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Survey Questions: Managing Performance

Definition: Managing Performance is the process of establishing clear goals and expectations, communicating roles and responsibilities, and using measurable criteria to track and assess individual and team outcomes. It involves continuous monitoring through benchmarks and performance audits, timely feedback, and formal reviews to identify areas of strength and improvement. Managers support growth by providing training opportunities, increasing responsibilities for high performers, and implementing targeted remediation plans when performance falls short. Recognizing accomplishments through fair rewards and celebrating contributions builds accountability, motivates excellence, and aligns effort with organizational success.
Management/Leadership Skills
Management
Leadership
Supervision
Supervisor
Establishing Focus/Direction
Empowering Others
Project Management
Conflict Management
Human Resources
Information Technology/IT
Business Focus
Corporate Culture
Company
Global
Reorganization
Vision
Hiring
Staffing
Turnover
Diversity
Facilities
Resources
Equality
Employee Assistance Program
Employee Development
Employee Relations
Rewards/Recognition
Wellness Program


Goals and Objectives
Goals and Objectives focus on what needs to be accomplished. This behavior emphasizes defining specific, measurable outcomes—whether long-term or short-term—and aligning them with organizational priorities. Leaders who excel here clarify departmental targets, adjust goals as conditions evolve, and ensure that individuals understand and commit to achieving those aims. It's about setting direction and tracking progress toward completion, often using metrics or milestones as accountability markers. In this context, goals serve as the compass that guides performance across roles and functions.


Performance Expectations
Performance Expectations focus on how work should be carried out to meet those goals. This behavior sets clear standards around quality, timeliness, behavior, and contribution - ensuring employees know what excellence looks like in daily execution. It reflects a managerial responsibility to establish fair, actionable criteria for evaluating performance, provide consistency across roles, and foster commitment to those standards. It's less about the destination and more about the operating norms that support the journey.


Determines Measures
Determines Measures emphasizes the design and definition of performance standards. This behavior involves identifying relevant KPIs, aligning OKRs with organizational goals, and selecting or adapting frameworks that specify what success looks like. It's a strategic and foundational activity focused on deciding what to measure, why it matters, and how measurement should be structured. Leaders who determine measures are setting the rules for evaluation, often integrating both quantitative and qualitative indicators to ensure alignment between performance and purpose.


Communicating Expectations
Communicating Expectations emphasizes clarity and shared understanding of performance standards. It focuses on making sure employees know exactly what is expected of them through role definitions, KPIs, OKRs, timelines, and production targets. This behavior fosters alignment and minimizes ambiguity by proactively conveying goals, responsibilities, and metrics. Effective communication of expectations lays the foundation for performance. It's the precondition for evaluating success, guiding effort, and enabling consistent execution


Accountability
Accountability centers on ownership, follow-through, and consequences. It reflects a manager's commitment to holding individuals and teams responsible for fulfilling those clearly defined expectations. This includes tracking progress, reinforcing commitments, addressing missed objectives, and ensuring the delivery of results. Accountability moves beyond setting the standard—it ensures people live up to it, reinforcing trust, discipline, and credibility in performance management.


Measures Performance
Measures Performance focuses on the application and monitoring of those predefined standards. It reflects the practice of gathering data, reviewing benchmarks, and assessing how well individuals or teams are meeting expectations. This behavior is operational and executional to ensure that performance is tracked regularly (e.g., through quotas, metrics, or reports), and that assessments are tied directly to established goals. Measures Performance is about using it to understand and guide results.


Monitoring
Monitoring reflects the ongoing, real-time evaluation of performance through regular check-ins, staff meetings, weekly audits, and informal feedback. It's a continuous, dynamic process that allows managers to course-correct, recognize progress, and resolve issues as they arise. Monitoring keeps performance visible and adaptive. Managers assess against established indicators and benchmarks to ensure goals stay on track, often making adjustments or providing coaching in the moment.


Performance Reviews
Performance Reviews are formal and retrospective assessments of employee achievement against predefined goals, standards, and OKRs. These are typically scheduled quarterly or annually and rely on structured evaluation frameworks, forms, and documentation. The focus is less on day-to-day observation and more on milestone-based reflection. This is summarizing performance, offering development feedback, and informing decisions like promotions, raises, or performance plans.


Training and Development
Training and Development centers on building capability -- it focuses on improving performance through structured learning, targeted support, and skill enhancement. This behavior is often developmental or remedial in nature, used to close performance gaps or help individuals realize their potential. Leaders who emphasize training and development provide resources, recommend learning pathways, and create opportunities for growth based on current limitations or future needs. The emphasis here is on readiness: equipping employees with the knowledge and competencies required for success.


Increasing Responsibilities
Increasing Responsibilities reflects trust in demonstrated performance. It's about recognizing individuals who consistently exceed expectations and expanding their scope of work accordingly -- often as a precursor to promotion, leadership development, or increased autonomy. This behavior is a form of performance recognition, where stretch assignments and higher-level tasks are given as a reward and signal of confidence. The emphasis here is on advancement: building on proven success to drive organizational impact and career progression.


Poor Performance
Poor Performance behavior reflects the initial managerial response to substandard outcomes or behavior. It emphasizes prompt recognition, timely feedback, and corrective action to maintain accountability and prevent further decline. Managers operating in this space ensure that performance concerns are addressed quickly and consistently, often using disciplinary procedures, probationary status, or direct intervention to signal urgency. The focus is immediate: confronting issues early and clearly to protect team standards and reinforce expectations.


Remediation Plans
Remediation Plans represent a structured path for recovery and sustained improvement. These plans define specific goals, outline corrective actions, and provide a timeframe for progress, often including follow-up checkpoints, developmental support, or coaching interventions. Remediation goes beyond disciplinary response by offering a roadmap for success and tracking improvement over time. It reflects strategic commitment to helping employees rebuild competency, reestablish trust, and return to acceptable performance levels.


Rewards and Recognition
Rewards and Recognition reflects a broad and inclusive culture of acknowledgment, emphasizing both informal and formal appreciation for contributions that support organizational goals. This behavior includes real-time praise, bottom-line impact recognition, peer validation, and leadership-driven acknowledgment capturing a wide spectrum of performance, from exceeding targets to contributing meaningfully to team success. Its scope is relational and motivational, aimed at reinforcing morale, visibility, and a culture of appreciation across various achievement levels and moments.


Rewards Good Performance
Rewards Good Performance emphasizes formalized acknowledgment for exemplary achievement, often tied to specific types of contribution such as perseverance, creativity, long-term service, or leadership excellence. It's structured around criteria that distinguish individuals who consistently perform at a high level or go above and beyond. Done through institutional mechanisms like promotions, awards, or executive recognition. This behavior elevates performance to symbolic status, reinforcing standards and inspiring others by spotlighting exceptional effort.


Administers Rewards Program