Topic outline

  • Overview

    Performance is vital to your success. Whether looking to develop skills to increase your own productivity or drive high performance of your team, the resources below have been designed to enable you to self-direct your own learning, practice your new skills and join others in making a difference.

    • Meaningful conversations

      Regular, productive conversations between you and your manager are key to the success of you and your team. They build trust, provide direction and encourage growth. It’s your manager’s opportunity to ask ‘how are you getting on’ and discuss whether you’re’ focused on the right things.

       

      You or your manager can set up regular meetings. Their formality may vary. Think not just about what you’re working on but also how you work, how you can get even better, your wellbeing and your aspirations.

       

      Questions to consider:

      • What is a good conversation for me?

      • How can we make our time together more productive?

      • How do I like to be managed?

      • What might you need to ask your manager to do differently?

      Share with your manager to discuss how your regular conversations can work for each of you. It’s important we make the most of these opportunities to discuss our progress, development and resilience.

      Where to talk

      Depending on what you want to talk about, this could be at your desk, in a meeting room or while making a coffee. Conversations can also take place out of the office; for example, in a café, via video conference, while out for a walk or on the phone. It’s crucial you keep in touch, so don’t let when you can next meet your manager at work dictate when you talk.

       

      What to discuss

      Think about what is most meaningful for you to discuss. Jot this down to share and focus on.

       

      Here are some topic suggestions:

       

      • Support or development you need to strengthen your future performance

      • Wellbeing. How are you? How resilient are you feeling? Is there anything in your personal life affecting the way you work? Can you share this with your manager to fully support you?

      • Reflective practice. What have you learnt to strengthen future performance?

      • Goal review

      • Feedback. Any you’ve received that you’d like to share with your manager. Or is there feedback you can provide to them? Your manager will be interested to know how they can better support you.

      • Barriers. Any areas of concern? Are there things stopping you being productive?


    • Setting goals

      Goals are a great motivation tool as they provide you with direction to follow and a vision to work towards.

      Your goals will reflect day to day tasks and work, plus challenging and stretching targets. They should promote your accountability and include team goals to promote productivity towards the right things, allowing you to take pride in the achievement of your accomplishments.

      Both you and your manager as responsible for your goals. Agree them together and be aware priorities and deadlines might change as you progress.

      Before your goal setting meeting, both of you should think about possible goals and behaviours; taking the direction of your service in to consideration.

      Questions to ask yourself:

      • What are you going to do that will make a difference to your future performance and contribution to your team?

      • What will stretch and develop you?

      For goal writing tips see the Using SMART to set goals eLearning. SMART uses an acronym to guide you in setting clear, comprehensive goals.

      Once you have an idea of your goals you may wish to use the OUTCOMES model to improve your understanding, motivation and commitment to what you’ve set for yourself. You can work through this individually or together with your manager.

      During the process of creating your goals, be sure to think of the why. Why is it important for you to achieve that goal? Knowing the why provides you with a sense of purpose and increases motivation. If you’re unclear of your why, discuss with your manager.


    • Importance of feedback

      Feedback is key to developing performance and vital to our regular conversations. It maximises your potential and helps you grow, on both a personal and professional level by making you aware of how you can perform even better in future.

      Regularly ask and encourage others to provide you with feedback. Provide feedback to others to help drive high performance and continually improve team productivity and performance. Frequent informal feedback increases employee engagement and has a positive impact on the workplace.

      What can you or others start, stop or continue? What would make your work even better? What could you do differently next time?

      Take 5-10 minutes completing the Giving Feedback interactive eLearning for a more structured approach to providing feedback, applying best practice. You’ll learn how to remove your judgement and provide feedback based on facts, reducing conflict.

      Reflective practice is great for assisting in your own self awareness. See the learning from experiences resources below for further information.

    • Challenging conversations

      Meaningful workplace conversations can be emotive and become challenging.

      Manage challenging conversations by keeping in regular touch with your manager and/or team. By having a chat in the first instance you can avoid the conversation becoming complicated or challenging.

      Before having the conversation, ask yourself some questions:

      • What is your purpose for having the conversation?
      • Are you making assumptions? Is the discussion topic based on facts and observations that you can back up if necessary?
      • Are you adopting a supportive / understanding approach?


      Be mindful of active listening and how powerful it is during conversations.

      What to do in advance
      Plan and prepare your conversation in advance to help you remain calm and confident.

      See our Resilience and Wellbeing course resources for information on how to discuss mental health in the workplace.

    • Learning from experiences

      Frame mistakes as opportunities to learn and develop, not as indicators of failure.

      Think about how you can build reflective practice into your routine and start to reflect as you work. This will help you think on your feet, be more mindful of what you do and act immediately.