid performers commit to improving their skills. They are anxious when they realize they need to improve.
So, when we have performance conversations with solid performers, we start with assuring them that we are glad they are part of our organization. We want them to know we will be having a positive conversation. We may say something like, “When you leave here today, I want you to feel better than when you came in.” The idea is to alleviate any anxiety they may have.
After we reduce their anxiety, we tell them how important they are to our team. We give specific examples to show why. Our attention is focused on what they need – that’s where their concern resides. They know they need to develop and grow. As leaders we must have the ability to engage in meaningful conversations about their development.
We then talk about their development needs. It’s best to focus on one thing. We want them to feel good about being developed and eager to learn and grow.
Finally, we close with what’s right. We talk about what they do well, and they feel better than when they came in. They know we want them to stay. They know what they do well. They know we as leaders are committed to their development.
As we continue to connect with solid performers, we capture and communicate small wins along the way, showing how what they do contributed to achieving significant results.
When engaging in conversations with solid performers, let’s remember the 3 to 1 principle we discussed in the episode, Building an Emotional Bank Account. Three compliments to 1 criticism produces a positive interaction.
Since the way we provide feedback is so critical to determining the level of success for our conversations, let’s take a deeper dive into how we provide feedback.
Feedback about someone’s performance tends to be about telling people what we think of their performance. For example, we use performance guidelines or a rating scale as we watch someone in action. As leaders we hold conversations with our direct reports and tell them what they did well, where they have performance gaps, and where they can improve. If we are trying to support individual growth, this can be a tough approach to get to that outcome.
Here’s why. When people tell us how to change our behaviors to better perform, it’s difficult to hear, process, internalize and actually change. If we are expected to demonstrate certain skills on the job, of course, we would have checklists of those expectations. We would be clear when we are not aligning our behaviors to the checklist. It’s important for expectations to be clear.
Most of the time, when leaders are assessing our performance it’s more subjective around fuzzy expectations. Leaders view others through their viewpoint. That’s human nature. It’s also human nature for us to look for performance gaps. For those of us who are teachers, we’ve spent much of our time highlighting places where students could improve. I think about all of those years I could have helped students by starting with what’s right first, then focusing on what’s wrong.
As referenced in the solid performer conversation, we find that working from positive behaviors helps employees grow. Gaining insight from our employees on why a certain behavior leads to positive result lends itself to a reflective and engaging conversation. It’s a conversation people want to have.
Let’s again think about the 3 to 1 principle. What if we included this question in our solid performer conversation? Tell me about three things you are doing right now where you feel good about your performance. And, then probe by asking, why is it working for you?
Then, it’s easier to ask solid performers to describe one thing they are struggling with and why. We could ask this question. Can you recall a time when you experienced a barrier that got in your way in achieving results? How did you work through that barrier? This approach gives us an opportunity to offer suggestions to someone who now is open and appreciative. Then, we could close by asking this question. What actions will you take to grow and overcome some of this barrier?
This conversation works when we’ve developed a relationship with our direct reports. Remember, every day we work to build an emotional bank account with our teams. And, one sure way to do so, is to harvest small wins along the way. Rather than wait for a conversation to occur, let’s recognize good performance on the spot. When we see someone do something right, we immediately let them know. We may say – that’s it! That’s the action that will help us get the best results. What you did is spot on. Tell me more about how you did this.
Performance conversations are best when they occur more often and in the moment. Our goal is to make performance conversations a habit of practice – to catch people performing well and knowing when help is needed.
Now, let’s summarize the framework I’ve outlined for engaging in solid performer conversations and then apply it.
First, we let solid performers know we value them and are grateful they are working on our team. And we let them know this conversation is going to be a positive situation.
Second, we ask them to tell us three things that are going well in achieving results. Then, we select one of the three, and ask why it’s going well? What are they doing to get positive results?
Third, we ask the solid performers if they’ve experienced a barrier to achieving results in the past several weeks. We ask, why is this a barrier? And can they think of a time when they had a barrier like this one or some other barrier and they worked through it? What did they do?
Finally, we ask, what actions they think they could take to grow and develop their skills? What help do they need?
Today, I bring Erica back to help with modeling the solid performer conversation. Welcome back, Erica.
