Performance

Causes of Poor Performance
Student’s Name
Institution
Causes of Poor Performance
Cause
Heather’s poor performance in delivering her training is due to a deficiency in procedural knowledge. She possesses declarative knowledge of the topic she was training other employees. Heather was given the role of designing and conducting training on interpersonal skills. The skills included networking, communication skills, and new manager training lessons. It shows that Heather has a depth of the information she is expected to share with others through training. The challenge is common for people in the technology sector because they usually tend to be good in mastering information but can be poor in interacting with their colleagues. Heather appears to be a hardworking employee whose commitment has led to the promotion up to the level whereby the manager can allocate her more responsibilities. Heather displays intrinsic type of motivation, whereby her dedication and effort has provided her the opportunity to serve as a trainer. Her disability to deliver practical training lessons shows her lack of interpersonal skills. Therefore, despite being motivated and declarative, her performance is still low due to the deficiency in procedural knowledge.
Remedy
To remedy Heather’s situation as the manager I would suggest meeting with Heather. The best way is to share with her the feedback from the attendees of her training sessions. First, I would prepare her by suggesting that she does not take the feedback personal but consider ways to improve.

Heather also ought to approach her performance with the aim to get better each day after getting the feedback. She can incorporate behavior model, in that she focuses on what happens around her. She can observe the behavior of the attendees of the training lessons and ask for suggestions on how they would like their training delivered. Lastly, Heather should be ready to seek feedback from experts as well as those she is training.
Heather should also focus on her contextual performance. Contextual performance is measured by an individual’s behavior that can better the effectiveness of an organization by providing a conducive environment for performing a task (Reilly & Aronson, 2009). Contextual would help Heather improve her performance and productivity of the organization. For instance, contextual performance help improve interpersonal support. The interpersonal support that Heather lacks includes activities such as training co-workers on useful skills, improving the productivity of coworker over time and offer suggestions, among other functions. Reilly & Aronson (2009) mentioned that contextual performance also helps to enhance interpersonal facilitation. This involves courteous and cooperative treatment of the trainees by Heather. The actions might assist in improving the productivity of the trainees. Thirdly, valuable feedback is essential in developing performance. Input from the trainees is vital as Heather can learn from her mistakes and know what to improve on. The contextual performance also allows people to possess higher levels of conscientiousness (Aguinis, 2009). This gives an individual opportunity to learn and have skill development. Lastly, contextual performance would also help Heather have a positive effect on customer satisfaction. In an organization, conscientious employees offer more than customer expectations. Therefore, beyond the other efforts, Heather can also incorporate contextual performance that would help her improve interpersonal skills. The interpersonal skills strengthen her interaction with the trainees. Contextual performance has also given her the opportunity to learn ways of making the trainees satisfied with the lesson.
Performance Measurement
Measuring the performance of the employee (Heather) would be good for the future. Measurement of performance is essential in assessing the productivity of the organization as well. Behavior approach would be best suited for Heather because it emphasizes on the activities of the employees. However, behavior approach does not involve the outcome or the traits of the employees that could result in behavior change (Aguinis, 2009). Behavior approach is process-oriented focusing on the responsibility given to the employee. In some cases, an organization can fail to realize the outcomes required even when the employees’ behaviors are right. Griffin (2011) argued that at times, employees could achieve results despite their behavior, whether right or wrong. However, for the case of Heather, given that the results of her work seem to be better, she should focus on her behavior. Heather should learn the behaviors of the trainees and then focus on the outcome of the training sessions later.
Secondly, the managers can use behavior approach to measure the performance of Heather. Waiting to measure the performance through the results can fail because it can take some time before the measurement can be successful. The manager can measure the behavior of the employee (Heather) over short intervals. For this case, three months would be enough to confirm whether she has developed interpersonal skills rather than wait to assess the results of the training session. Results approach will not be viable to measure Heather’s performance because the approach only focuses on the outcomes than the satisfaction of the trainees. Also, trait approach could be combined with behavior approach in assessing Heather’s performance because it helps in evaluating the abilities, personal traits as well as work-related behaviors.
Conclusion
Therefore, despite having declarative knowledge on interpersonal skills training, she lacks procedural knowledge that would help her communicate better with the trainees. She should focus on applying contextual performance that would help her improve interpersonal skills.
References
Aguinis, H. (2009). Performance management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.Griffin, R. W., & Moorhead, G. (2011). Organizational Behavior. Cengage Learning.
Reilly, R. R., & Aronson, Z. H. (2009). Managing contextual performance. Performance
management: Putting research into action, 297-328.