Stay connected
It may seem like overkill to say that to manage performance well you need to stay well connected, accessible and check in with your staff often about how they’re tracking. But it’s quite the opposite. It’s essential to supporting an engaged team that feels valued and performs well.

Schedule regular check-ins
As well as being accessible and having ad-hoc interactions, make sure you schedule regular monthly or quarterly check-ins. Now more than ever you need to be more deliberate with this and have structure around checking in with your team’s capacity, wellbeing and yes, performance too. But giving feedback and managing performance should be a consistent part of your interaction with your team, so don’t save valuable feedback for these meetings only.

Be compassionate
If there’s one skill required of leaders that has dramatically increased in importance, it’s this one. These are times that require compassion in leaders more than ever. Business as usual has become something entirely different, and we need to be compassionate with each other, with ourselves and with our teams. And what does it have to do with performance? When someone feels seen, supported, understood…magic happens, as I’m sure you know.

Give it a go and let me know how you’re finding it. And by the way, if you have any performance management challenges you need help with, drop them in the Big Goals facebook group and I’ll give you my thoughts.