Performance and behaviour

An interesting conversation on Wednesday evening’s telephone conference produced the following email exchange – good enough to share with you today: “Hi Chris I enjoyed the phone in last night which left me pondering a few things – what would you say is the difference between performance and behaviour? I presume that performance is more readily monitored for one thing, easier to appraise objectively whereas behaviour could be considered more subjective? Performance easier to change by incentives, whereas behaviour more deep-rooted psychologically? If you take as an example a dental nurse who is on occasion grumpy (and knows it) I assume that is a behaviour problem, provided that she still nurses adequately and is sufficiently nice to the patients? But the behaviour might ultimately affect the performance? Would be interested to hear your thoughts” My response this morning… “Remember what I said on the bridge call: Knowledge – the amount you know about your subject – enhanced by qualification and Continuing Professional Development; Skill – how effectively you apply the knowledge – this is performance; Attitude – the behaviour with which you apply the knowledge. And I keep saying that successful business is 98 per cent customer service, 2 per cent clinical skill (but you have to have 100 per cent of the 2per cent). So I’m suggesting that the 13th month bonus is payable if the whole team achieves a set target – but individuals are paid differing amounts by virtue of what they have done to achieve and maintain their “score” in all three categories above. We all have bad moods – but not “on stage” – only “back stage”.