Performance Management
How can we assess the talent in our organization? How can we help staff understand their own performance, leverage their strengths, and identify areas of growth and improvement?
Listen to this short (2 min) voiceover introduction to this topic.
Competency Frameworks
INSIGHTS
Create a Competency Framework Based on Your Organization’s Core Values and the Skills and Behaviors That are Necessary for Success
A Competency Framework provides a common language for the organization to talk about skills, mindsets, and behaviors needed for success. Reflecting carefully on your organization’s core values and the skills and behaviors that high performers have can help you identify key competencies, such as problem solving, communicating and influencing, organizing and managing, etc. While the level of skill for each competency can vary by role, the competencies should be common across the organization.
Use the Competency Framework to Inform Staff Selection, Performance Management, and Professional Development
Using competencies as a guide for staff selection can help ensure that the right staff are brought into the organization. Managers and staff can also use the Competency Framework to have productive performance management conversations and guide their professional development.
TOP TIPS
- Consider linking your competencies to your core values. Many partners have explicitly linked their competencies to their core values as a way to ensure that the skills and behaviors needed for success reflect how the organization wants to operate based on its core values.
- Contextualize your competencies and descriptions based on cultural context. While there are common skills and behaviors that often lead to success in organizations, the way they are exercised can differ depending on cultural context. For example, some cultures value leaders who can make decisions on their own after consulting different perspectives, while other cultures value leaders who can build consensus for group decisions. It would be helpful to contextualize your competencies so that they reflect what are most valued in your cultural context. Pair your contextual understanding with creating an inclusive system that allows for individual differences in what success can look like.
FAQs
How can we create and use a competency framework?
It may be useful to look at these partner examples. After reviewing examples, begin to identify the core skills and competencies you think that are necessary to be a successful staff member at your organization. It’s also important to link your competencies to your organization’s core values and cultural context, as noted above. Once you’ve identified your key competencies, you would want to attribute actions or mindsets to them and identify different levels for each competency. When building out the actions and mindsets, be sure to consider diversity and inclusion so that people of all backgrounds are able to succeed and advance. This will enable you to use the framework to evaluate performance. It’s a good idea to re-evaluate your competency framework every couple of years to ensure it's helping people live into their roles and drive impact.
What are the competencies that we should have across levels?
Partners usually find that there are a common set of skills and competencies that make a staff member successful at their organization, regardless of his/her position or job level. Some common ones we have seen across the network include relationship building, strategic thinking, planning and execution, etc., but you should have a conversation with your team to identify the right ones for your organization. While there are common competencies across positions and job levels, sometimes they do manifest themselves differently depending on the job level. For example, one might expect an Associate to think strategically about a project, but a Director will be expected to think strategically about the entirety of his/her team’s work. You would want to delineate these differences as different levels within each competency.
What would an excellent demonstration of those competencies look like at different levels?
The answer to this question should come from you and your colleagues. Across the network, we've seen partner staff agree on a set of competencies that every staff in the organization should have and then identify some examples of excellence for each competency at different levels. Based on the examples you can distill actions and mindsets that constitue excellence for each competency, and use that to assess staff's level of development.
Designing Performance Management System
INSIGHTS
Assess Both Goals Attainment and Competencies
Performance management systems should assess what work was accomplished (goals) as well as how it was accomplished (competencies). This will help staff see the importance of their work in achieving the organization’s mission and build their understanding of what skills and behaviors are needed to achieve their goals.
Implement the Right System for Your Organization’s Needs
Organizations go through phases, and so should a performance management system. A new organization may just have a basic system where managers have performance management conversations with staff using a simple form, such as a 2x2. As organizations grow, they may consider using a more advanced system with a more sophisticated form and multiple sources of feedback. They may also transition from a paper-based system to an online system to facilitate feedback submission and data analysis and retention.
View Performance Management as an Ongoing Process
The best performance management system is one that facilitates regular, ongoing feedback conversations between managers and staff. Staff and managers should frequently engage in formal and informal feedback conversations and have a regular, open dialogue about performance throughout the year.
TOP TIPS
- Keep it simple. It is better to keep the system simple so that managers and staff cam engage fully and have regular feedback conversations. Complex systems can feel too time consuming and difficult, which may cause team members to decide not to participate or engage with it. When designing the system, consider the tradeoffs between the amount of feedback you collect, and the time it will take for people to provide that feedback.
- Be clear about tasks, follow up and timeline. Outline the tasks that your team needs to complete throughout the process (e.g., identify who they will get feedback from, fill out evaluation form, schedule time for performance conversations, etc.) and set deadlines. Specify follow up actions, such as manager and staff reconvening to review their commitments at regular intervals. If you are clear about tasks, follow up and timeline your team is more likely to complete the steps in the process on time.
FAQs
What kind of performance management system is most appropriate for our organization?
Start as simple as possible. It’s appealing to build out a very robust system all at once, but your needs are likely to shift over time. It’s often a better choice to try something simple and then iterate and innovate once you see what’s working. Start by asking yourself what you need/want to track (most often partners choose progress and contribution to individual, team, and organizational goals, and alignment to values and cultural enablers), and what kind of systems will work best for your organization. Some partners choose to use shared google documents to collect feedback whereas others use a technology platform with surveys built in. Frequent feedback and alignment on expectations over the year can help remove some of the stress from having a perfect system that does everything.
How can we implement or improve on a performance management system to assess goals attainment and competencies?
