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Managing Performance - Competency

Definition: Manages the performance of subordinates. Plans and sets goals and performance expectations for work outcomes; determines measures of performance and communicates those expectations to the employee. Measures and monitors performance and conducts regular performance reviews using standardized performance measures. Recognizes and rewards performance that exceeds expectations and implements remedial actions if necessary.
Leadership Skills
Leadership
Management
Establishing Focus/Direction
Managing Performance
Supervisory Skills
Empowering Others
Persuasion and Influence
Project Management
Delegation
Performance
360-Feedback Survey Managing Performance:
Survey 1 (4-point scale; Competency Comments)
Survey 2 (4-point scale; Competency Comments)
Survey 3 (5-point scale; Competency Comments)
Survey 4 (5-point scale; radio buttons)
Survey 5 (4-point scale; words)
Survey 6 (4-point scale; words)
Survey 7 (5-point scale; competency comments; N/A)
Survey 8 (3-point scale; Agree/Disagree words; N/A)
Survey 9 (3-point scale; Strength/Development; N/A)
Survey 10 (Comment boxes only)
Survey 11 (Single rating per competency)
Survey 12 (Slide-bar scale)
Survey 13 (4-point scale; numbers; floating anchors)
Survey 14 (4-point scale; N/A)
Performance Assessments that include Managing Performance:
Assessment 1 (5-point scale; IDP Comments)
Assessment 2 (3-point scale with Comments)
Assessment 3 (Manager Assessment; 360-Feedback)
Assessment 4 (3-point scale; Rating Limits)
Assessment 5 (3-point scale; Rating Limits)
Assessment 6 (5-point scale with Comments)
Assessment 7 (Comment Boxes Only; IDP)
Assessment 8 (Comment Boxes Only)
Assessment 9 (3-point scale with Letter Grade)
Assessment 10 (360-Feedback; Bonus/Merit Pay)
Assessment 11 (Core Values & Job Competencies)
Assessment 12 (4-point scale; 6 Comment Boxes)
What is Managing Performance?
Managing performance is the structured process of setting clear goals and expectations, defining measurable success criteria, and ensuring accountability to drive organizational success. It involves aligning individual and team objectives with broader company goals, articulating performance requirements, and regularly communicating roles and responsibilities to employees. Through continuous monitoring, measurement, and performance reviews, managers assess progress, provide constructive feedback, and make necessary adjustments to keep teams on track.

Effective performance management also includes training and development initiatives that support employees in enhancing their skills while identifying opportunities for increased responsibilities and career growth. Leaders address poor performance proactively by implementing remediation plans that focus on improvement while reinforcing positive behaviors through rewards and recognition. By maintaining fairness in evaluations, offering incentives, and systematically administering reward programs, organizations cultivate a motivated workforce that consistently meets and exceeds expectations.

