In previous articles we’ve spoken about performance management and why it’s important. We’ve looked at how to set realistic and achievable targets as well as business planning and goal setting. The focus of these articles has been primarily at the individual level.
In this article we are now going to focus on performance within a team environment, understand why it differs, and how to get the most out of each team member.
How Does Performance Fit into the Bigger Business Picture?
Performance – how well we achieve a certain goal – must be the ultimate measurement of an organisation’s success. This is true whether the goal is more sales, more profit, more people helped, children educated, refuse collected or whatever. A failure to perform well against set goals and the business or department is in danger of failing.
Performance is also a measurement of our collective output of skill, effort, communication, abilities, strengths and weaknesses – human attributes that require a contribution of people’s endeavour. This endeavour can be measured for teams as well as individuals.
(There’s a good argument to suggest even one-man bands are teams (‘an army of one’) when they consider suppliers, customers and the occasional consultant, engineer or freelancer who helps out on the odd occasion.)
Take for example a sales team, if they consistently underperform, i.e. fail to achieve sales targets, the income of the business is affected. Reduced income means less money in the pot for everyone and ultimately perhaps even to the demise of the company.
A manufacturing business must consistently produce widgets that fit certain criteria (minimum or maximum sizes, tolerances, colours, quantities of ingredients or inputs, health and safety standards etc) and a weak link or error in any part of the process can produce defective products further down the line. Reproducing those failed widgets costs more money which impacts profit margins. If the company gets a bad reputation, customers will eventually stop buying.
In our context, as businesses are made up of people team performance directly affects the entire business outcome. An ineffective team, wherever they sit within an organisation, has the potential to negatively impact the bottom line.
Team Performance vs Individual Performance
Team performance targets will be broad in nature, say, to achieve a certain level of sales, number of widgets produced, reduction of defects, better quality of output, higher exam grades etc. They should be specific but assigned to the team as a whole.
A poorly performing team failing to reach its potential is more likely to affect overall business performance by simple virtue of the size of the task involved: teams will take on bigger tasks than individuals. There may be many sound reasons for this: poor project scope, alteration of the scope midway through the project, poor management, lack of guidance, lack of budget etc but the impact of team performance is likely to be of a far greater magnitude than that of an underperforming individual.
Moreover, their performance (or lack of) could cause negativity within the organisation and a team perceived to be underperforming can be a burden on other teams who are meeting the demands of the business or organisation.
Individual performance targets will be (could be) different for everyone in the team. Not every individual in the team will be working on the same task or have the same set of skills and experience.
For example, take a team producing a new piece of software. Some will be involved in its architecture, others its UX and UI, others database management, others will be developing an app and so forth. Each member of the tram will be assigned a certain task. In addition, new recruits won’t be as adept as more experienced employees even if they are tasked with the same job.
The team goal may be to develop the project on time and on budget but on an individual level you wouldn’t expect a UX designer to create and manage a database for example nor the new recruit to know as much as the developer with eight years’ experience.
While the performance of the team is paramount a single poorly performing individual can also affect a business particularly if they are high enough up the ladder. Take the management team. If one ore more are ineffective (they are not pulling their weight, been promoted too early, clearly not good at their job, poor people managers etc) they can affect the dynamics of the team. We have all seen the impact a departing CEO has on a business listed in the FTSE 100 or Fortune 500.
However, in the context of this article when we are concerned with individuals within teams it’s fair to say that team performance will be broad while individual performance will be specific to each individual. Everyone must know their role within the team and the impact their performance has.
Individuals Within a Team
Cohesion in a team is generally a good idea. There may be circumstances when it’s not (a standout character brilliant at her job) but on the whole you all need to get on, be assigned a task and be pulling in the same direction.
On a team level, the formation and structure of teams within your business begins with leadership. You, the manager, are ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the group so you’ll need to pick people who can perform the task in hand to help you get the job done!
In many cases, especially for small and medium sized businesses, you may not have the luxury of choosing from a wide pool of colleagues – you simply don’t have enough staff. If you only employ 40 people you will have to use what you have or hire someone new. Allowances may need to be made therefore if the pool of labour is tight.
When it comes to team accountability your team members also don’t pick their colleagues – they are assigned them by management. In some ways it’s a bit like a family dynamic – you don’t get to choose your parents/siblings either! It is therefore imperative that you as a leader (or your management/HR teams) understand what is required in terms of a person specification for the team and what personality types will work well together in this situation.
The best qualified person for a job/role may also not be the right fit for a specific team. Perhaps someone would be best suited for project work across a whole department than being slotted into a team situation.
As a business owner, task your managers to understand the importance of knowing the people they work with and lead. Offer them training as not all managers are people persons themselves after all.
A word of advice. Watch out for competition between team members; it is not always appropriate as it can create a toxic environment of individuals trying to sabotage other team members in order to ensure they personally come out on top. An atmosphere of strife within your teams is not healthy – you may have the best performing sales team, for example, but if most of the people in that team are stressed to the point of ill health by pushing themselves to keep up with the top salesperson, then ultimately you may end up with no team at all. Not to mention a bunch of sick leave to cover for those individuals who can’t cope and burn out.
Company leaders, team leaders and managers need to understand the individuals within the organisation in order to create, motivate and manage the various teams. Putting people together who, for whatever reason, struggle to bond into a team is a recipe for disaster. Dissent will be inevitable and ultimately you will end up not only with a poorly performing team but also a bunch of unhappy people.
Holding individuals to account in a team can only be achieved if they know what their role is and have been set clear goals.
Start with Team Performance
So how do you go about putting great teams together?
