asking

Performance Reviews: There’s a much better way

February 28, 2011 by Rosa Say

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.ï»¿

Managers: Promote a Culture of Asking

February 4, 2011 by Rosa Say

Had a situation come up this past week where I was reminded of how important it is that we learn to ask questions. Whatever the reason, our hesitation must be overcome, and sometimes we simply need to get less nervous and more courageous, even with strangers, and perhaps especially with those of higher authority — parents know this bravery is vital to our children’s well-being as they grow up.

The story, briefly: I’d gone to get my annual mammogram done, and switched my doctor and radiology facility. As women come to learn, we can all have minor masses in breast tissue, and the annual necessity of mammograms is because the radiologist who reads them looks for changes from one year to the next: It is change which may signal cancer, not mere presence. As the attending radiologist told me what he saw, I asked him enough questions about it, and volunteered enough additional info about my own known history, that he went on a diagnostic quest outside the norm after I had left him, retrieving my previous films from another hospital on another island — much to my benefit.

Whew. It was yet another instance where my ‘nagging habit’ of asking question upon question has served me exceptionally well.

And then other memories come back to me, of all the misunderstandings which occur when we don’t ask questions. So many factors can be at play, I know. Our relationships are riddled with unasked questions, and thus, unknown answers. In particular, the workplace is chock full of them, so let’s solve what we can influence.

Here are the assurances Alaka‘i managers must convey to their teams:

Asking questions is NOT a sign of weakness.
Asking questions is NOT a betrayal of your own intelligence.
NOT asking questions when you should will usually be your biggest mistake.

When you ask questions, you get answers. At minimum, you get a bit more information, and a bit more info is normally what we all need to keep us moving forward.

However that’s common sense, isn’t it. It’s an example of sensibility we all have, and yet we’ll still hesitate: Reasons abound as to why people don’t ask questions when they should. And those diagnostics are the job of the Alaka‘i Manager: Seek out the reasons why people may not speak up on your team.

Why are they uncomfortable?
Why do they hesitate?
What is it that YOU need to do to make the atmosphere more conducive to questions?
What are the root causes at play which you need to deal with?

In starting your Quest for more Questions, try this:
Staff meetings, and other routine huddles, have a boring convention of report-giving: Those who conduct meetings will go around the table and ask for reports, wherein everyone will often hear what they already know, or are supposed to have read on email or in the company intranet. It’s a practice which eats up time by proliferating mediocrity. Yuck. DO continue getting everyone to speak, and contribute, but change it up by having everyone ask a question they feel others might have too, and stressing that you’ll all be ending your huddle with much more clarity.

Do the same thing in your one-on-one conversations: Finish them well by asking for questions, and by getting more comfortable with the golden silence in which people think before they speak. When you initiate a Daily Five Minutes and your receiver is unprepared, prompt them without leading them by saying, “Have you been wanting to ask me a question, about anything at all?”

Clarity trumps generic information in a huge way.

Questioning makes an ‘Ohana in Business healthier.
Questioning fuels the growth of more inquisitive curiosities.
Questioning fans the blue flames of idea generation.

So as the adage reminds us: “Ask, and ye shall receive.” Ask well, receive well.

Archive Aloha: Here’s a Take 5 of related postings:

The Care and Feeding of your Talking Story Subscription

February 8, 2010 by Rosa Say

As the years of my life have marched by, one of the lessons I have always been challenged by, is asking for what I want. I have to push myself to practice asking for just about everything, and I’ll bet you do too.

Even though I know nearly everyone else in the human race has the same challenge with asking, it doesn’t make it any easier for me.

We have to be brave, stick our necks out, and ask for all sorts of things. Asking invites nourishment. As a mother, I taught my children to ask, and ask assertively and without apology, as a survival skill they’d need when speaking with intimidating adults. Choosing the right words, and articulating our asking helps us be clearer about what we think we want, or might need.

Fact it, people don’t always know what we want, and they can’t read our minds. (Believe me, your boss really, really struggles with this… happen to watch Undercover Boss on CBS last night?)

More often than not, people will surprise you by simply saying “Okay, sure, I can do that.”

Ask, and it shall be given to you;
seek, and ye shall find;
knock and it shall be opened unto you.

For every one that asketh, receiveth;
and he that seeketh, findeth;
and to him that knocketh
it shall be opened.
—Matthew 7:7-8

So here goes… an asking which concerns the care and feeding of Talking Story.

Your RSS reading of the blog (via something like BlogLines or Google Reader, or the Alltop Leadership aggregator) is a wonderful start, and I thank you for deciding to subscribe at all, with the number of choices which are available to you. However in today’s offering of a gazillion blogs and websites, the care and feeding of Talking Story requires even more.

Please consider switching to an email subscription

As a writer who blogs, I feel so acknowledged and appreciated by you who subscribe to Talking Story via email: It tells me you don’t want to miss anything, affirming the effort which goes into publishing the blog, and encouraging me to continue.

Email subscriptions (Click here to get yours) also help you share Talking Story posts with others more easily, so that we can spread the Managing with Aloha mission here, and invite more voices into our conversation. You can print the emails you receive, to talk about workplace concerns in your huddles and meetings. You can forward the emails to whomever you feel the subject matter will be of interest to that particular day: Doing so lets them know you are aware of their challenges or opportunities, that you were thinking about them, and that you care enough to reach out and make the effort. It’s a win-win!

Please click in!

Even better? It is so great when you have an email subscription, yet click directly to the blog to read my post here, immersing yourself in the full “online experience” that email programs and workplaces can firewall out. Even if you choose to silently read and not comment for some reason, your clicks will tell me you were here, and I will know.

Do you know what really sets my heart on fire, and encourages me even more? When we talk story in the way the blog platform makes it possible for us to do so, setting an example for managers in the brave conversations we will engage within here. As you know, I feel we don’t talk story enough in our workplaces; it’s another challenge we need more practice with.

Clicks are the care, and comments are the feeding.

Another thing to remember, is that as the author of Talking Story I start conversations, but I am not always the one to finish them. The email alert you received will never reveal the comments which have been added by others in our Ho‘ohana Community (like this particularly generous one yesterday from Rich). When you are interested in an on-going conversation you can also subscribe to it individually, making it easy to follow along as things progress.

Come talk story here on the blog, won’t you?

That wasn’t so bad! You can practice this too. Use the comments of this posting today to ask me, or others in our Managing with Aloha Ho‘ohana Community, for what you want.

Mahalo nui loa, thank you so much. Good people that you are, you made this pretty easy for me!