When we recruit for a position, we take a lot of care to consider whether or not someone is a good cultural fit. However, it’s much harder to address this issue with someone from within the organisation. Here’s how to performance manage for cultural fit.
Performance managing against metrics and targets is pretty straightforward, but against the vagueness of a “good cultural fit” it’s much harder. The only way to make this easier is to be very clear about what the observable behaviours are from a cultural perspective and what they would explicitly look like for that role.
It’s not sufficient to say that you have a “high-performance” or “collaborative” culture, you will need to give many examples of what that looks like. Then you need to coach the person concerned to help them change behaviours in line with the desired culture. It’s only when the person is clear on the cultural expectations, has been given opportunities to demonstrate them but has still not done so, that any performance management can really begin.
It’s a long process to detail the observable behaviours for each role, but that shouldn’t put us off doing it. Once it’s in place, and well communicated you can then recruit, promote and performance manage for cultural fit.
It all starts with taking the time to think about what the culturally aligned observable behaviours are and how they translate into that specific role.
Start with a clear view of what you want more of/less of. Ideally, this is a team activity to get to a shared view.
Then for all the items on the more of/less of list go through a list of these questions:
- What would we actually observe if this was being done?
- How would this behaviour change at different levels / for different roles?
- What real-life examples are there of this for each level / role?
This isn’t a competency framework; it’s not about what people can do. It’s about how people behave. It’s much harder to give feedback and hold people accountable to how they behave, rather than results, but behaviour is a leading indicator of future results.
For further help with leadership, culture and startegy, contact me at Sarah Robertson Consulting or book a discovery call
