Fair performance appraisal methods use metrics only to judge performance at regular, short intervals. In this way, he or she knows exactly what is expected and can become stable in his role.
Give each employee a set of deliverables and measure those deliverables by graphing them on a daily or weekly basis to show changes. The employee’s performance can be easily judged. Of course, other qualities in an employee matter besides his or her ability to deliver, but this comes first and foremost where fairness is concerned.
As a role becomes more complicated or you head toward the top of the org chart, certain complexities make the evaluation of performance more difficult. In this case, the best idea is to make a list of the deliverables as well as the “soft skills” or intangibles that the position needs. Do this without regard to the person currently in the role. Imagine what an ideal person would do and be in the role and write that into the job description as a standard to judge the person against.
As soon as you enter “soft skills” into the equation, the ability to keep bias out of your performance appraisal methods becomes compromised to a degree. Therefore, the job description should include these skills at the outset, not added after a problem arises. Be thoughtful about the skills, tasks and deliverables of the role as early as possible so that the standard is fairly set.
If you do not currently have a job description for each role in your organization that includes the main tasks, the deliverables and the soft skills for that role, then this is the first task you must take on to get your house in order. From there, develop regular performance reviews based only on metrics that occur weekly.
Then, at longer intervals, such as every six months or one year, look at the whole list of tasks, deliverables and soft skills and write a short comparison of the person to this list. Remember as you go over the comparison of the person to this list that the person is receiving a picture of himself which may or may not be flattering. Think of how you feel when you view an unflattering picture of yourself, and take this into account as you share the information. Be firm but kind in your appraisal and after reviewing any negative information, quickly give the person a list of ways to improve his or her performance. Allow him to improve the picture.
The performance management process is the process of looking at how someone is doing in their role and guiding that person’s performance to a higher level in the organization. The most apathetic employees are the ones who have a ceiling in their job. The performance management process is a process that gives workers hope of getting to that next level. Without this hope, an organization will have bored, irritated employees. If you are not going to do performance management and you are not going to give people feedback or reviews, you might as well stick them in the middle of a forest with no compass.
To recap how to keep bias out of your performance appraisal methods, start off with a clear-cut set of tasks, deliverables and soft skills for each position. Review the deliverables on a weekly basis with the person to judge performance regularly. This allows for no surprises at the formal performance reviews which take place yearly and contain a comparison of the person to all the tasks, deliverables and soft skills. If any negative information surfaces, give the person a development plan to help him improve the picture.
Executive Coaching + Leadership Development + Teambuilding + Sales Training + CEO Course + Influence Course
Showing posts with label performance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label performance. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
How YOU Doin?
Feedback is not always easy to give. Or receive. Take the story of the CEO who went in to give his head of sales his annual performance review and found the office cleaned out. Turns out the head of sales left a "note" in his drawer saying that he coudn't face the performance evalution he was expecting he would get. This is a bit extreme. Hopefully, your experiences have not been this dramatic.
But let's assume you have never given performance feedback, like about 60% of all bosses. If you need to create a performance evaluation from scratch, take the person’s job description and break it down into categories. Try not to list more than 12 or 15 areas at the outside. If you have no job description available, search the job title on the internet with the words “job description” included, e.g., “VP of Marketing job description”. Pull out the parts that apply to the role and break it down into categories. Be sure to include soft skills such as influence or conflict management if they apply. If you are reviewing a person in customer service, for example, friendliness and communication skills would be top priorities on the soft side.
Next, either have the person do a self-assessment or include as many people as realistic in evaluating the person in the time allotted. The people to include can be the manager, peers, direct reports or any other stakeholders who know the person well. A simple evaluation can include a rating scale and a box for comments. A more complicated one can include a rating scale and associated questions. A simple 360° process can be purchased at a reasonable price through a coach. (The cost can be as low as $100/person.) A 360° is so named because it takes evaluation information from 360° around the person. It is simply a specialized type of performance review most commonly used by executives and a favorite tool of many coaches.
If you are giving feedback to a high level executive, the most common areas of improvement for executives are listed in the following table by frequency. These percentages were gathered from the hundreds of executive 360°s we have performed over the last decade in our company and in partnership with other companies.