Last week Erica and I engaged in a high performer conversation. Today, Erica will join me to demonstrate a solid performer conversation.
Let’s get started.
Janet: Erica, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. I want you to know that this conversation is going to be a positive one. In fact, when you walk out, I want you to feel better than when you walked in. You are a valuable member of our team, and I want to listen to your insight today.
Erica, think about three things you are doing well to achieve results. Give me one and let’s talk more.
Erica: We are doing a great deal to make our new product exceptional. One of the things I’m proud of is balancing the planning and content development aspects of the work. One example of how we’re doing this is the use of our planning tool and facilitation of our weekly planning meetings. Those have been critical for personally keeping me on track.
Janet: Tell me more about how you use the tool. What’s a second thing you are doing well to achieve results.
Erica: I think I’ve grown a great deal in the past few years when it comes to receiving and using feedback. As you mentioned earlier, being new at something can often impact performance and emotions related to performance. Developing a new product is certainly no exception and there have been a lot of learnings and feedback opportunities. I’d like to think those have helped me be more successful through each phase of development. Launching our new system, after multiple iterations, might be the most important result of the last two years for me.
Janet: How has receiving feedback through those iterations made you grow? Give me your third.
Erica: Protecting the integrity of our intellectual capital. I take that very seriously. As we work with our greater team to build and present our content in new ways, I feel a sense of responsibility to make our greater team proud. Creating a solid communication loop with our team of coaches through our quarterly meetings has helped me, and our whole team of content experts, stay connected to what takes place in the field.
Janet: And, I’ve read the positive feedback the coaches continue to provide to you and the team.
Wow, how great to learn about where you are and how your work is producing results. Let’s shift for a minute - what’s a barrier to your performance that could get in the way of producing results? Or What do you wish you could do better at this point?
Erica: Well, I know we are about to enter another phase of the unknown. We’ll be receiving feedback and requests on a grander level and will need to be agile and timely with the way we respond to new customers, while maintaining exceptional service to existing customers. I’d like to prepare as much as we can in advance, but part of me still fears dropping a ball.
Janet: Have you faced a barrier like that before? Tell me about a time when you overcame a barrier to your performance.
Erica: I guess I have. I was actually part of launching a new system in my previous organization, which required much of the same considerations and expectations. (my elaboration will include being careful to know urgent vs. important, service first…)
Janet: Here’s what I’ve found to be helpful to me. See what you think. When people provide feedback, I keep myself from having answers. Rather, I really try to listen and have a couple of probing questions in my back pocket. Here’s a couple - could you tell me more about x?.... I want to make sure I understand what you are saying. Can you give me an example? Now I don’t have to do all that people say. Sometimes the probing opportunities help me think of things I didn’t think of. How does that feel to you?
Erica: will respond to my question
Janet: What actions do you think you could take to grow and develop your skills? What’s important to you to learn?
Erica: respond
Janet: I think that’s right Erica. Let’s keep this action in front of us. I have confidence in you to continue to develop and grow. Is there anything I can do to be helpful to you?
Erica: respond
Janet: close
You will hear good teachers and coaches say -- We are good teachers when our students are working harder than we are to learn. That’s the same for solid performers. They need to be working harder than their leaders to grow. Solid performer conversations shift the work from the leader to the employee. The employee gains confidence and greater satisfaction at work.
This week think about conversations our leaders have had with us when we were in the middle as solid performers. And, if we’ve been leaders, think about the conversations we’ve had with solid performers.
1. How would you change the way you engaged in a performance conversation – as the employee and as the leader?
2. Intentionally find someone on your team doing something well and as soon as you see it, say something like – that’s it, that’s the way to do this work. How did you do that?
Ironically, as a leader I learn a great deal when having solid performer conversations. When I ask them what they do well and how they do it, I learn, have fun, and feel energized. And, my direct reports walk out feeling the same way and with an action to help them grow. In the end we’ve both grown by simply engaging in a meaningful connection with each other.
We’ve all lived in the solid performer’s world. Some of us are there now. Some of us travel back when we face a new challenge. Solid performers are the backbone of every organization. They deserve our best; when we give our best to them, they will give their best to us and our organizations.
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Thank you for tuning in to Accelerate Your Performance. I look forward to connecting with you on our next Podcast episode where we will focus on low performer conversations. Have a great week.