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REVIEWING PROGRESS IN SIX STEPS

1. Review your expectations and ask for progress.

2. Probe for both achievements and problems.

3. Listen intently and respond with empathy.

4. Compliment the achievements and summarise problems identified.

5. Ask for and discuss ideas to solve problems identified (if appropriate).

6. Decide and record specific actions and timing. Set a follow up date.                                                  

At the end of delegating a task you will have set a date in your diary to review progress.

It is important to keep your commitment to having this meeting. The meeting does not need to be particularly formal, but you will both get the most out of it if you follow this sequence of steps.

A progress review meeting gives you the opportunity:

1.    To find out whether any problems are arising.

2.    To gain information about how people work.

3.    To reinforce your image as a confident manager.

4.    To reinforce the other person’s self esteem and feeling of empowerment.

Staff tend to assume that because you are a manager you should know everything that is going on therefore they will tend not to tell you what is going on unless you ask.

A progress review will give you the information you need without your having to watch people all the time, which would annoy them.

In a progress review you should aim to keep the discussion purely factual, even though you might be frustrated if progress has not met your expectations.

There could be a valid reason which needs your intervention. 

Step 1. Review your expectations and ask for progress.

At this point you know nothing about how it has been going, and the other person may not be entirely sure what this meeting is about, so this step is neutral in tone, just to focus the discussion:

“Last Monday I asked you to start collecting information about people’s preferences for leave over the Christmas period so that I can organise cover by the beginning of December. How are you getting on so far?”

Step 2. Probe for both achievements and problems.

When people have a history of being well managed they will know that it is “safe” to be straightforward about what they have achieved and what they have not.

If, on the other hand, they are accustomed to being made to feel uncomfortable about reporting a lack of progress, they need to be brought round to a more positive attitude.

This is best achieved by being non-judgemental. You ask for the facts and note the answers:

“How many people have you contacted so far?”

“What methods have you used?”

“How many have stated a preference?”

It is important to treat this step purely as an information-gathering exercise. Do not get into problem-solving yet. This will only make the process take longer because you don’t yet know whether you have identified all the problems. Besides, if you start telling the person how to resolve the problems, you will undermine their ability to think of a solution for themselves.

Step 3.  Listen intently and respond with empathy.

This is part of the technique of Step 2, but it helps to think of it as a separate process. You respond to the person with appropriate body language and verbal cues to encourage the flow of information.

Using empathy, as opposed to sympathy or criticism, is very productive in keeping to the facts. Remember that empathy is about acknowledging feelings rather than examining them.

Empathy can be used to reinforce positive feelings:

“I’m sure you’re pleased that you’ve got more than half the data.”

It can also be used to restrain discussion about negative feelings:

“I can see that you find it frustrating trying to catch a moment with the sales staff”.

The underlying message with empathy is:

“I am aware of how you feel about that. Now I want to go on to the next issue.”

Step 4. Compliment the achievements and summarise problems identified.

This is the turning point of the discussion, so it is important to ensure that the previous steps have not left some other unidentified problem lurking in the background. Keep on with Steps 2 and 3 until you are sure. This will save a lot of time later.

Only when you are sure that the achievements and problems have been identified should you lead the discussion towards the problem-solving stage.

Step 4 is a clear signal that the discussion is going into a different gear.

“Well. I’m pleased that you have obtained more than half the data, and that you have all the data for the Admin and Accounts departments. You also have two thirds of the Service department, which is commendable. Progress is slower with the Sales team, and you have not yet had any response from your emails to the field-based reps. Is that a fair summary, or is there anything else I need to know?” (Final check that you have completed Steps 2 and 3).

Step 5. Ask for and discuss ideas to solve problems identified (if appropriate).

The easiest way to resolve problems is to tackle them yourself; Wrong!

It is worth the extra effort to avoid upward delegation. Who is managing whom?

Although the eventual outcome of this Step might be that you do need to take an action, particularly if there is a problem that you have created, or one which needs to be facilitated by you in conjunction with other managers, the main intention is to enable the other person to retain accountability for achieving the task.

Compare:

“How can we get round that problem?”

“What do you think you need to do to get round that problem?”

As with the previous steps, Step 5 will proceed more effectively if you elicit all the ideas before discussing them.

The reason for getting all the ideas out first is that some of them may not be very good. If you are working on a full list of ideas you can selectively encourage some and discard others without undermining the person’s confidence.

Compare:

“Idea 1....” .  “No, that won’t work because...”

“Idea 2...”.  “No, that won’t work either...” etc.

“Set of suggestions...”.  “Thanks for those ideas. I’d like to hear more about Idea 3 because I think that could help you make more progress.”

Sometimes you may find that no ideas are forthcoming, so you may have to suggest ways of thinking about solutions.

Step 6. Decide and record specific action(s) and timing. Set a follow up date.

This is where you return to classic manager mode and bring the interaction to a close. In Step 5, the tone of the discussion was on what the person could do to resolve the problems. Now you reinforce the fact that you need the person to do it and ensure that they know they are accountable.

Compare:

“So, it looks like Idea 3 is our best way forward”. (“our” implies that “we” will work on it)

“Idea 3 is the best way forward, so what I need you to do by the end of the week is...”

Recording the specific action to be taken achieves two things. Firstly it enables you to recall what your next meeting is about. If you are managing a lot of people, or managing people frequently, you can’t rely on your memory. Secondly, it gives a message that you are serious about the action and will follow it up.

So, set a date for your next meeting, and leave the person to get on with it.

With the two processes of delegation and review you have all the tools you need for successful people-management. Your staff will become motivated and increasingly capable of taking on more complex tasks. You will have notes of all the interactions and so you will have something positive to talk about at their appraisal.

(Although this course is not specifically about doing appraisals, it is clear that delegation and review done in this way will make appraisal easier. The thing that makes annual appraisal such a chore is that it is virtually impossible to recall a year’s worth of successes (and failures) unless you have kept an ongoing record of their job development.)

OK, where’s the flying pig?

It is true that delegation and review will serve to make things better if everything is going ok. But things don’t always go ok. Circumstances change; people change. Sometimes you have to start from a position where things are not ok.

So the next few sections are about what to do when people’s performance and/or behaviour is not how you would like it to be.

Exercise:

Think of an occasion when you were giving a progress report to your manager about something that you had not (yet) successfully completed. Did it follow the sequence outlined above? In what respects did it differ? How did you feel during and after the interaction?