Is it time to stop talking about development?

Many organisations split their appraisal discussions with employees into KPI’s or objectives and development. While this can work, it can also promote the idea of development as a nice to do. Optional. Something often chosen on a whim.

What I think is more useful is to think of everything an employee does as performance. If you do this there are some key coaching questions that help support this approach…

• How effectively are we communicating the performance we expect?
• Can we accurately measure individual performance contributions?
• Are we recognising and rewarding where performance is good enough?
• Are we recognising and rewarding where performance is over and above?
• What are the areas where performance needs to be better?
• Does improving performance require a change of focus if someone has the skills needed or an opportunity to learn new ones if they don’t?

So if we just focus on performance do individuals get learning and growth (development) anyway? And is that a better way of ensuring that this learning and growth becomes both non-negotiable and more effective at maximising business performance? Something to think about…

Tony

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