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Middle leader tips: how to improve individual performance
Supporting staff to do their best work is vital, especially when things aren’t going well. So what should this look like in practice?
What should you do as a middle leader when you’re not seeing the necessary improvements in your team?
There are different approaches to consider when trying to support someone in boosting their performance, and it’s important to have an idea of which would be best for your team, whether that’s on an individual basis or together.
The lowdown
Cultivating a high-performing environment is one of the key aims of any leader, and communication is key in achieving this, with regular discussion of goals, progress and roadblocks, encouraging the kind of open dialogue where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas and concerns.
But what should you do when progress seems to be stalled? And how can you move things forward?
What we know about what works
Observing the performance and confidence of your team members in carrying out their tasks is an essential first step, says Bob Thomson, professor in the organisation and work group at Warwick Business School, who leads the full-time MBA module, LeadershipPlus, at Warwick Business School.
“Next is to have conversations with them, asking them to reflect on what they’re doing well and less well, and what additional support or development they need,” he explains. “This is often done in an annual review process, but it’s even better if this is part of how you manage throughout the year, with more frequent review meetings.”
April Wright, professor of organisation studies at the University of Warwick Business School, says there are key signs to keep an eye out for during such conversations, such as individuals being demotivated or confused about their own progress, and feeling that their career opportunities and paths are stalled or blocked from further progression.
Likewise, she says, when “someone expresses concerns that their role does not feel meaningful, seems incoherent and/or is not sufficiently challenging”, that is a sign that intervention is likely needed
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And so what can be done when those red flags appear? Wright recommends “mentoring or coaching conversations to prompt self-reflection about what meaningful work and career progression might look like for the individual”.
“Another approach is to encourage individuals to reframe their thinking about the institutional context as an enabler and not just a constraint on more meaningful work and career development,” she says. But she counsels that all such approaches will “take time and require individuals to be self-reflective about their own career journey”.
“The more focused an approach, the more tailored to the situation of an individual, the more likely it is to be effective,” Ashley adds. “This needs to be balanced with costs. Having an external coach is perhaps the gold standard in terms of impact, but it is the most costly. Taking part in face-to-face learning events gives the additional opportunity to learn from others.”
When it comes to the business of balancing individual development needs with those of the wider team, there are also important questions to ask, not least around whether approaches should be focused on the individual or the collective.
Wright explains that both individual and collective approaches “can work in tandem, but the developmental support offered should align with the nature of development need identified, and whether that is specific to an individual or a collective need shared among members of a team”.
“Team-wide development is useful if the learning need is a general one across most or all of the individuals,” adds Ashley. “Also, when the weakness or challenge is one that requires genuine teamwork, the need then is a team development one rather than developing the skills of individuals.”
The experienced leader view
Jon Hutchinson is director of curriculum and teacher development at the Reach Foundation. He writes:
As a rule of thumb, people in education are often much too certain of things. It’s a messy business, and we’re often working with incomplete or flawed data points. Teaching is sometimes referred to as a low-validity domain, meaning it can be very hard to make inferences that truly reflect broader reality.
This means that identifying underperformance can be challenging. It feels like a big call as a middle leader to reach the judgement that one of your team members is not delivering in a way that will support all pupils to get great outcomes. And that’s because it is a big call, with potentially big consequences.
None of this means that you should shy away from intervening in some way where you don’t believe performance is good enough. But it’s worth taking some time to really examine how you’ve reached that judgement. Perhaps a colleague has shared concerns, maybe test data is poor, or it could be that work in pupils’ books is of lower quality than usual.
Starting from this foundation is the key to any action that follows. Rather than opening with a confrontational statement like “I’m concerned about your performance”, you can have a more collegial and collaborative discussion from the point of “I’m concerned about the pupil behaviour in your class” or similar. Then state precisely what you’ve seen and ask if you could work together to find solutions.
It may well be that members of your team aren’t sure what excellence looks like, or at least what your standard of excellence is. Ambiguity is kryptonite for high standards, so providing some sort of a model can be tremendously helpful. If you’ve witnessed a chaotic start to a lesson in one of your team’s lessons, you might start by showing them a short video of a colleague who always has a calm and purposeful beginning.
In most cases, this approach of clearly identifying a specific issue and providing concrete support such as coaching or co-planning will be enough. Every now and then, though, you’ll be met with more persistent low performance, where it becomes more of an issue of will than skill. You must remember that your responsibility is to the students, and guaranteeing that they receive their entitlement of an excellent education.
This means turning a blind eye or hoping the situation will improve on its own isn’t an option. It’s worth keeping a clear, dated record of issues identified and support given. You probably won’t ever need it, but it’s prudent to have it there should things continue to be of concern or deteriorate.