When supervisors and employees talk to each other, the subject of their conversation can vary across a whole range of topics. In a performance culture, conversations tend to focus a lot on performance. What do your conversations focus on? Take the following quiz to determine your “performance focus.”
As a Supervisor, How Performance Focused Are You?
On average, about how much time per week do you spend talking with your employees?
hours
minutes
Approximately what percentage of time do you spend talking about performance?
% of the time
What are the usual topics of conversation? Review the following list of topics and then rate each topic according to how often you talk about it with your employees.
1 = almost never
2 = sometimes
3 = often
4 = almost all the time
The employee’s performance
Obstacles the employee has encountered
Performance of the work unit or agency
Developments within the agency that affect the employee’s job
Someone else’s performance
Agency gossip
Non-work-related topics (e.g., local politics, last night’s ball game, your family, etc.)
While talking to an employee, how often do you refer to the employee’s results expectations?
Almost daily
Once a week
Once a month
Once every six months
Hardly ever
As an Employee, How Performance Focused Are You?
On average, about how much time per week do you spend talking with your supervisor?
hours
minutes
Approximately what percentage of that time do you spend talking about performance?
% of the time
What are the usual topics of conversation? Review the following list of topics and then rate each topic according to how often you talk about it with your supervisor.
1 = almost never
2 = sometimes
3 = often
4 = almost all the time
Your own performance
Obstacles you have encountered
Performance of the work unit or agency
Developments within the agency that affect your job
Someone else’s performance
Agency gossip
Non-work-related topics (e.g., local politics, last night’s ball game, your family, etc.)
InterpretingYour Results
The following results are danger signals:
You spend less than 5 minutes per week talking to each employee (or to your supervisor).
You spend less than 50% of the time in conversation with your employees (or supervisor) talking about performance.
The topic of conversation leans more toward non-relevant issues (someone else’s performance, agency gossip, non-work-related topics) than toward performance-related topics (employee performance, work unit or agency performance, developments that affect the job).
You refer to results expectations no more often than once a month.
If you fall into the danger zones, take action to increase the performance focus of your conversations. The informal conversations supervisors have with their employees discussing performance can have a major impact on employee commitment and performance. Research suggests that, when these conversations include discussion of performance standards and informal feedback that helps employees do their jobs better, performance can be increased by more than 30%.
Corporate Leadership Council, “Building the High-Performance Workforce,” 2002.