If a person had more negative comments than positive comments in an area, it is considered a “development area”. These development areas show common themes and they are listed in the table by frequency of appearance.
Most Common Development Areas
Onboarding 12% / 88%*
Results Focus 62%
Problem-Solving 58%
Interpersonal Skills 58%
Delegation 44%
Influence 32%
Communication 31%
Executive Presence 22%
*While Onboarding was only a development area in 12% total of the reports we performed, of those who had recently begun a new role, 88% needed onboarding help in their development plans.
If you need further ideas for competency areas, check out the FYI book by Korn/Ferry. Next, get ready to actually deliver the feedback, or at least talk about it after you have slipped the report surreptitiously onto your employee's desk.
Remember a few key points as you deliver the feedback:
1. Be specific. Include examples as you point out development areas.
2. Balance praise and criticism. When giving the criticism, include suggestions for improvement.
3. Expect some reactions. Allow the person receiving feedback to digest and then have a follow-on conversation after tempers or tears have cooled.
4. Don't forget a development plan. Pick one or two areas that are most important and give the person a little adivce or some tasks to handle those areas. You'd be surprised how far a little advice can go.
It's time to get going on giving some feedback and helping the 94% of your employees, so let's get started!
But let's assume you have never given performance feedback, like about 60% of all bosses. If you need to create a performance evaluation from scratch, take the person’s job description and break it down into categories. Try not to list more than 12 or 15 areas at the outside. If you have no job description available, search the job title on the internet with the words “job description” included, e.g., “VP of Marketing job description”. Pull out the parts that apply to the role and break it down into categories. Be sure to include soft skills such as influence or conflict management if they apply. If you are reviewing a person in customer service, for example, friendliness and communication skills would be top priorities on the soft side.
Next, either have the person do a self-assessment or include as many people as realistic in evaluating the person in the time allotted. The people to include can be the manager, peers, direct reports or any other stakeholders who know the person well. A simple evaluation can include a rating scale and a box for comments. A more complicated one can include a rating scale and associated questions. A simple 360° process can be purchased at a reasonable price through a coach. (The cost can be as low as $100/person.) A 360° is so named because it takes evaluation information from 360° around the person. It is simply a specialized type of performance review most commonly used by executives and a favorite tool of many coaches.
If you are giving feedback to a high level executive, the most common areas of improvement for executives are listed in the following table by frequency. These percentages were gathered from the hundreds of executive 360°s we have performed over the last decade in our company and in partnership with other companies.
If a person had more negative comments than positive comments in an area, it is considered a “development area”. These development areas show common themes and they are listed in the table by frequency of appearance.
Most Common Development Areas
Onboarding 12% / 88%*
Results Focus 62%
Problem-Solving 58%
Interpersonal Skills 58%
Delegation 44%
Influence 32%
Communication 31%
Executive Presence 22%
*While Onboarding was only a development area in 12% total of the reports we performed, of those who had recently begun a new role, 88% needed onboarding help in their development plans.
If you need further ideas for competency areas, check out the FYI book by Korn/Ferry. Next, get ready to actually deliver the feedback, or at least talk about it after you have slipped the report surreptitiously onto your employee's desk.
Remember a few key points as you deliver the feedback:
1. Be specific. Include examples as you point out development areas.
2. Balance praise and criticism. When giving the criticism, include suggestions for improvement.
3. Expect some reactions. Allow the person receiving feedback to digest and then have a follow-on conversation after tempers or tears have cooled.
4. Don't forget a development plan. Pick one or two areas that are most important and give the person a little adivce or some tasks to handle those areas. You'd be surprised how far a little advice can go.
It's time to get going on giving some feedback and helping the 94% of your employees, so let's get started!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
360° Executive Reviews; faqs
1. What benefits do executive 360° reviews provide?
The biggest benefit to the CEO is more productive executives who work more collaboratively. When an executive exhibits difficult behavior, that behavior is often unknown to him or her because it is a problem in self-awareness. The main point of a 360° is to increase self-awareness.
Beyond that, creation and initiation of ongoing executive performance review is shown to have the most marked effect on company morale and productivity. It outranks any other kind of leadership or organizational development as it shows an atmosphere of employee accountability at the highest level and targets the leadership areas which most need improvement in the executives.
