Transformational leadership approach in an employee performance meeting

Employee Meeting Assessment

My employee meeting was overall very positive, as I assessed the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for growth of my employee in an objective manner, abstained from criticism, and essentially showed encouragement, appreciation, and empathy for the employee throughout the process. As Dust et al. (2014) indicate, empathy, positive reinforcement, and encouragement along with strategic use of EI (emotional intelligence) are fundamental skills that a manager can use when adopting a transformational leadership strategy with workers. The transformational leadership strategy for this employ, I felt, was suitable as the key here was to identify goals for the worker and assess opportunities and pathways by which those goals might be obtained. Assessing shortcomings in the employee's work habits was not viewed as detracting but rather as areas in which the high level at which we would like our employees to be at is a challenge to all that they should strive to embrace so as to really become the best that they could possibly be (which would then even open up doors and future opportunities for them as well). Thus, identifying weaknesses was not even presented as such but rather as a helpful method for me to introduce the concept of growth and strategic development of skills in a way that could then benefit the employee's future long-term horizon. In this way, the idea of incentivizing the employee was utilized, which is a strong HR concept that can produce positive reinforcement.

Another good positive element that came out of the meeting was that I was able to identify a precise action of the employee and show what it was that could be corrected and improved. For instance, with this employee, he has a tendency to come in late for work, so instead of saying that tardiness is an issue to him, I simply looked up dates and times that he came in late and listed them off -- not in a condescending or disapproving manner, but rather in a matter-of-fact tone with a willingness to hear whatever explanation he might give as to why he is so consistently late. The employee did not really have any good reason to give for tardiness so I said nothing and allowed him to draw the conclusion that he was simply just being lazy about getting to work on time. I provided some encouragement/motivation for him to consider how to overcome this weakness, and I posed a concept to him that was based not on arriving late to work but on arriving early. The theme was that through an eager and energetic display to get to work, it would help to promote a positive workplace culture. I explained that all workers feed off one another's energy and that if we ourselves slow down the pace or bring negative energy to the workplace environment it does not have an effect that stops with us but carries on outward to others. When the employee saw that he was potentially harming others in the workplace by giving such a consistent example of tardiness he felt embarrassed and begin to see the positive side of coming in on time or even early: it was about helping out the organization and being part of a team (Welch, 2013). As Eurich (2013) points out, one of the best ways to help someone is to identify the specific action that needs to be changed so that there is no confusion.

Likewise, by focusing on the organizational culture within the workplace and using it as a goal of what we were trying to develop (not just the skills of the worker but the larger picture of the workplace and the spirit of the workplace), I was able to remove any sense of personal frustration or a sense of confrontation from the review. The idea of focusing on the culture of the workplace environment is an essential aspect of HR because really what is at stake in a firm is the overall image and the overall spirit that individuals either add to or take away from (Reigle, 2001). Measuring this mechanism is performed on an individual, one-by-one scale in ways such as personal reviews like this one, but the point is not to focus solely on the individual but to use the occasion as an opportunity whereby the entire workplace may be developed more fully by showing what behaviors are needed in order to effect the goal. It is like examining the parts of a production and discussing with the crew what can be done to bring the parts together so that the production runs smoothly. The crew can figure it out if guided properly by a strong transformational leader who has the methods, tools and strategic policies in his belt to bring the crew together and move them in the right direction.

The feedback provided was very effective and the employee was overall very happy with the assessment. He appreciated that I was able to identify his strengths and the manner in which he contributed significantly to the workplace culture and he also appreciated the objective review of his weaknesses and the fact that I did not speak condescendingly to him but rather in the manner of one displaying servant leadership -- that is, as one who is here for him to help him become better and to improve his abilities as a worker.

Thus, I would not do anything differently in the assessment as everything went very satisfactorily from beginning to end. I began with a conceptual approach/vision of where we want the company to be and then we moved to his own contributions to the company and on to what could be done to improve those contributions. It was a positive experience in all.

The notes that I took during the evaluation are as follows:

12:00 Explain vision of company -- a team of workers contributing, working together to maintain a spirit of mission. Asked Jim what he thought about this. Jim said he likes the idea of developing a spirit, like in a corps. Said that was good and we want everyone on the same page about where we are heading.

12:10 Identify Jim's strengths. Jim was pleased to see that we were aware of his contributions, staying late, volunteering for overtime duties, helping out with projects, traveling when needed. Pointed out his always cheerful and positive attitude and complimented him on his professionalism.