Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

Annual Appraisals: What should I say?

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This was a reader email in response to my last posting about performance reviews. Please read that first for best context if you have not yet done so: Annual Appraisals & Performance Reviews: There’s a much better way.

“Rosa, assuming we’ve done our homework as you described, can you give us more suggestions on the conversation we can have within the appraisal meeting itself? I really stumble with that expectation that it’s a good time for goal setting, and handling it without feeling like I’m forcing the issue.”

Great question, for you bring up an excellent point: What’s the objective of the appraisal meeting, and are you accomplishing it?

The answer may vary in different companies (this goes to the point within that last post about understanding your mandates). While I was employed by the Hualalai Resort, annual reviews were tied to compensation, but with an added layer of complexity: Profit sharing via an incentive program structured via departmental bell curve (promoting ‘healthy’ competition), which was also tied to annual goal-setting. That alone was a big job to tackle!

Learning to deal with that expectation, and accomplish that objective well, was a big factor in my subsequently developing a different model for the MWA OIB (‘Ohana in Business ® model) where performance review coaching (which many managers assume is ‘officially done’ in an annual appraisal) isn’t actually done then, for it’s considered everyday management: Your People are Your Daily, and deserve way more than an “annual review.”

Objectives versus Goals

Let me share a bit of clarity in our vocabulary here, for it’s an important distinction:

  • We use the word ‘objective’ to refer to company-wide objectives,
    i.e. All annual appraisals in this company are done for this specific reason (whatever it may be for you), as a shared objective across company divisions: It aligns with our values, and is conducive to achieving our mission and vision.
  • In comparison, ‘goal’ varies individually, and is set personally,
    i.e. Warren’s goal is increase his skill level with matching typography to the graphic designs he works on — on our behalf, as the job he performs while working here.

All employees differ, and so in addition to understanding your company objective (and fulfilling it) you have to personalize annual appraisals for them: Never lose sight of the fact that an appraisal is documentation connected to their good name!

Company objectives largely seek strategic consistency in an organizational culture, whereas goal-setting should focus on individual talents, strengths, skills, and Ho‘ohana dreaming — and how their most fervent goals can be a shared win, in that they benefit the company employing them as well.

That, to me, is the overall objective of performance coaching: Managers mentor their people in the delivery of performance which grows them (i.e. helps them achieve their personal goals) while they simultaneously make an important, and meaningful contribution to the mission and vision of the company employing them. Besides earning compensation for their efforts, that contribution is what employees have agreed to deliver when they hired on. Hopefully, they chose their job well in the first place, having anticipated that it would be a Ho‘ohana connection for them: They make a valuable contribution and enjoy doing so.

So in my view, and returning to answer your question, that’s the conversation you are having when you help employees with goal-setting. This is what I’ve suggested in Managing with Aloha (page 49 in the hardcover):

Great managers make it their practice to schedule periodic reviews with employees to talk through these five sets of questions:

1. Now that a few months have gone by, how do you feel about the goals that you have set for yourself? Do we need to work on any revisions or shall we continue to work on course? Are your goals still a match for your mission? (Has Ho‘ohana and ‘Imi ola connected?)

2. Where do you feel you have made the most progress? Why do you suppose this has happened? How can we duplicate your success? (Look for the pleasure that Ho‘ohana, working with intent and purpose delivers.)

3. Were there any unexpected results? What kind of challenges have you encountered? How can I help you? (Time for more Aloha?)

4. Are you comfortable with the measurements we’ve set up to monitor your progress and quantify your achievements? (Have numbers count success, not failure.)

5. What is your next step? What kind of timeline are you setting for yourself? (Keep ‘Imi ola at the forefront, seek the best possible form, the best possible life.)

After each question, be quiet and listen: Give them enough time to respond to you. All of these questions are designed to get them talking, and you listening. The reason this is so important, besides the obvious things about good listening, will become clearer in the next section.

When are new Goals set?

I think this is an important question to answer, for as alluded to in this reader’s question, an annual appraisal meeting may or may not be the best time (remember point no. 4 about Acing Your Timing?) It could be a progress meeting, versus the celebration of having accomplished one goal, and now moving toward working on another one.

