2600 Phrases for Setting Effective Performance Goals: Ready-to-Use Phrases That Really Get Results - Softcover

Falcone, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814417752 ISBN 13: 9780814417751

Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership, 2018

Synopsis

As a manager, you aren’t truly successful unless your employees are as well. Helping them establish compelling, actionable performance goals is the first and most important step, and this handbook is there to lend a hand.

A follow-up to the bestselling 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews, HR executive Paul Falcone provides you with ready-to-use performance goals organized by the characteristics and core competencies used most often in the appraisal process. From attendance and attitude to teamwork and time management, managers will find the language they need to inspire exceptional results.

In 2600 Phrases for Setting Effective Performance Goals, Falcone shows you how to: 

• Build on individuals’ strengths rather than compensating for their weaknesses.
• Help your employees feel engaged and self-motivated.
• Develop an “accomplishment mentality” that encourages your staff to constantly reinvent themselves based on the organization’s needs.
• Encourage retention by developing realistic, customized goals that prepare them for their next career move.
• Determine appropriate follow-up intervals and measurable benchmarks to determine progress throughout the year.

2600 Phrases for Setting Effective Performance Goals also shares language tailored to many of the most common positions in sales and marketing, accounting and finance, HR, IT, legal, manufacturing, operations, and more.

If your employees don’t succeed, neither will you. This one-of-a-kind guide enables you to get more done through others and develop your own leadership abilities along the way.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Falcone is principal of Paul Falcone Workplace Leadership Consulting, LLC, specializing in management and leadership training, executive coaching, international keynote speaking, and facilitating corporate offsite retreats. He is the former CHRO of Nickelodeon Animation Studios and has held senior-level HR positions with Paramount Pictures, Time Warner, and City of Hope. He has extensive experience in entertainment, healthcare/biotech, and financial services, including in international, nonprofit, and union environments.

Paul is the author of seventeen books, many of which have been ranked as #1 Amazon bestsellers in the categories of human resources management, business and organizational learning, labor and employment law, business mentoring and coaching, business conflict resolution and mediation, communication in management, and business decision-making and problem-solving. His books have been translated into Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Turkish and have sold in excess of 750,000 copies worldwide.

Paul is a certified executive coach through the Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching program, a long-term columnist for SHRM.org and HR Magazine, an adjunct faculty member in UCLA Extension’s School of Business and Management, and a member of the board of directors of the American Management Association. He is an accomplished keynote presenter, in-house trainer, and webinar facilitator in the areas of hiring, talent and performance management, leadership development, workplace ethics, and effective leadership communication.

From the Back Cover

As a manager, it's your job to ensure that your employees are clear on what their goals are throughout the year and what they need to do to accomplish them. Yet so many companies and leaders view the performance appraisal process as a mandatory paper chase, a mere form they need to fill out, rather than as an opportunity to create true engagement with their people and inspire career-making results.

2600 Phrases for Setting Effective Performance Goals gives you the language you need to establish compelling, actionable performance goals. More than just a list of descriptive phrases, the book provides wisdom and guidance on how to lead your team more effectively and inspire those around you to reach higher levels of individual performance and achievement. This uniquely practical guide provides you with the insightful strategies you need to accomplish more through others, serve as an effective career mentor and coach, and help your company stand out from the competition. You'll learn how to:

- Build on individuals' strengths rather than compensating for their weaknesses.

- Help your staffers feel engaged and self-motivated.

- Develop an "accomplishment mentality" that encourages your employees to continuously reinvent themselves in light of your organization's changing needs.

- Encourage retention of high performers by developing a realistic and customized set of goals that will help them prepare for their next move in career progression.

- Determine appropriate follow-up intervals and measurable benchmarks to determine progress throughout the year.

The book provides you with ready-to-use phrases organized by the core competencies used most often in the appraisal process, from attendance and attitude to communication and time management. In addition, the book includes language tailored to many of the most common positions in sales and marketing, accounting and finance, HR, IT, legal, manufacturing, operations, and more.

You're never truly successful unless your employees are as well. This one-of-a-kind guide-book enables you to get more done through others and develop your own outstanding leadership abilities.

PAUL FALCONE is an HR executive and has held senior-level positions with Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, and Time Warner. He is the author of several bestselling books, including 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews, 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees, and 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

How to Use This Book to Save Time and to

Write Compelling Performance Goals

Setting goals for your employees—or, more accurately, helping

them set appropriate goals for themselves—is a very individualized

and personal endeavor. Adding the right elements to the

recipe, so to speak, therefore varies significantly depending on

the individual’s needs and aspirations. Still, your key focus

always lies in customizing a blueprint or template for success to

help your staff members find new ways of increasing their own

productivity, which of course improves your departmental and

ultimately company performance.

Creating Development Plans for Employees

So how exactly should you go about creating individual development

plans for your subordinates, and, more importantly, how

can this book help you get there? First and foremost, always ask

your employees for their input. Without your subordinates’

involvement, drafting development plans in goal statements

becomes hit or miss. Second, realize that employees will remain

loyal to their companies—regardless of headhunters’ calls luring

them away to greener pastures—as long as they’re on a positive

career growth trajectory and they feel appreciated for what they

contribute. This so-called psychic income serves as the glue that

binds workers to their organizations, and it’s clearly the most significant

element of any development plan.

