Robust Performance Conversations

Without clarity of expectations, both in terms of roles and in terms of tasks you cannot with good conscience hold a person to account for their performance.

In addition, without a culture where blame is non-existent and a genuine desire of leaders to create great working relationships, I really question how effective our organisations will be. I predict the gap between actual performance and potential performance will continue to be very wide and just a distant dream for many.

Developing your skills to have productive conversations is very important, not only in the workplace but for all relationships. In my last post I discussed the importance of social process skills.  So we know it is important but how do we build our capability to do it well?

Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent CommunicationTM (NVC) is a fantastic method for communicating without judging and meeting everyone’s needs. Now I am very much a Jackal trying to shift to a Giraffe so I am not the right person to write about how to apply this so here are two links to better material, Martha Lasley’s paper Difficult Conversations: Authentic Communication Leads to Greater Productivity and a video featuring Marshall Rosenberg introducing NVC – the analogy of Jackal and Giraffe will make sense if you watch the video, which I sincerely hope you invest some time in.

Image courtesy of Sven Hartenstein

In my next post I will discuss “understanding the work” the middle element of the framework around which all other elements are centred.