Performance Management
Eight steps to achieving a high-performance culture
19 May 2022 | Vlatka Ariaana Hlupic
Creating a high-performance culture is often touted as the holy grail of today's organisations. But achieving it in practice remains an elusive concept.
Accountability is more important than accounting
14 Oct 2021 | Wayne Turmel
What's more important: that people are working on exactly what you want them working on at that exact moment, or that important tasks and outputs are done on time and team goals are met?
Managing time in meetings
30 Apr 2021 | Wayne Turmel
One of the main concerns when running a webinar or virtual meeting is managing time effectively so we don't lose sight of what the meeting is actually supposed to accomplish.
Don’t confuse task completion with productivity
21 Sep 2020 | Wayne Turmel
People who work remotely often claim to be ‘more productive’. But productivity is a long-term measurement that means more than just getting more tasks finished in a given time period.
It's the little things, stupid
26 Jul 2017 | Wayne Turmel
For most of us, the big things - like the global economy - are out of our control. So let's turn off the news for a while and focus on the little things that happen at work that make so many managers lives far more complicated than they need to be.
So you're a manager. Now what?
01 Jun 2017 | Dan Bobinski
As managers, we can either choose to value and develop our team members or we can look for ways to elevate our own stature. Do you know which category you fall into?
The road to Rio: three powerful leadership lessons
27 Jul 2016 | John Blakey
The road to Rio represents four years of dedication, hard work and suffering for thousands of athletes from around the world. But working with Olympic sports coaches can also offer valuable lessons for those of us leading businesses.
How much do you waste on email?
08 Jul 2016 | Wayne Turmel
How much time does the average employee spend on email each day? You’d think that’s a simple question, demanding a simple answer. But it’s not.
The myth of high performance
08 Apr 2016 | Dominic Irvine
The term ‘high performance’ is bandied about as if it is some mythical state which we can all attain if only we just try hard enough. But that’s nonsense. All performance is relative. Whether it is high or low is all about context.
The six conditions of high performance
30 Nov 2015 | Mary-Clare Race
The key to performance doesn’t lie in a process; it lies in encouraging the behaviors that build a high-performance culture. That’s why the idea that you can manage performance through an annual conversation is so outrageous.
Those darn performance appraisals
07 Sep 2015 | Duane Dike
Great performance is a product of happy people. And happy people are a product of good leadership, not of formal performance appraisals which treat people like children, create bad feeling and breed unproductivity.
Don't be a busy fool!
01 Sep 2015 | Chris Merrington
With summer almost over and the post-holiday pressure starting to pile up, it’s easy to fall into the trap of becoming a busy fool. Being too busy is like a disease. And to avoid catching it you need to understand how to work smarter.
Can you ignore your weaknesses?
26 Feb 2015 | Mike Roarty
Sometimes the best thing to do about a weakness is simply to ignore it. That might sound counter-intuitive, but if we explore the notion of strengths-focused leadership, the reasons quickly become apparent.
Win big with integrated performance measurement
04 Feb 2015 | James M. Kerr
Why do so many businesses measure staff performance after the fact? Metrics ought to be produced as a direct by-product of doing the work, giving you time to make mid-course adjustments. Get it right and your business results will sky-rocket.
Moving beyond procrastination
08 Oct 2014 | Peter Vajda
Procrastination doesn’t exist in a vacuum: there’s normally something underlying it. Asking yourself these questions can help you uncover why you're resisting doing what needs to be done and help you to move beyond procrastination.
Reviewing remote managers
28 Aug 2014 | Wayne Turmel
With performance review season looming, how should remote team leaders be evaluated? While the differences between managing remotely and co-locating are few, they are significant, and your terms of reference need to reflect that reality.
Improving your remote coaching sessions
13 Aug 2014 | Wayne Turmel
We all know how important it is for managers to coach team members. But with remote teams, coaching conversations can be particularly tough to get right. Here’s how to get round the lack of non-verbal cues to make your remote coaching sessions more effective.
How wide is the digital skills gap?
29 Jul 2014 | Wayne Turmel
As any long-suffering IT support pro will tell you, many people use technology unbelievably badly. Just how badly is a real shock. So how long does it take to recognize that this skills gap is a real problem and to address it in a way that gets you some of your wasted time and money back?
How do I handle my nit-picking negative boss?
23 Jul 2014 | Chris Welford
Bill's boss focuses only on the negative, dishing out a regular diet of nit-picking criticism that is as demoralizing as it is unfair. Coach Chris Welford explains how he can break the pattern by doing something different.
Drowning in co-operation
16 Jul 2014 | Kevan Hall
Many organizations are suffering from an epidemic of co-operation. Their problem isn’t too little teamwork, it’s too much. Forget a lack of communication, the challenge now is how to separate the mass of trivia from the things that are really important.