A strong performance management system fosters a culture of accountability, continuous learning, and operational efficiency. By leveraging structured assessments and proactive feedback, organizations ensure employees understand their contributions and are equipped to meet evolving business challenges. With well-defined metrics, leadership can optimize talent development, enhance productivity, and create a dynamic environment where employees thrive, driving long-term success for the company.
Core Components of Managing Performance
  • Goals and Objectives: defining specific, measurable targets that guide individual and team success over time. This dimension highlights long-term and short-term goal-setting, tracking progress, adjusting objectives to meet department needs, and ensuring alignment with organizational priorities.
  • Performance Expectations: clarifying the standards, behaviors, and requirements necessary for employees to meet organizational goals successfully. This dimension centers on establishing work expectations, ensuring employees understand how tasks should be completed, setting performance benchmarks, and obtaining commitment to meeting job responsibilities.
  • Determines Measures: establishing clear performance indicators, criteria, and benchmarks to define success. This dimension highlights setting OKRs, KPIs, operational standards, and measurable goals that align with company objectives.
  • Communicating Expectations: clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and performance requirements to ensure employees understand what is expected of them. This dimension highlights setting OKRs, updating job descriptions, articulating expectations for key tasks and metrics, and making sure commitments are understood.
  • Accountability: ensuring employees take ownership of their tasks, meet objectives, and uphold performance commitments. This dimension centers on assigning responsibility, holding individuals and teams accountable for meeting performance expectations, and reinforcing the importance of completing work successfully.
  • Measures Performance: assessing employee output against predefined benchmarks, quotas, and performance objectives. This dimension highlights using standardized metrics, reviewing reports, recording production figures, and evaluating job performance against measurable criteria.
  • Monitoring: continuous oversight and regular assessments to ensure employees remain on track toward their performance objectives. This dimension centers on routine audits, ongoing feedback, performance tracking through meetings, and establishing indicators to measure progress in real-time.
  • Performance Reviews: the formal evaluation of employees through structured assessments and feedback processes. This dimension centers on conducting regular appraisals, reviewing how employees meet their goals, ensuring consistency in evaluations, and providing feedback on individual progress.
  • Training and Development: providing employees with the necessary skills, knowledge, and resources to enhance their performance and reach their full potential. This dimension highlights structured job training, remediation programs, skill improvement initiatives, and opportunities for professional development.
  • Increasing Responsibilities: rewarding high-performing individuals by expanding their roles and assigning them new challenges to facilitate career advancement. This dimension centers on giving additional assignments, promoting internal growth opportunities, and recognizing exceptional contributions with greater responsibility.
  • Poor Performance: identifying and addressing performance issues in a timely and consistent manner, ensuring corrective actions are applied when necessary. This dimension highlights disciplinary measures, clear feedback, probationary actions, and swift responses to underperformance.
  • Remediation Plans: developing structured improvement programs with clear objectives and measurable progress to help employees improve their performance. This dimension centers on follow-up evaluations, tailored improvement strategies, and formalized plans for enhancing workplace effectiveness.
  • Rewards and Recognition: acknowledging contributions that positively impact the organization, ensuring employees receive appropriate recognition and rewards for their accomplishments. This dimension highlights structured reward programs, distinguished service awards, and appreciation for exceeding goals.
  • Rewards Good Performance: recognizing exceptional individuals based on unique contributions, perseverance, leadership, or innovation. This dimension centers on rewarding employees for overcoming challenges, demonstrating creativity, or showing long-term dedication to their roles.
Why is Managing Performance Important?
Managing performance is essential for a manager because it ensures employees understand expectations, receive consistent guidance, and stay accountable for their roles. By setting clear goals, monitoring progress, and providing timely feedback, managers create an environment where employees can improve, develop new skills, and contribute effectively to organizational success. Strong performance management fosters productivity, motivation, and fairness, helping teams operate efficiently while reinforcing a culture of continuous learning and growth.
What are key aspects of Managing Performance?
  • Goals and Objectives
  • Performance Expectations
  • Determines Measures
  • Communicating Expectations
  • Accountability
  • Measures Performance
  • Monitoring
  • Performance Reviews
  • Training and Development
  • Increasing Responsibilities
  • Expectations
  • Poor Performance
  • Remediation Plans
  • Rewards and Recognition
  • Rewards Good Performance
How can I improve my ability to Manage Performance?
  • Set Clear Expectations: Clearly define job responsibilities, goals, and performance standards to ensure employees understand what success looks like.
  • Communicate Regularly: Hold frequent check-ins and performance discussions to provide guidance, address concerns, and keep employees aligned with objectives.
  • Monitor Progress Continuously: Track performance using measurable indicators, identify strengths and improvement areas, and adjust plans as needed.
  • Provide Constructive Feedback: Offer timely and specific feedback that is both encouraging and corrective to foster employee growth and development.
  • Encourage Professional Development: Support employees in gaining new skills, taking on additional responsibilities, and advancing their careers.
  • Recognize and Reward Achievements: Acknowledge employee contributions through incentives, praise, and formal recognition to boost motivation and engagement.
  • Address Poor Performance Proactively: Tackle issues early by implementing remediation plans and coaching employees toward improvement.
  • Lead by Example: Demonstrate professionalism, accountability, and a commitment to high standards to inspire employees to follow suit.
What questions could you consider for including on a 360-degree feedback assessment regarding Managing Performance?
The questionnaire items below will measure "Managing Performance". These questions are grouped into different facets of performance management. When creating a 360-degree or other performance assessment, try to select one or two items from each group.

360-Feedback questions that measure Performance Management



Goals and Objectives
Goals and Objectives focuses on what needs to be achieved. It is about defining clear, specific, and measurable targets--both short-term and long-term--that guide individual and team success. This dimension emphasizes aligning goals with organizational priorities, providing the resources needed to accomplish them, and tracking progress to ensure meaningful outcomes are reached. The behaviors in this category revolve around setting ambitious and measurable goals, ensuring alignment, and following through to completion so employees have a clear roadmap for achievement.


Performance Expectations
Performance Expectations focuses on how work should be carried out. It emphasizes clarifying the standards, behaviors, and requirements necessary for employees to meet their responsibilities effectively. This dimension centers on establishing fair and understandable performance benchmarks, ensuring employees know exactly what is expected of them, and obtaining commitment to those expectations. The behaviors here involve defining performance standards, communicating expectations clearly, setting OKRs, and reinforcing accountability so employees understand the quality and consistency required to meet organizational goals.


Determines Measures
Determines Measures focuses on defining how performance will be evaluated. It involves establishing the KPIs, OKRs, standards, and criteria that determine whether work meets expectations. This dimension is analytical and framework-driven: identifying indicators of success, determining operational standards, aligning measures with organizational objectives, and using established performance frameworks to monitor progress. it is about building the measurement system--clarifying what will be measured and how performance will be assessed over time.


Communicating Expectations
Communicating Expectations focuses on ensuring employees clearly understand what is required of them. It emphasizes articulating roles, responsibilities, OKRs, performance metrics, job requirements, and commitments so employees know exactly what they must deliver. This dimension is communication-centered: conveying expectations, updating job descriptions, explaining key tasks and KPIs, and making sure employees grasp the standards they are accountable for. it is about delivering the message--clarifying what employees need to do and what successful performance looks like from their perspective.


