Moneris

Sandra Robesco

The only constant in business these days is change – and the pace of change keeps increasing. How do we prepare our organizations and our leaders to deal with change when we don’t know what is coming, but we do know shifts are heading our way?

Leadership agility means keeping the business moving forward during turbulent times and ensuring people processes such as performance management are fluid and encourage 2 way “win/win” growth for both employees and the business.

Adapting people processes for new ways of leading and working has shown to increase workforce engagement, promote growth of competencies / skills and ultimately future proof our organization’s leadership position.

At my company, Moneris, Canada’s leading payment processor, we started by democratizing our Leadership Competencies and defining behaviourial expectations spanning from selfleadership (individual contributors) to team leadership (people leaders at all levels, including executives). One key insight in creating an agile culture and a hybrid work environment was to shift the mindset of individual contributors to recognize themselves as self-leaders in our organization.

Through training and communications, team members and team leaders understand our Leadership Competencies and Values as well as associated expected behaviours. Understanding Leadership Competencies and Values is a good start, however, we also need to hold each other accountable and demonstrate these characteristics on the job every day.

This is where our performance management program comes into play. We adopted an approach to performance management that sets each employee up for success in their current role, while giving them access to the training and skills development for those future roles they aspire to attain. Each individual brings unique skills, perspectives, and experiences to work, and in recognizing and creating a space for those individualities to shine is where we see success for both the employee and the organization.

"Leadership agility means keeping the business moving forward during turbulent times and ensuring people processes such as performance management are fluid and encourage 2 way “win/win” growth for both employees and the business"

We are able to align our resources, systems and processes to meet Organizational Priorities, while allowing employees, teams and leaders to define and work towards goals aimed at achieving the business strategy.

With this said, our refreshed Performance Management approach is called LEAD . (Reference illustration below.) LEAD is all about empowering the individual contributor to be in the driver’s seat by taking increased leadership and accountability over their performance, development, and personal growth throughout the year.

The program provides their leader with an approach that helps with coaching, while encouraging ongoing, open, transparent two-way communication. In today’s hybrid workplace where in-person, spontaneous and/or frequent interactions occur less frequently, these skills are more important than ever!

LEAD as illustrated is a process where people are at the heart of the program. The acronym LEAD was selected purposely as we all need to demonstrate “selfleadership” in a hybrid work environment. LEAD is not a linear event-based process, rather it is designed to be ongoing, iterative and agile as depicted by the movement in the arrows.

Through stronger connections between leaders and team members, and ongoing discussions throughout the year, we believe we are all be better equipped to achieve our vision, to live our values, and for everyone to win no matter what change comes our way.