What Is Performance?

Just what is performance anyway? By clearly understanding this, your life as a manager will be so much easier.

Performance is simply the production of valid results.

There may be many other answers to this question, but it all boils down to: can the employee produce the results expected of them?

You can recognise this via certain key performance indicators.

Top Performers

These are the people who get the job done with amazing ease. You never have to chase them up or hound them for results. They just get it done – no fuss!

You come to rely on your top performers . If you think about it, though, you probably spend less time managing/supporting these employees than others in your team. You will see later that this may not be a good strategy.

Performance Characteristics

One of the things that stands out with your performers is that they can envisage the end results of their job. They know what they are shooting for.

Ask one of your employees what he or she thinks they are trying to achieve on the job. Note how fast and accurately they answer. This is just one of the performance characteristics you need to understand.

Seeing is Believing

One of the traps in assessing performance is that some people produce results on their job simply because the system is propping them up. How do they handle it when the system fails? Do they still get results?

A real performer can “see” their job . They understand the basic ideas that underpin the activities, so when things change, they can still see how to achieve their results.