In this blog series we are exploring the components that come together to create Sustainable Performance. Using the Tap’d Sustainable Performance Framework as reference, we will explore how elements come together and have a causal effect that builds into healthy work cultures that enable performance and productivity in organisations.
As a reminder, we define Sustainable Performance in the workplace as “the ability of an organisation, team, or individual to consistently achieve high levels of productivity, effectiveness, and well-being over the long term, without compromising future performance or the health of its people.”
In part 1, we started our journey by looking at Building Foundations of Wellbeing. Then in part 2, we built on these foundations and looked at how to create personal ownership, build social connections which allows us to form high performing teams.
High performing teams need to be maintained and continuously evolve based on external factors and the performance of individuals within the team. One of the biggest obstacles to maintaining performance in organisations is a lack of skill, ability and desire to tackle poor performance and have those challenging conversations to correct unwanted behaviour and results. Many organisations spend considerable time conducting workforce planning to create ideal operating models, yet they fall down because the day-to-day work of affirming the right behaviour and tackling the wrong behaviours is often avoided by line management. In this third part of the Journey to Sustainable Performance blog series we will discover that there are many reasons why a lack of challenge from managers and leaders happens. We will look from different perspectives and see the evidence between well-delivered feedback and sustainable future performance.
The two components from the Tap’d Sustainable Performance Framework we will investigate in this blog are:
1) Open Feedback
2) Challenging Conversations
Open Feedback
So far on our Journey to Sustainable Performance we have seen the importance of psychological safety to create a fundamental level of trust within the culture. We have then seen how psychological safety allows us to open up our inner motivations and attach them to organisational goals, creating ownership, both as individuals and teams. One of the best ways to help them build trust and foster more psychological safety is to enable and support a culture of open feedback. If we can normalise the concept of giving and receiving feedback openly then we can create a baseline for trust, as observations and perceptions are more in the open.
Feedback and trust are linked. Baker, A., et al, for example, in their 2013 study “Feedback and Organizations: Feedback is Good, Feedback-Friendly Culture is Better”, noted that if we are used to and expect feedback as part of our role, then it is more readily accepted as a source of data to help me grow. In addition, Kluger & Denisi (1996) in their meta-analysis on the topic, found that “timely, specific and tough” feedback was one of the strongest predictors of organisational learning. Thus proactively creating a culture of open feedback clears the path for challenging conversations to happen.
Conversely, the lack of open feedback has been seen to have detrimental effects on performance. McKinsey, in their 2015 report “Diversity Matters” note that diversity in teams creates higher performance when robust debate is encouraged. However, if open feedback and debate is stifled a diverse team can actually then produce increased dysfunction. Low feedback cultures also encourage “groupthink” (Janis, 1972), where dissent is suppressed and poor decisions result. This is a great example that by just creating an operating model of well-constructed teams but not maintaining them with feedback cultures can actually lower performance overall. Morrison & Milliken describes the lack of encouraged feedback as a culture of “organisational silence”: a climate where people withhold input due to fear or futility, leading to stagnation and reduced adaptability. The journey to sustainable performance only happens with great management and leadership behaviour performing action on the ground, day by day.
Open feedback needs to be constructive. It should be a gift of observed data to the receiver who can then use this to be a better version of themselves. Healthy feedback is not something that people give to make themselves feel better by “getting it off their chest”. For this reason, many simple feedback models exist to help employees and managers structure feedback well, such as the SAID model of giving feedback and the RADAR model of receiving feedback (Tap’d Solutions).
Challenging Conversations
So, what is the difference between open feedback and challenging conversations? Why do organisations struggle to
do it well? And what are the consequences of organisations not being consistently great at challenging conversations? Let’s look into these questions below.
Feedback is defined as “actions taken by (an) external agent(s) to provide information regarding some aspect(s) of one’s task performance” (Kluger & Denisi, 1996). In simpler terms, it is any information, comment, or suggestion that and employee provides to their managers or coworkers regarding their performance, behaviour, or work-related activities. It can be positive or negative, formal, or informal, and come from various sources, including managers, colleagues and customers.
