Enhancing Performance through Goal Setting, Engagement, and Optimism - Coursework Example

Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Title Date Leadership project Goal setting is vital in determining how an organization wants to move through its life. Setting and achieving the goals results in feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction. Within the organization, there cropped an issue of leniency in performance among the employees. Consequently, this leniency led to reduction in the sales volume, which eventually resulted in reduced profits. Hence, the managers realized the need to devise measures to retain and upgrade the organization’s profitability quotient. Accordingly, they came up with this goal: By November 15, 2013, the company should adopt and implement an employee performance system. This system will have very clear-cut guidelines that will show how managers and employees of the company will implement this program. This system will allow the employees to evaluate the way they perform in the organization. The employee performance system provided easy-to-use but highly efficient tools, such as performance appraisals, talent profiles, analytics and reporting, multi-rater, goal management, skill and competency assessment, and development activities. From the goal, I have learnt that development of software in performance management is vital in allowing the managers align the workforce to company objectives, measure organizational output, and assess individual performance. I feel that this is an efficient strategy to improve performance, develop employees, align, establish and measure performance on an incessant basis, and retain core staff. The goal proved key in connecting employees’ work to departmental or unit as well as institutional goals. It helped them defined their tasks clearly and why they are important to the overall organization. At the initiation period, I encountered massive resistance from the employees. Accordingly, I perceived the goal to be a failure. Nevertheless, I learnt that I had conducted a great mistake of failing to involve the employees within the process. From this kind of resistance, I learnt the need to involve employees within any organizational goal setting process because performance goals are set with employees but not for employees. I realized that as the manager, I ought to work with the employees to align the goals to those of departments or units, as the aim of the goals is to endow the employees with a target on which to concentrate. As Medlin ascertains, goal setting should positively impact employee engagement, which in turn positively impacts workplace optimism, and eventually positively impacts individual performance (943). Hence, after seeking for employees’ input and asking them to generate their ideas in the system development, the system did realize effective results. I realized that in goal setting, employees play a key role in developing the plan, providing regular feedback, understanding performance expectations, and liaising with the managers to set intended dates for goal achievement. From this scenario, I learnt that I tended to fail to incorporate employees within decision-making processes in the organization. I suppose this might be among the reasons the employees had portrayed leniency in performance. Thus, being key to the organization, I ought to make employees part of every decision-making and system development process. Subsequent to realizing and solving the above-mentioned impediment, the system did attain massive progress. The initial step in reaching the premeditated goal was providing employees with the resources and assistance they required to meet their performance goals. In this perspective, I endowed them with the relevant material, facilities, and equipment to perform their tasks, added them assistance from auxiliary staff, and offered them training. The continuous coaching, discussion, and feedback proved critical in keeping employee performance on the right track. Moreover, I learnt that the supervisors were not quite aware of the tenets of the performance management system. The lack of awareness resulted in lack of understanding the value and significance of the process, which eventually led to mistrust, consistently late and incomplete appraisals, lack of sincere performance-allied discussions, and neglect of performance discussion. In this milieu, I learnt the need of training supervisors prior to establishment of any novel system within the organizations. To ensure effective leadership, I realized I would need to train the leaders, managers, and supervisors. Managing other people’s performance is not easy, and thus stipulates numerous skills. I will incorporate training prior to establishment of any development system to make sure the leadership team is sufficiently prepared to efficiently complete the systems’ tasks. Leaders ought to identify with human behavior, motivation processes, and problem identification to enhance efficiency in a given system. Leaders who feel sufficiently prepared to receive and provide feedback, carry out evaluation meetings, and deliver performance evaluation will be principal contributors to successfully functioning processes. Another thing I would do differently in the leadership development process is hire externally. I have realized that for an organization to be best prepared, it cannot always develop its overall future leaders via internal development solely. However, given that external hiring can be risky, I need to ensure that these leaders fit comfortably within the organization’s culture as well as share their passion for the mission of the organization. Moreover, these leaders must meet the organization’s leadership priorities, and be set for organizational success. In my future endeavor to continued leadership development, I plan to work toward developing my leading leadership team while holding them responsible for development of their reports. I will as well embrace the task to determine how and when to bring the board aboard in leadership development because failure to do so might render the board a bystander, thus destroying the overall effort. By demonstrating dynamic, continual commitment to leadership development, I will laying foundation for an managerial culture that not merely recognizes but also exploits the transformational capacity of leadership. I understand that leaders are made but not born. Hence, in my leadership development plans, I will design efficient on-the-job experiences endorsed by coaching, formal training, and mentoring. In this context, I will merge the efforts of senior leaders to assign work assignments, which are critical in developing leaders. The principal players in this endeavor will be the line managers as they are the talent champions within the organization. Training will prove necessary in turning other line managers to talent champions. Hence, the on-the-job experiences will tend to concentrate on the managers who are enthusiastic about developing people but do not have the skill to do so. Work Cited Medlin, Bobby. ‘Enhancing Performance through Goal Setting, Engagement, and Optimism’. Industrial Management & Data Systems 109.7 (2009): 943-956. Read More