In the book Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan, a study of executives showed that those who created an atmosphere of accountability with regular performance review and leadership development programs were found to be more successful than their colleagues who sought business results to the exclusion of development. Conaty and Charan reason that these executives found it easier to attract and retain the most talented people by giving them opportunities to grow rather than just to work toward a number. Talented executives want to be challenged and stretched while they deliver excellent business results.
In fact, in a recent study performed by Korn Ferry International, it was discovered that an amazing 94% of executives want more feedback than they currently receive. Combine this with the Lominger study which proves that leaders who have low self-awareness are most likely to be fired, and you can see why executive 360s are now considered a large part of total benefits packages at some of the most cutting edge companies in the world, such as Cisco, Zappos and NetApp. These companies routinely top the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, in part due to their commitment to leadership development through executive review. The vast majority of executives want continuous learning opportunities that many companies simply do not provide. Without these learning opportunities, their careers can grow stagnant and they look elsewhere. Given the high cost of executive recruitment and retention, this is not a mistake businesses today can afford to make.
2. How does the 360° feedback process work?
When we perform your 360° reviews, the time expenditure for you is quite minimal. Our job is to make the process easy on you so you can continue to produce amazing business results while we develop the reports.
The following steps are the usual process:
a. Question development: First, we do a short research program to determine the correct competencies to address for each executive. We have an enormous database of information on roles, responsibilities, job descriptions and competencies for each unique role. We customize this to your culture and finalize the list of questions to be asked with the CEO and the HR executive.
b. Interviews: When we have your list of 360° contributors, we interview each person individually, including the executive himself, to obtain the most detailed and rich content on the competency, examples for each competency and suggestions for change, if applicable. We ensure confidentiality by cleaning each comment thoroughly for identifiable remarks. In the interviews we are looking for areas of strength as well as areas of development.
c. Customized reports: We then create a customized report for each executive. This report can be up to 40 pages long depending on the number of contributors. An average length is 15-20 pages. The report contains five major parts—the standard assessment results (if applicable), the summary, the graph, the verbatim comments and development materials. Samples of the summary, the graph and the verbatim comments are attached to this document. The executive receives the report in a three- or four-hour session where each part of the report is discussed thoroughly with the coach.
d. Development plans and coaching: After the report delivery phase, we immediately craft a development and coaching plan. If the executive is receiving coaching with the 360° review, we create a coaching plan with deliverables and timelines that match the development plan. At times, it is appropriate for the HR executive to take over the development plan at this point. This is customized for each person.
e. Ongoing review: The first 360° review is intended to be a baseline for the executive and should be updated every 12 to 18 months with a new 360° review.
3. Can our Human Resources department perform the reviews?
As the executives set the tone for the entire company, developing a continuous learning and feedback environment at the leadership team level is of the utmost importance. Having an external company perform this work gives an objective view of performance and allows for a larger measure of confidentiality for those contributing information via interview. It also allows for an unbiased review of the human resources executives in the same process as the rest of the team. Another benefit is that when tempers flare or emotions run high, as they inevitably do with reviews, the internal Human Resources function is shielded from these difficulties which are handled by our team. Our team is intimately familiar with executive problems and challenges and we easily and smoothly handle these issues for you.
Executive performance review must be distinct from other performance reviews in the company. Executive level expectations are higher and contain a long list of competencies, as many as 114 separate competencies. Executive responsibility is extremely high and must be treated as such. It is quite difficult for an HR professional who sits as a peer to another executive to deliver these types of performance reviews.
4. What do 360° reviews cost?
The cost for 360°reviews varies widely but the normal range is from $7,000 to $15,000 per executive. Most companies currently pay approximately $10,000 per executive, however, top executives like Bill Gates and Michael Dell pay upwards of $100,000 per report for their reviews which can run as long as 100 or more pages. Costs are determined by the size of the executive team, the list of competencies and numbers of reviewers. Coaching packages are an additional cost which can be cut down substantially by the quality of the 360° review itself. As an example, one CMO who recently received a review from our company was able to make the necessary changes within two months rather than the original six-month estimate on his development plan. He credited this to the ability to pin-point the correct issues. Our reports focus with laser-like precision on development areas and this precision can often make development steps obvious and rapid, saving the company money in coaching and education costs. A benefit of using our company is that we are so experienced with 360° reviews that we can save you time on the development plan as well as on the process itself.