It makes sense to start with team performance goals. What are the overall goals of the team? Are they SMART (see SMART goals).
Look at how an individual person slots into the whole team. Does everyone have defined roles and responsibilities and know what they are?
Not everyone is a natural team player either – some people are solitary and self-contained by nature. They may feel uncomfortable in a team environment and may actually perform less well if pushed into a group situation.
On the other hand, plenty of people thrive in teams and group environments and actually one of the reasons they join a business is because they have heard there is a great team culture.
Consider whether team members are included in the setting of goals and objectives or are they imposed by a team leader or manager?
What are the key performance indicators/KPIs and does everyone know what they are and why they are important? It is rather pointless to have a raft of KPIs that no one understands, no matter how long it may have taken to contextualise them.
Once you understand the dynamics of your teams you can then begin to …
Focus on Individual Performance: Reviews and Rewards
Reviews should be held at regular intervals and are crucial to the success of any team. This should be a team review and individual review. We discussed setting goals and targets in a previous article. Team members must be held accountable for their performance.
How often do you review team members? Is this done on an individual basis, a team basis, or a combination of both? The importance of this cannot be overstated especially if there are teams within teams or the task in hand is sizable.
Setting the bar too high is counterproductive meaning few, if any, employees are able to reach their targets. You’ll end up with a group of demotivated individuals who can’t achieve the expectation and so stop even trying to reach them.
How you reward your employees for reaching their goals/objectives/targets is entirely up to you – but you really should offer some incentive other than the implied (or explicit!) belief that ‘if you don’t succeed you’re out’.
Incentives can be a potential minefield though and need to be carefully monitored to ensure that fairness is at the heart of the process. The ‘teacher’s pet’ should not be rewarded at the expense of a highly competent, but perhaps not as well liked, team member.
Is being in a team in their job description and if it’s not, and they are, then were they at least made aware that the job involved teamwork BEFORE they started? If they weren’t then it may be unrealistic to expect them to do their job to the best of their ability. They perhaps thought they would be working alone and discovered that actually they are a small cog in a larger wheel. Not everyone plays nicely together despite what we’d perhaps like to think, and a loner will always be a loner.
The old sayings “A team is made up of individuals” and “There’s no ‘I’ in team” may be true but it is also rather trite and doesn’t help someone settle into a new team (especially if they didn’t expect to be working in a team role!).
Advice is to set some relatively simple performance goals for every team member: ones that are very definitely achievable, as succeeding (or outperforming) instils confidence. Goals like:
- Attend all staff meetings
- Be punctual
- Master a new skill (ensure appropriate training is available!)
- Answer all emails within a specified time period
- Pick up the phone within x number of rings
Team Member Responsibility
How much responsibility each team member gets will ultimately depend on the purpose of the team.
Some thrive on responsibility but are they allowed to use their initiative? Do they have a budget? Do they need sign off to make a purchase? How much responsibility are you willing to let go of? Are you giving people responsibility who really don’t want it?
I recall one client, a Marketing Manager, who had been allocated a budget at the start of the financial year to the tune of around £100,000. However, any purchase required authorisation from his director no matter how big or small. There was no discretion to the extent he couldn’t even spend £5 to purchase a photo for an email campaign. Not surprisingly the Manager felt very disgruntled. There was no explanation why such a small amount was denied but it became abundantly clear six months later when the two owners of the business walked into the office, called the managers together and told them they had sold the business. There was no doubt in his mind the lack of marketing spend (there were several instances of not being given permission) was purely to save money and make the business more profitable.
If you expect everyone to simply follow the rules/guidelines imposed from above an individual with a highly developed sense of responsibility and initiative (no matter how much of a team player they are) will very quickly become disillusioned, trapped and bored.
Managing Work From Home (WFH) Team Performance
This is a really hot topic right now – for obvious reasons!
Many people have experienced working from home for the first time this year – some have prospered, others haven’t and much of this has been down to how the WFH strategy within their organisation has been set up.
Micro-managing does not sit well with a working from home set up. Yes, there are tracking systems to monitor how long a person sits at their laptop; you can monitor keystrokes and even install software to remotely monitor them via their webcams.
What all of those imply is that you don’t trust the people you employ to do the work they are paid to do! Trust is probably the single biggest factor in staff engagement – you need to trust them! It’s at the aforementioned reviews that you understand if they are performing well, nor not, and take appropriate action.
With many people having to juggle childcare and home schooling is it fair to expect them to follow a set 9 to 5 pattern? Obviously, there are roles which may require that, customer facing roles for instance, but if the only requirement is that work is completed does it matter when it is done?
What Happens When Standards Are Not Met?
If your performance management is working as it should the team manager should be picking up on areas of concern before they become a real problem. But when goals are not met, for whatever reason, it’s important to distinguish between team goals and individual goals. Who is to blame?
If an individual can be identified as being solely responsible should the rest of the team pay the penalty? Should they lose out because of one person? That’s a decision for you to make.
Yet, apportioning blame can be counterproductive to a team’s overall cohesiveness (if it exists that is). Rather than penalties or other repercussions, why not look at training – either the individual or the team?
In a worst case scenario, should the individual have even been in a team role? Would they be better off in a standalone or project role?
The bottom line is that person was employed by you: you (or another manager) believed they had something to bring to the company; their perceived lack of success could be as much down to the role they were given as to any lack of aptitude.
What To Take From This Article
If there is one thing we hope you take away from reading this it is that understanding the people you employee is key to the success of your business. Pretty much every business has teams. Treating people as individuals with their own unique set of skills, talents and abilities, as well as their own individual issues and problems will ensure you employ the right people and individual performance will likely be more achievable.
