Ecube Training & Consulting was recently invited by Beeah, a government of Sharjah company and the largest waste management company in Sharjah, UAE to conduct a session on Performance Management for its senior managers and leaders.

Management, etymologically speaking, stands for managing ‘men’ tactfully. Thus, the role of any manager is to manage her people well and achieve business results through them. Therefore, every manager is morally responsible to ensure that she understand the needs of employees and thus does everything possible to keep them motivated and focused. This can be a huge challenge, especially in the face of the demands that managers experience.

Fortunately, a sound performance management system comes to the rescue of the manager for it contains the seeds of business excellence. Some of these elements are:

1. Clarity – Where there is clarity there is speed and accuracy. Every employee needs to have clarity of two aspects, viz. her role and her goal. Performance Management Systems force the manager and her employee to clear the road ahead in terms of roles and goals
2. Autonomy – Goals and targets are mutually agreed upon by the manager and the employee. Adults like choices and hate others telling them what to do and how to do it. A sound performance system would train managers to effectively finalize objectives with employees considering the interests of the company and the employee in question.
3. Feedback – We all like to know where we stand and how well we are doing. Although we find it difficult to digest the bad news, a well-trained manager knows how to evaluate yet motivate employees. Feedback given well and received in the right spirit becomes the breakfast for champions.
4. Development – Where there is growth there is joy and where there is joy there is no sign of fatigue or pain. William Shakespeare said it well when he stated “the labor we delight in physics pain’. Any sound performance management system contains elements of learning, development and growth in the organization.
5. Objectivity – When clear goals are set, measurement and evaluation becomes objective. The bias of evaluation such as the ‘horn / halo effect’ are eliminated. Partiality reduces and things become so much more transparent.
6. Maximization – We always have an amount of ‘untapped’ potential and it is the manager’s duty to tap into this. A well trained manager knows how to be her employees coach and thus to ‘stretch’ the employee beyond her comfort zone.

It thus becomes apparent that while Performance Management may fall under the custody of the Human Resource Department, it is an enabler of business excellence.

Established in United Arab Emirates, Ecube has been successfully delivering leadership, management and softs skills training programmes to corporate. Its training titles include situational leadership, time management, stress management, customer service and sales training across the Gulf including Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. Every training session is preceded by a training needs analysis and is followed by measurement of training results.