Vicki Anderson

I have been doing training for the last sixteen years and I have encountered all kinds of participants. Trainers are always charged with making the training practical and helping the organization get a return on investment. However, I have seen sessions that worked for some people and didn’t work at all for others. I have seen people walk away from a session that I thought was weak, but they got a lot out of it.

I truly believe that in the business of learning, it’s what you do with it that counts. It doesn’t matter whether you have fancy handouts, multimedia slide shows, games or quizzes. What matters is whether the participants engage with the learning and decide to put it to use.

I have seen very bright people who glossed over the material and barely did any of the assignments at work. I have also seen people who seemed average at first, but really decided to put some effort into their practice and started to blossom over time.

Leadership, like any other skill can be taught and learned. Over my years of working with leaders I have seen many people grow in their leadership ability and I have seen others who think they are already there and have better things to do with their time. It’s been my experience that those who have put effort into consciously and continuously improving their leadership skills have reaped the benefits of having employees who respect them more and are eager to work for them to produce whatever it is they do.

I believe the old adage that it’s not what you’ve got that’s important, it’s what you do with it.

There is a lot of talk today about performance management, but confusion about what it is. To me, performance management is about helping people understand what they are expected to do in their jobs and giving them clear and frequent feedback about how they are doing it.  This means that a once a year performance appraisal is not performance management.

So often an employee tells me his supervisor never talks to him about how he is doing unless he messes up. Employees need to know what they are doing right so they can keep doing it and they need to know what they are doing wrong so they can change it. This requires frequent feedback.

Talent management is about developing people’s skills, abilities, and knowledge so they can contribute effectively to your organization. This is not just about putting down a learning goal on a performance appraisal for the next year and sending someone to a seminar. This is about coaching and counseling, giving job assignments for learning and growth, and encouraging people to learn on their own.

Having a good performance management system can be used as a talent management tool if it is used to provide frequent feedback for the employee to know what he or she is doing well or should develop.  Goals can be set for honing skills or for learning new skills to prepare them for future positions.

Even though there are many people looking for jobs today, the time will come again soon when we have a talent shortage, so this is an excellent time to be making the most of the people assets you have by developing a consistent and frequent means of monitoring and measuring performance successes. This will also help you manage the talent you have now into the talent you will need in the future. Execution of your strategy requires that you be intentional about great performance.

One product I have found to be good for this is KeyneLink. It is web-based and very user friendly.  It is designed to facilitate frequent performance-related conversations, which clearly meets my criteria for performance management. It is a way to manage talent by measuring performance. More information can be found on their website.