Simple, real-world examples illustrate how successful communications can help improve your performance management capabilities – read & learn!
To give you an idea of what great communications looks like, check out what a couple of the top-performing managers we’ve studied recently have done:
- Health Care: This client took the time to post the most recent Patient Experience scores at the nurses’ station AND talk about what they mean to the team during the shift huddle AND reiterate how the scores apply to individuals when you touch base with each nurse on the floor. By sharing the information via multiple methods, the organization was able to ensure its staff not just received the messaging, but had the opportunity to digest it and ask questions too.
- Home Security: To ensure a new installation technique would stick, this client spoke about the installation in the team meeting AND distributed a cheat sheet for employees to carry in their pockets AND sent out a GroupMe text to get the team to share feedback on how it was working in the field. Again, by repeating the messaging over and over, but in different ways, the client found success.
Yes, these actions were straightforward. And, yes, they were probably fairly easy for the organizations to implement. But the reality is that most organizations fail to effectively communicate with their people. And when you fail to communicate effectively, you’re also failing in your performance management goals because without strong communication skills, you won’t be able to effectively discuss, guide and coach your people and help them develop into even stronger employees.
Yet, the simple acts of being varied and agile make all the difference when you want to ensure your message is heard loud and clear – especially when you want people to shift their behaviors. This is because most of the time, for most people, change impacts them in one of two ways:
- The change is somewhat distant from their daily work, so the message you’ve shared about that change gets shut out completely to make room for the things impacting them
- The change creates several ripple effects in their work that can cause stress and confusion and as a result, it’s easier to simply ignore the change.
But don’t just take my word for it:
“It’s not really just throwing information out there; it’s making sure there’s understanding on both ends. We have emails, we have fliers that are posted and different things, and I talk to them all.” – High Performing Manager in the Airline Industry
“She’s good about emailing all the information to us, making sure everybody got it, and then letting us know one on one that, hey, these are the changes. Just giving us reminders is really helpful.” – Team Member of a High Performing Clinical Manager in a major U.S. Health System
This real-life feedback supports the theory that the best managers know that the more they explain, provide context, and seek acknowledgement and feedback on the information, the faster their teams will adopt change. But the power of effective communications doesn’t just help out your organization during times of change.
When an organization is comprised of managers who know how to deliver messages with clarity, who know how to communicate effectively and who are skilled in coaching and employee development, well then you have team leaders who are also excellent at performance management … and that is the business that will come out on top.