Accountability
Accountability focuses on ensuring employees follow through on their responsibilities and meet the objectives assigned to them. It is about ownership, enforcement, and consequences. Employees strong in Accountability make sure commitments are honored, deadlines are met, corrective actions are completed, and individuals or teams are held answerable for results. The behaviors in this dimension emphasize assigning responsibility, monitoring follow-through, addressing missed commitments promptly, and reinforcing the importance of meeting performance expectations and quotas. Accountability is about making sure the work gets done as promised.


Measures Performance
Measures Performance focuses on evaluating how well the work was done. It is analytical and data-driven, emphasizing the use of benchmarks, KPIs, dashboards, scorecards, and production quotas to assess performance levels. Employees strong in this area regularly review outputs, compare results against standards or historical trends, and use performance data to identify patterns, risks, or opportunities for improvement. The behaviors here revolve around measurement, assessment, and analysis rather than enforcement. Measures Performance is about determining how effectively the work was done, using objective criteria to evaluate results over time.


Monitoring
Monitoring focuses on continuous, real-time oversight of performance. It involves regularly checking progress, reviewing weekly or monthly reports, using indicators and metrics to assess how work is unfolding, and providing ongoing feedback as issues or trends emerge. Monitoring is about staying close to day-to-day execution--spotting problems early, keeping performance on track, and making timely adjustments. The behaviors in this category emphasize frequent audits, routine measurement, and ongoing visibility into how responsibilities are being carried out.


Performance Reviews
Performance Reviews focus on formal, periodic evaluation of performance over a defined timeframe. This dimension emphasizes structured review processes, quarterly OKR assessments, standardized forms, and documented comparisons of employee performance against stated goals. Performance Reviews are retrospective and summative: they consolidate performance information, evaluate achievements and gaps, and provide formal feedback that informs future goals and development plans. The behaviors here revolve around conducting official reviews, maintaining consistency in evaluation methods, and communicating how performance aligns with expectations.


Training and Development
Training and Development focuses on building capability--helping employees gain the skills, knowledge, and proficiency needed to perform at a higher level. It is fundamentally about closing gaps, strengthening competencies, and providing structured learning opportunities. The behaviors in this dimension emphasize offering training when performance is lacking, encouraging additional learning, requiring remediation training when necessary, and even participating in training oneself. Training and Development is about equipping employees with the tools and skills they need to improve and succeed.


Increasing Responsibilities
Increasing Responsibilities focuses on expanding scope--giving employees more complex, visible, or higher-stakes work as they demonstrate readiness. It is about using responsibility as a developmental lever, assigning stretch tasks, broadening roles, and providing opportunities that build autonomy, judgment, and leadership capability. The behaviors here emphasize rewarding high performers with additional responsibilities, gradually increasing role complexity, entrusting reliable employees with cross-functional or strategic work, and aligning new duties with long-term career paths. Increasing Responsibilities is about helping employees grow through challenge, ownership, and expanded contribution.


Poor Performance
Poor Performance focuses on identifying and addressing performance problems as soon as they appear. It is reactive and corrective--centered on recognizing when an employee is not meeting minimum standards and taking timely action to confront the issue. The behaviors in this dimension emphasize delivering clear feedback, using disciplinary or corrective actions consistently, addressing missed expectations promptly, and placing employees on probation when necessary. Poor Performance is about intervening early and decisively when performance falls below acceptable levels.


Remediation Plans
Remediation Plans focuses on structured, sustained improvement efforts designed to help an underperforming employee return to acceptable performance. It is proactive and developmental--centered on creating formal improvement plans with specific goals, milestones, checkpoints, and follow-up. The behaviors here involve identifying targeted actions, setting clear improvement objectives, initiating performance improvement plans, and monitoring progress over defined periods (such as 30-, 60-, or 90-day follow-ups). Remediation Plans are about building a roadmap for recovery and giving employees a fair, organized opportunity to improve.


Rewards and Recognition
Rewards and Recognition focuses on how managers personally acknowledge and reinforce positive performance. It emphasizes noticing good work, celebrating contributions, and providing individualized recognition that motivates employees and sustains momentum. The behaviors in this dimension are relational and expressive--highlighting accomplishments, appreciating incremental progress, and ensuring employees feel valued for their efforts. Rewards and Recognition is about the human act of recognizing performance in a meaningful, timely, and personalized way.


Rewards Good Performance
Rewards Good Performance focuses on recognizing exceptional achievement, not on setting or managing goals themselves. It highlights what happens after employees exceed expectations--rewarding outstanding leadership, creativity, perseverance, or long-term service. This dimension is celebratory and appreciative: it reinforces extraordinary contributions that go beyond standard performance requirements. Rewards Good Performance is about honoring excellence once it occurs, spotlighting individuals who surpass goals or demonstrate exceptional capability.


Administers Rewards Program
Administers Rewards Program focuses on the procedural and administrative side of distributing formal rewards. It emphasizes fairness, consistency, eligibility verification, and proper execution of the organization's established rewards systems. The behaviors here are operational--ensuring the rewards program is applied correctly, equitably, and proactively. Administers Rewards Program is about managing the mechanics of the rewards system, not the interpersonal act of recognizing performance.
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