So let’s wrap up with this:

What is the manager’s role in goal-setting?

Here is where we run into another assumption, that managers are supposed to help others set goals. Yes, I buy that much, but how exactly, are you helping? My experience has been that managers stumble into two different kinds of sticky points:

1. What a goal should be
You can guide people through different choices, but motivation is an inside job, and an individual needs to set his or her own goals. If you try to set goals for them, and they let you, it’s highly likely you’ve sabotaged the whole deal, for their heart will never be in it completely. You want them to do it for themselves, and not to please you. So guide, but get them to decide. Call them on it if you sense they’re settling for less than they should be: Go for that burning “Yes!” where they sit up a bit straighter and their eyes light up, and not a “Okay, sounds good” as they glance at their watch.

As for your guiding them, my suggestion is that you focus smaller versus bigger: Forget the 1-year, 3-year, 5-year goal stuff, and talk about goals connected to specific talents, skills and knowledge. Be a manager who helps others learn in a focused way, and help them build on their strengths while correcting course on any weaknesses. That’s the way you support them in setting their own ‘bigger dream’ goals. Remember what we talked about earlier, and make the connection to the contribution they deliver — reaffirm how important it is.

2. Why bother?
Our goals can best be thought of as the tools which tweak us: They enable us to stretch and grow while we are making a contribution of some kind in earning our keep (whether we do so for a paycheck or for profit). Goals elevate performance and keep energies ramped up. They introduce creativity and new invention to work so we aren’t resting on our laurels, becoming complacent, and getting bored.

Sometimes managers lose sight of all these benefits, and they go through the motions with employees just because it’s expected of them — please don’t! Everything you give your attention to should be on-purpose and Ho‘ohana intentional.

Do yourself and your employees a favor, and get excited about goal-setting again by focusing on the benefits: Add more excitement and energy to the entire process, and get them to say:

“I feel strong when I talk to you.”

Performance Reviews: There’s a much better way

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Sat to talk story with a few managers who are currently facing their annual deadline with completing performance appraisals.

If you’re in corporate life you probably know the drill:
Performance reviews are conducted annually in one-on-one manager/employee appraisal meetings (and mandated), and managers are required to use a format designed by an HR office or some consultant, so consistent performance ratings can be used throughout the company for supposed equity in compensation levels — a poor reason for a bad process.

Employees hate it, and managers hate it, and yet scores of companies continue to uphold the practice. Pure yuck.

As you might guess from my tone so far, we don’t use that system in any of my Managing with Aloha-modeled businesses (we don’t have Job Position Descriptions either; we co-write individual Ho‘ohana Statements).

Do we review performance? Of course! The difference is that we do it constantly, coaching and mentoring on the job as the best possible context for having those conversations: Working on our Ho‘ohana is an everyday thing (and compensation is handled in another way as well). Thanks to opportunities furnished by The Daily 5 Minutes and our value-mapping practices, business partners (i.e. employees) are often the ones to initiate conversations on their performance with managers.

However I know that many managers have no choice but to comply with mandates, and like those I just coached, they have to work within the system they have until they are able to change it. Well, you CAN make improvements, making them work for you right now. Embrace your Systems Thinker: As we have learned, people can fix broken processes. Processes cannot fix broken-in-spirit people.

Here is what I advise.

Keep the good, get rid of the bad

In short: Turn your mandates into a positive and highly useful process.

  • Start with the basics of what you are required to do,
  • Improve the quality of those basics when done by your hand, and then
  • Build new improvements from there.

Here’s how.

1. Learn everything there is to know about your mandate. Good managers never wing it or fake it when it comes to putting anything in writing in regard to the performance of another human being. If you’re feeling somewhat powerless at this point in changing anything about the system as it now stands, imagine how your employees feel! They are counting on you: Hold yourself accountable for what is a profound responsibility.

Put your own manager or HR department to work for you, and get their coaching. Ask all your questions, and be crystal clear on the domino effect created by any appraisal form you complete: forms largely exist to expedite other processes.

2. Do your homework. If you’re working within a mandated system, you’re not alone. Chances are the employees in your charge have been reviewed before, and by others: Learn their history. I don’t necessarily recommend you use it (each situation is likely to have different variables requiring your judgment), but you should definitely be aware of it: you can’t build a new house (and culture of Aloha) without a solid foundation.

