Page 189 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

174 Just Promoted!

there resources and technologies dedicated to help employees and leaders
learn, grow, and develop? How do you compare to other organizations?
Your direct reports should, in turn, appraise the competency of their staff.
Ask for a thumbnail description of each employee, including his or her respec-
tive strengths and weaknesses, training, experience, and history with the com-
pany. It may be too early to make personnel decisions based on a single
reading, but as you gather data and gain perspectives on the competency of
the staff, these thumbnail sketches will expand and help you decide how best
to use critical and limited talent resources. When assessing your staff, include
their technical knowledge (about the work) and their ability to lead others.
Consider using the tools introduced specifically for this task in Chapter 4.
Once you have done your homework, give your top people your impression
about the quality of their key people after they have shared their assessments
with you.
Read your organization’s goals, yearly objectives, structure, job descrip-
tions, and performance standards, if they exist. They will describe what the
department is supposed to accomplish, its individual roles and responsibili-
ties, the reporting relationships, and the chain of authority. These can help you
make judgments about what people are supposed to do and their expected and
actual levels of competence.

Performance Management
Performance management practices help ensure that leaders and employees
do what is needed in the way it should be done. In too few companies per-
formance management practices are used effectively. Often they are not taken
seriously. Performance appraisals are generally considered a yearly ordeal that
employees and managers alike endure. But if properly managed, performance
management will be coaching, learning, and developmental experiences. They
can also point to performance discrepancies, help set career development
goals, and help the employee set interim and yearly goals that will help the
department achieve its work. Contemporary management practices point to
the need for situational uses of performance and developmental coaching and
feedback as opposed to heavily evaluative performance assessments that all
too frequently lack good communications and a helpful path forward. Feed-
back and coaching on how the job is done and on goal achievement should be
the hallmarks of a performance management program.