Page 262 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

246 enhancing performance through goal-setting and feedback interventions
Ask the technician if he can account for the performance fluctuations on the selected

indicator.
In most cases, there will be performance fluctuations. In the previous part, more obvious
variations in performance have served as the criterion to select indicators for goal setting.
Probably, the controllability of performance on the indicator in question will become
a discussion item (as it should have been in the development phase), and perhaps that
is a good thing. Is the top score due to pure luck and the lowest score due to bad luck,
or do the variations depend on the technician’s behaviour? If the latter is the case, one
must ask what the technician actually did to achieve a high score and what he did not
do, or what he did differently, when he got a low score? Perhaps, when he achieved a
low score factors played a role which could be influenced by himself, the company, the
supervisor or the customer. What were those factors that contributed to his low score and
similarly, what factors contributed to his high score? In that case, what measures should
the technician, company, supervisor or the customer take to ensure that the necessary
conditions for achieving a high score are in place?
Ask the technician what sort of agreements could be made in order to fulfil the condi-

tions necessary for consistently high scores in the coming period, or in order to change
the technician’s behaviour in such a way that consistently high scores would result.

In fact, the way in which the technician and others influence the technician’s performance
is re-examined. The factors that have the greatest impact on the technician’s performance
are selected. The discussion is focused on what should be done, by whom, starting by
when, in order to achieve constantly high scores. It is important to focus this discussion
on the issues the technician is able to influence himself and to avoid the outcome of the
discussion becoming a list of excuses or a lists of tasks for others. The question, “What
is your influence on the performance variation on this indicator?” must therefore be the
focal point.
AskthetechnicianwhatwouldbethespecificProMESscoreontheindicatorinquestion

in the coming period, if everybody kept entirely to the above agreements.
Agree to set this ProMES score as a specific, difficult but attainable goal for the coming

period, as this score should result if the technician kept entirely to the agreements (also
assuming that others responsible for a number of conditions keep to theirs).

A specific goal means that a target is formulated in terms of a specified score on a specific
indicator, or on a set of indicators (relating to a certain area of responsibility), or on all
indicators together: the overall ProMES score. Difficult but attainable means that the
technician, on the basis of his insight into his competencies, gives himself a chance of
at least 15% to attain the goal. If great uncertainty exists on the task-strategies required
to achieve a higher performance, it is advisable not to decide on specific difficult goals
but to introduce a period of experimentation to explore the relationships between cause
and effect.

Use of the critical behaviours
In the case setting, the critical behaviours were discussed with the region supervisors and
applied in the performance enhancement sessions that were conducted. There is some
evidence of a positive relation between the degree to which a supervisor actually used the