Second, put your feelers out for other managers who have a good reputation in your company (managing and leading with Aloha), and ask them to share any of their lessons learned with you: You may be pleasantly surprised in discovering great workarounds (legal ones) which already exist in your company culture.

3. Add some heart to add good energy. I cannot emphasize this enough: In “starting with the basics of what you are required to do” make the ‘official’ annual appraisal meeting a positive experience, helping without hurting. Do what you have to (more on this in the next section on timing) but be absolutely sure the annual appraisal itself ends on a high note: Positive and useful.

How can it be useful? Do have the appraisal focus on Ho‘ohana goal-setting, with action-specific goals that are achievable week to week (not year to year). Hō‘imi: Lay the groundwork for a near future flush with positive expectancy. Always remember that the energy of your people will fuel their capacity to perform magnificently going forward, and thus, it’s your greatest resource too: All other business assets flow from the performance energy of human beings. Your job as manager is to light those fires, not put them out.

4. Ace your timing. Until you can change the system itself, do whatever is required of you, by doing what you have to at the best possible time. If you have to deal with some negativity and have a conversation about poor performance, do so and do not avoid it. Be a good boss: Never shy from your opportunities to teach, facilitate, coach and mentor.

Corrective conversations do NOT have to occur during an annual appraisal: They should happen before then, and in their best context on the job. Alaka‘i managers will create a coaching m.o. where they deal with any messes first, and then use the annual appraisal as yet another time to celebrate a sweet victory with having done so. Give that victory to the employee whose performance you are coaching and mentoring as a win you can log during the ‘official’ review.

5. Keep conversation as the construct of each working relationship. Annual appraisals are a pain when you only do them annually. What I’m suggesting to you is that whatever is required becomes the culmination of better practices you’ve adopted day in, and day out. We talk about conversation so much here because it’s easy, enjoyable, and effective.

Work with Ho‘ohana initiatives to fuel performance energies in your workplace group huddles. Do the Daily 5 Minutes ® and you will have a wealth of one on one conversations:

I need to be crystal clear about something:
If you’re not giving your staff the gift of the Daily Five Minutes ®
you’re not Managing with Aloha „¢

Turn up the Volume, and Manage Loudly:
Don’t give up too soon. Enjoy the music of managing well.

This need not be overwhelming:
Don’t Just Add, Replace. Own the 100%
Scroll down to the footnote tags and see how much this relates to!

Bonus Idea: One of the practices we incorporate in the ‘Ohana in Business Model ® is the Annual Nānā i ke kumu Interview: We literally re-interview all our business partners (including our vendors and suppliers) to strengthen our relationships with the knowledge of any life shifts which have occurred over the past year. It’s a time we revisit innate talents, strength activities, and sense of place well-being as we purposely catch up with each other. Why do so many managers only do this when they first hire people?

Will this be enough for you?

Finally, please do question your own influence: Stretch and grow it, and do not underestimate what you are capable of. What can you do to effect change in the larger system? How can you be a change agent where you work so a bad system goes away forever?

I think of what I’ve just outlined for you in this post as managing well: As I love to say, managing and leading are verbs. Will you be satisfied with this, or will you now lead? One problem with leadership, is simply that we don’t have enough of it.

As I mentioned before, the obstacle faced is usually your company’s compensation structure if that’s what ratings are tied to: Break the ties which bind by offering to help them create a much better solution.

D5Mdiscover

January Coaching: What are you really managing?

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I’ve a January, year-prepping exercise in journaling for you, one of my favorites in the executive coaching I’ve done for people. We’re still in the 1st week of the new year: Do this before the coming weekend is over and you’ll feel the Ka lā hiki ola goodness, I promise.
[MWA Ref: Ka lā hiki ola means “the dawning of a new day.” It’s the value of newness with hope.]

It’s a favorite exercise because it’s so useful. Writing this down will serve as a great point of reference for you in the coming months, for you can look back at it, remember your better intentions, and screw your head back on correctly if need be. When you’re done, keep it where you normally would review it during your quarterly, monthly, or weekly reviews.