If you convince subordinates that achieving specific goals at

work equates to adding vivid bullets to their resumes, then you’ll

develop an accomplishment mentality that enables your employees

not only to motivate themselves but also to reinvent themselves

in light of your organization’s changing needs. That’s

where an average manager or supervisor steps up to become an

outstanding leader. Great leaders know how to set up their subordinates

for success. Then they simply step aside and get out of

the way.

When you describe the best bosses and mentors that you’ve

had in your career, you’re more than likely to use the verb “to be”

rather than “to do.” In fact, in all human relations, “beingness”

typically trumps “doingness” because the greatest influencers on

our lives were loving, supportive, caring, patient, and selfless in

guiding us. And those traits all came much more from who they

were than what they did. In other words, providing others direction

and offering guidance is actually a lot easier than you think.

It’s simply a matter of being a selfless leader who’s committed to

balancing the company’s needs with those of the individual

worker.

If you’re able to make this one paradigm shift in your belief

system—that great leaders focus on being rather than on

doing—you’ll cut a lot of stress out of your life and develop

teams that will remain very loyal to you. Loyalty begets respect,

respect begets devotion, and we all know that devoted employees

will give you 110% of their efforts. In short, if you command

employees from the top down, you’ll get no more than 100% of

their efforts out of their sense of compliance. But if you can

touch their hearts and help them to love you as their boss and

mentor, you’ll build amazingly strong teams with lots of camaraderie

and teamwork and, in so doing, catapult your own career

to new heights.

With these simple premises in mind, understand that you’re

not responsible for motivating your team. Motivation is internal,

and I can’t motivate you any more than you can motivate me.

However, as a leader within your organization, you are indeed

responsible for creating an environment in which people can

motivate themselves. And that fine distinction is where this book

can come in rather handy.

More Than Just a List of Descriptive Phrases

This book offers a lot more than just descriptive goal phrases

outlining competencies and responsibilities. It provides wisdom

and guidance on how to manage your career, lead your team

more effectively, and inspire those around you to reach higher

levels of individual performance and achievement. 2600 Phrases

for Setting Effective Performance Goals will provide you with

insightful strategies to accomplish more yourself as well as

through others, to serve as an effective career mentor and coach,

and to help your company stand out from its competition. For

example, when it comes to motivating and leading your team,

look to phrases like these to minimize misunderstanding and

open the lines of communication:

● Encourage individuality and foster an environment of

respect and inclusion.

● Recognize that perception is reality until proven

otherwise; therefore, always hold yourself accountable

for your own “perception management.”

● Welcome and encourage others’ feedback so that they

are comfortable sharing minor concerns with you before

they become major impediments.

● Nix conversations about politics, religion, or politically

incorrect, nonwork-related issues, which are sure to

foster resentment or frustration.

● Learn what you could change about your own behavior

to invoke a different response in others.

● Understand that building on someone’s strengths makes

more sense than compensating for their weaknesses.

Similarly, you can become a stronger career mentor and

coach by helping your subordinates grow and develop in their

own careers if you:

● Encourage others to engage in random acts of kindness.

● Find creative ways of surprising your customers.

● Focus on making bad relationships good and good

relationships better.

● Look for new ways of reinventing the workflow in light

of our company’s changing needs.

● Think relationship first, transaction second.

● Realize that people can tell more about you by the depth

of your questions than by the quality of your statements.

● Separate the people from the problem.

● Heed Mark Twain’s adage: “If we were meant to talk

more than we listen, we would have two mouths and

one ear.”

● Always provide two solutions for each question you

ask or suggestion you raise.

● Employ right-brain imagination, artistry, and intuition

plus left-brain logic and planning.

● Convert “yes . . . but” to “yes . . . and” statements to

acknowledge the speaker’s point of view and to share

additional insights.

Likewise, recognizing that managing in corporate America

today is fraught with legal peril for the unsuspecting leader, keep

sage guidance like the following in mind:

● Never promise confidentiality before knowing the

nature of the question or request.

● Employ the attorney-client privilege by copying

our in-house counsel, asking for a legal analysis

and opinion, and limiting your audience to as

few individuals as possible.

● Recognize that the fundamental claim of unfairness

may become the basis for a legal charge of

discrimination.

Don’t forget the importance of finding your own work-life

balance and peace of mind as you face the daily grind and challenges

that come your way throughout your career.

● Practice the adage, “What you want for yourself, give to

another.”

● Convince team members not to act on principle to the

extent that their positions become rigid and self-justified,

allowing for little compromise.

● Put others’ needs ahead of your own, and expect them

to respond in kind.

● Realize that people don’t necessarily resist change; they

just resist being changed.

● Accept that no one does anything wrong given their

model of the world; therefore, look for common interests

and underlying concerns if you need to heal a wound on

your team.

● Ensure that your team communicates upward and asks

for permission up front rather than for forgiveness after

the fact.

● Teach what you choose to learn.

● Help your team find individual and creative solutions by

asking, “I realize you don’t know, but if you did know,

what would your recommendation be?”

● Change your perspective, and you’ll change your

perception.

Chock full of insightful guidance and career and leadership

tips, this book is packed with useful information that you can

apply any time of the year, not just during performance

appraisals. So sit back and let 2600 Phrases for Setting Effective

Performance Goals serve as a handy guide and guiding hand to

walk you through the challenging task of helping your subordinates

set not only their annual goals but also the measurable outcomes

to ensure they’ve achieved them.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814417752
• ISBN 13: 9780814417751
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224