Challenging conversations differ because, due to the content of the feedback, the conversation’s path will probably encounter substantive differing of opinion. This is what makes them challenging as they have the potential of being emotive and something that is valuable to both parties is usually under discussion. Kerry Patterson et al (2012)’ in their book “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High”, define a crucial conversation as when the “stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong”. The result of a crucial conversation often determines the success of relationships, teams, and organisations.
This level of volatility and uncertainty of where the conversation might go, potentially could make the conversation be perceived as challenging. For busy line managers, this often leads to procrastination over having the conversation. “My life will be easier today if I delay this conversation.” Today, maybe, but what about the long term?
The impact of not having a challenging conversation in a timely manner can be considerable in the longer term. In the last blog we mentioned Equity theory of motivation – the perception that we are being treated fairly compared to our peers. If our line manager avoids having timely feedback conversations with members of the team who are underperforming then the other team members, who are performing, will notice. Persistent lack of dealing with poor behaviour results in your better performers becoming demoralised. They may start to question their own dedication and high levels of effort as there is no difference in line manager behaviour or reward between a higher performer and a lower performer. The result is a loss of performance by your best people over time. So, in essence, avoiding a challenging conversation for a “better life” today may result in a “worse life” for a line manager tomorrow. Again this can undo the creation of high performing teams we explored in the last blog.
So how do you get your line managers to have these challenging conversations on a regular basis and stop them procrastinating about them. Firstly, line managers need to be trained on how to have challenging conversations. Stone, D., Patton, B., & Heen, S. (1999) in their book “Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most,” state that line managers need to have the behavioural tools to have crucial, performance-raising discussions. They see this as a skill set that has to be learned and then practiced regularly. Modern organisations are having it tough currently. The world is volatile, the marketplace is not easy and budgets are tight. We need higher performance from our people. We need our line managers to step up and raise their game. Yet since the start of the 2020’s we have seen line manager training budgets reduced with asynchronous online learning coming to the fore. The skills of holding challenging conversations and growing confidence need to be learned and practised with real peers in live settings. Observed practice with quality feedback is how the basics of challenging conversations are developed in your managers and leaders. If not, initial confidence will not grow. Then line managers will not have these challenging conversations in real settings.
Secondly, senior leaders need to be overtly interested in the conversations and behaviours around poor performance. Acting as mentors and coaches. Asking how the conversation went. Listening to the response and offering thought-provoking questions or advise. This creates a sense of accountability for the line manager to hold these conversations and a feeling of consequences if they do not do it. This is how the building of a culture of challenging conversations really happens. With interest from the most senior management on “how” performance is being managed, not just “what” the figures are saying.
Challenging conversations need to be prepared for. What is the feedback going to be? How might the other person react when I say this? How can I prepare for those responses? What is the ideal outcome and what am I prepared to compromise on? A good level of emotional intelligence is invaluable for challenging conversations. The ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and see the “reality” of the world through their eyes is a key skill to master. There is often no right or wrong in a challenging conversation, just differing views of the world coming from people’s values or beliefs. It is the lack of acknowledgment of these fundamental beliefs that often cause the strong emotions when stakes are high. This is why the learning practice of reflection on how it went is key to greater confidence.
In summary, having a culture of open feedback encourages acceptance of feedback, as it is seen as positive data for self-improvement. Challenging conversations will always exist but learning the skills and practicing them will help defusing the strong emotions. Successful feedback conversations from line managers allows for behaviour change to enable greater performance, and doing this within an open feedback culture means it can be done in a sustainable way.
If an organisation can master the successful cultural shift to open feedback and timely performance-related challenging conversations then it will start to experience a “pivot point” on its Journey to Sustainable Performance. This means that the people in the organisation can now use all this feedback to start to develop a growth mindset and become more mentally tough and resilient. We will explore this in the next blog in this series.