If you don’t like writing and journaling, please keep reading” I’ll address that momentarily. And as a MWA vocabulary reminder: Managing is a verb. You needn’t be a manager-in-title to do this.

Write out your answers to these 3 questions:

1. What are you really managing? — as in right now, as a managing creature of habit. Journal your way to truthful clarity, and notice that I didn’t ask you who you’re managing, for that would simply be writing a list (“myself and my own behavior” goes on the top of that list, but you already knew that, right?) Write about WHAT you are managing, and why you feel you need to be involved in the process. The more detail the better (this project, that assignment, a nagging recurrence with” etc.), for the more you’ll learn about your current habits, and the productivity and accomplishment (versus busywork) you’ve been getting because of those habits.

2. What do you want to be managing instead? — again, not who, but what, just like with the first question, but in the spirit of exploring how you can light a fire under your own energies with more exciting work — work that fascinates and intrigues you. The key word in the question is WANT. Don’t limit yourself; ALL work can morph to being more worthwhile for somebody: Just because a certain job isn’t within your workplace isn’t reason enough that it can’t be. Maybe you’re the person who needs to author it there.

If you suspect these are Ho‘ohana questions, you’re right.

Not enthused about Writing?

I admit that I’ll continually try to convert you — start by simply carrying a small notebook with you and writing stuff down when you’re bored, or when you’re waiting in line somewhere. You’ll be amazed by the ideas you start to capture once your whining is over. I don’t mean to be negative; that’s just the way it usually happens, and private whining can be useful to you too, within reason. Better to be on paper than out loud.

That said (that I’m very stubborn about writing stuff down), very smart guy and Business Strategist Mike Wagner recently reminded me that not everyone is like me” a good half of the world prefers to talk their way to clarity (like Mike) instead of writing their way there. So if that’s you too, go for it. Self-talk is powerful stuff: Muses, Mentors and Self-Talk.

Better yet, do the exercise out loud in a conversation with someone you like and trust — you go first, and then you be a listener and sounding board for them. You know how much I believe in talking story!

The Third Question

Last, and only when you feel the first two answers are info-packed with clues for you… (sleeping on this is a great idea. Go back and read about Wayfinding for your Best Clues if you’re getting impatient).

3. What will you be managing in the near future? — Said another way, What will it take to make your wants happen? I don’t care what your boss, spouse, or anyone else may have planned for you, or even if you already said yes to it (you can change your mind and say no if you have to. Burn your boat.) What do YOU have to do to move from what you described in your answers to the first question, to what you described in the second one?

For me, this is definitely a wayfinding exercise, because in starting with that first question you are confronting your existing habits and being truthful about them. I guess you could say that your answers to the second question are your goals, but in my experience it’s been much more effective for those I’ve coached to think of them as wants; they’re more basic that way, visceral even. Wants are Aloha-instinctive, and more emotion-charged compared to how pragmatic and strategic goal-setting is, and so energies ramp up quicker that way (I hate the SMART acronym. There, I’ve said it. I hate it because it’s boring.)

Where I’ve usually been able to help my execs as their coach is simply to give them permission, and get them to believe their wants are okay. More than okay. Listening to, and acting on those wants is what’s really smart, and you have a brand new year ahead of you… take the leap.

Postscript: If this post title sounds familiar to you, I have written on this “What are you managing?” theme before, but it was a little different, and employed the 5 Whys… use those instead of SMART!

When Learning Gets Overwhelming

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I’ll be the first one to admit that I get a bit over-zealous about the virtues of ‘Ike loa (the Hawaiian value of learning), believing that learning is all peaches and cream. This isn’t the first time I’ve been wrong, and it won’t be the last.

Our conversation started with wanting Focus

A manager said to me in his coaching call (shared with his gracious permission):

“It’s so hard for me to focus on learning the right things about my job. I know my boss wants me to learn more about this financial stuff, but I keep getting distracted by wanting to teach it, and not by wanting to learn more of it.”

Me: “I’m not sure I got that. Can you say it again?”

Manager: “My boss and I agree on the value of learning. I don’t think we agree on what I should be learning right now, or if I should be learning more about this at all. Our priorities are different. She wants me to learn more about our financial picture than I know now, but I’m still working on what I already know, and I want to teach it to the rest of my staff before I jump into new learning.”