First, ensure that role expectations and shared competencies are clear for all staff. You can do this through organizational, team, and 1:1 meetings. A culture of regular feedback can also help ensure that expectations remain clear as priorities and roles shift over time. Some partners choose to include a self- and peer-assessment for goal attainment in their 360 performance feedback. Teach for All recently introduced a Contribution & Impact rubric to help staff identify their contribution and impact, and then align with their manager. Often, the most beneficial component of a performance management system is the 1:1 conversation that a staff member has with their manager, so remember to prioritize time to discuss, debrief, and make meaning together.
How can we ensure managers and staff are having regular, ongoing feedback conversations?
Building a culture of feedback requires a shared understanding of how to give and get effective feedback; a culture that has psychological safety; and continuous modeling (if a CEO says they want a culture of feedback, they need to frequently model giving and getting feedback). Consider a series of workshops to help staff develop their feedback skills, and make time on teams and in 1:1 conversations to give and get feedback. See also Supporting Learning and Developing.
Goal Setting
INSIGHTS
Set Clear Goals at the Organizational, Team, and Individual Level
When an organization dedicates time and effort to define shared organizational goals that are aligned to its vision and mission, staff know what they are working toward and are more motivated and inspired in their day-to-day work. When everyone is aligned on organizational goals, they are able to see how their team and individual goals fit into the organization, which can be helpful in prioritization and measuring progress.
Set SMART and Outcomes-Driven Goals
Clear goals are SMART – Strategic, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Time-bound. They are also outcomes-driven, i.e., they measure the results or the ultimate outcomes of activities rather than the activities themselves. You should strive to set SMART and outcomes-driven goals across all levels of the organization.
Review Goals Regularly, Assess Progress Against Goals and Create Accountability
Goals should be reviewed regularly. At the individual level this is often done in check-ins between staff and managers. At the team and organizational level it is helpful to set up monthly or quarterly stepbacks. When reviewing goals, consider progress against goals, tasks that need to be done to remain on track, and plans to accomplish those tasks. The organization and managers can use these discussions to guide support to staff members and hold everyone accountable for the ultimate outcomes the organization wants to achieve.
TOP TIPS
- Consider setting quarterly goals and/or updating annual goals on a quarterly basis. Many partners have found that it is helpful to set quarterly goals and/or update annual goals on a quarterly basis because of the fluid environment they operate in – annual goals often become outdated or obsolete due to changing circumstances and priorities. When doing this, however, you should continually assess whether your goals are putting you on a path to achieving your vision and desired impact.
- Limit number of goals to four or five. Goals should reflect the most important and strategic things that the organization, team or individual is doing rather than a to-do list. Having too many goals can dilute focus and effort and lead to suboptimal performance.
FAQs
How do I know if a goal is strong?
A strong goal is easily measured, helps people make medium and long-term decisions, and prioritize their daily work. Look at the SMART framework to learn more about how to set a strong goal.
How can we reflect on progress against our goals and hold everyone accountable to them?
It’s important to build systems and rituals that enable your team and organization to step back on your progress and make necessary course corrections. At the individual level, staff should be clear about what their key responsibilities and accountabilities are, and should be frequently checking in with their manager about progress against those contributions. At the team level, a quarterly step-back or opportunity to reflect on progress to goals is a useful mechanism to foster learning, collaboration, and communication.
How can we support staff members in achieving their goals?
The first step is ensuring that staff members understand their goals, and have identified strategies that will make progress towards them. Second, it’s useful to have clear ways to measure progress against goals and frequent opportunities for staff members to discuss progress, successes, and holdbacks with their manager and their team and colleagues. For tips on dealing with performance problems, see here.
Performance Reviews
INSIGHTS
Use your performance management system as a foundation for conducting performance reviews.
In your performance reviews you should be assessing the same things (goals attainment and competencies) as those you are assessing in your performance management system, so it would be helpful to use that system as a foundation for conducting performance reviews. For example, some partners have quarterly performance management cycles but use the mid-year and end-of-year cycles for performance reviews.
Clarify the definitions of performance ratings and calibrate across the team.
To do performance reviews well, it is essential that managers and staff understand the definitions of performance ratings so they can rate themselves and each other accurately. Before conducting performance reviews, make sure the definitions of performance ratings are clear and your team understands them. It is also important to pair this with an understanding of unconscious biases and how these might play out in performance ratings (link to unconscious bias training referenced in other sections). After managers and staff rated themselves and each other, calibrate the ratings across the team to ensure that everyone in the organization is held to the same standards of performance.
Clearly articulate links (if any) to compensation and promotion and the underlying philosophy.
If performance reviews are used as inputs into compensation and promotion decisions, it would be good to articulate how they are linked to those decisions and what the organization’s philosophy on compensation and promotion is, so your team understands the full impact and implications of performance reviews.
TOP TIPS
- Provide examples to illustrate different performance ratings. While you should make your performance rating definitions as clear as possible, it is often helpful to provide actual examples to illustrate the different performance ratings. Examples are easier for the team to grasp and align on than the more generic language used in performance rating definitions.
- Consider using a rating scale with an even number of increments. When faced with a rating scale, there is a tendency for people to gravitate toward the middle. A scale that has an odd number of increments with a midpoint exacerbates this problem. When designing your performance ratings you might want to consider using a scale with an even number of increments so that your team must differentiate between high and low performance when they rate themselves and each other rather than gravitate toward the middle.
FAQs
PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
Teach For Thailand
- First implemented a simple performance management system by created a competency framework and using a 2x2 form
- Then built on their performance management system by using OKRs to set goals
- Has since integrated these two components and evolved their performance management system to include mid-year and end-of-year performance reviews linked to compensation and promotion
- Is continuing to evolve and optimize their system and training their team on how to use it for feedback conversations
Collaborate