Me: “Have you explained that to your boss yet?”

Manager: “Yeah. Um, well, I think so. Maybe not exactly in that way. I don’t think she’ll want to hear it.”

Me: “We can’t know that. We might need to give her the benefit of the doubt on what she wants, or doesn’t want to hear. We’ll get back to that” Tell me more about what you want to teach your staff first.”

It was an interesting conversation. We continued to talk a bit about needing to bring his boss back into the conversation to better understand this subject of learning relevance, and to be sure they each understood each other clearly. We also started to talk about how learning and teaching differ, and how learning can be pretty stressful for him. When you learn more, that comfortable place where “ignorance is still bliss” slips away. Suddenly, you have to handle what you have newly learned about!

However here is the tough thing about saying “No, not now” to new learning: You don’t know what you don’t know yet. It didn’t dawn on him that his boss may want him to learn more to help him and not overwhelm him. There was the very real possibility that he was refusing to learn something which would lessen his stress and not add to it.

That said, it became increasingly clear to me, that he may really need to say, “No, not now” and have his boss be okay with that. Turns out he was “getting distracted” by one of his strengths!

Are we talking about the same thing?

It got a little more complicated” and interesting! This might turn out to be more than one conversation he will have with his boss, and should.

For this manager, learning more than he was ready to deal with wasn’t just overwhelming him, he thought it was pure mission creep, and not at all conducive to him helping his team better their performance. Before we spoke, he had decided he needed to talk to his boss about that instead: That mission creep was the real issue he grappled with in his day-to-day juggling act, and that “more learning on mission creep” wasn’t going to help anyone. Not her, not him, not his team.

I agreed that he needed to speak with her again for true clarity, and to unload some of his stress about it, for he feared (but he wasn’t quite sure) that she would still expect him to handle his existing learning and new learning simultaneously, and sort them out afterwards.

My response was, “Well, if she does feel that way, you’ll discover that you don’t agree on what mission creep is.”

We had to separate the two issues, and not call overwhelming learning ‘mission creep’ or “different priorities” when it was simply learning that he couldn’t handle yet. However for him, fessing up to not being able to handle it was a little risky: His boss preached about the merit of continual learning all the time. (Sound familiar?) As he blurted out in his coaching call,

“Aw come on Rosa, who in their right mind is gonna tell their boss they just can’t handle learning?”

There are times we ALL can’t handle learning

To be okay with that, you need to define when you love it (or when it helps you feel strong) and when you hate it. Put a name and a description on your distaste for learning when it begins to happen, so you can correctly identify your resistance.

Then once you define it, sharing that knowledge of self-awareness with your own boss is a really great idea! For that’s what it actually is: Resistance you can identify and work with as your own self-awareness of when work (or learning) is working for you, and when it’s  not. It’s not a refusal (a won’t disguised as a can’t —and yeah, bosses hate those. Don’t we all?)

‘Learning’ is as cool and sexy a buzz word as ‘leadership’ is, yet similar to leadership, learning fits in a very BIG bucket: A lot of different learning efforts can be in that bucket, coming in a multitude of colors and stripes —some of it highly relevant and mission-critical, some of it distracting, and possibly mission-creep.

In this particular case, I think there is a fascinating, and mutually beneficial conversation which needs to happen between my manager client and his boss, where he explains to her how teaching his staff

We named his resistance this way: For him, learning is an input which simply needs teaching someone else as his learning output, and when you’re a manager, that is actually a great thing. Not all managers love to teach, and not as much as he does! I bet his boss would love to know more about his love of teaching if she isn’t fully aware of it, especially given the way his teaching aligns with workplace need: It is highly relevant.

He happens to be a teacher who needs a workplace to receive his teaching, not a classroom.

Let’s talk story

Interesting discussion, don’t you think?

When else can learning be overwhelming?

Can you separate whatever is within your learning bucket, so it is more manageable for you?

How would you name your own learning resistance when it appears?

Photo Credits: 236/365 doing the sums by obo-bobolina
and The Joys of Homework by Cayusa, both found on FlickrCC.