5. Do executives enjoy receiving the reviews?
The overwhelming majority of participants enjoy receiving reviews. 94% of our clients have found the process challenging and intellectually stimulating. Less than 3% found it unsatisfying or too difficult. The level of satisfaction with the process correlates with the positivity of the report, however, we have universally discovered that executives do indeed desire more feedback. As mentioned above, 94% of executives want more feedback.
6. What do executives say about receiving the 360s and coaching?
Below are a few excerpts from the success stories of executives who have received their reviews from us:
“I took my relationship with my CTO to an entirely new level in two weeks after my review. I literally would never have believed this could happen so quickly.”
--C-level executive
“I was surprised how focused this review was. There was nothing in the report that was extraneous and we didn’t try to fix what wasn’t broken. That was a relief.”
--SVP executive
“I had a prior 360° with another company and I could not decipher the results. This 360° was easy to understand and made creating the development plan a breeze. My development plan was completed in three months and I was ready for a new set of challenges. Our business went up 18% during my development plan.”
--C-level executive
“Applying the techniques I learned made me more organized and crisp. Most importantly, I learned how to quantify my unique value and stop making excuses. During the coaching, I was able to drive bottom-line results in less than 60 days.”
--SVP executive
7. What do 360° reports look like?
Below are sample excerpts of the 360° documents to show how the information is presented in the report.
a. The Executive Summary: The summary is intended to bring out the main strengths and development areas for the executive. The summary is also presented to the executive’s manager in a separate meeting and is used to create the slide show where the executive presents his 360° (if applicable). Below are partial sample excerpts. The summaries are usually one page for strengths and one for development areas.
b. The Chart:
The chart shows a visual summary of the verbatim feedback by color coding the comments into strengths and development areas. A person with very mixed review comments would have a chart similar to the one shown below. In the example below, the Openness to Learning and Technical Acumen categories are largely positive while the Managing Upward category is more negative.
c. The Verbatim Comments: This example shows a few comments from the Openness to Learning category. Each category contains a set of verbatim comments matching the chart and aligning with the summary.
8. Are there any best practices for 360° reviews?
Absolutely. The following are the summary guidelines for implementing a 360° review process.
a. Give 360° reviews to the whole team rather than a few team members. The process works best when the entire team gets used to giving and receiving feedback. This creates a cultural change which allows for more rapid adjustment of non-optimum performance and behavior. It also creates a sense of fairness and camaraderie on the team. If one executive is performing poorly, the other executives are usually contributing in some way to the behavior, even if only by tacit consent.
b. Respect the confidentiality of the process. The CEO and HR Executive should assist the team members to uphold the confidentiality of the reports. The CEO is a role model for receiving the report and summarizing the feedback to the group. Her attitude will be closely watched and imitated by other executives.
c. Grant the executives the importance of having separate and distinct reviews. Do not use the same type of feedback process at the executive level that is used at the lower levels of the organization. Executive responsibility and standards are much higher and should be treated as such. If you have a poor performer on the executive team, this situation must be remedied rapidly as the consequences hold much more importance to the company.
In short, the 360° process is a unique and time-tested approach for delivering a high quality learning and development experience for the executive team.
Years after receiving a review and three months of coaching, one executive left this message on our voice mail:
“ . . . I wanted to call and update you on my progress since our 360 process three years ago. I not only completely changed my approach to work, but I have been promoted twice and am now the Board’s choice for the new CEO of our company! I credit this entirely to the 360 process. I cannot thank you enough for the deep and lasting impact this process had on my career. I called my HR person to thank her as well for bringing this into the company. Of course, as the CEO, I will continue the process.”
The biggest benefit to the CEO is more productive executives who work more collaboratively. When an executive exhibits difficult behavior, that behavior is often unknown to him or her because it is a problem in self-awareness. The main point of a 360° is to increase self-awareness.
Beyond that, creation and initiation of ongoing executive performance review is shown to have the most marked effect on company morale and productivity. It outranks any other kind of leadership or organizational development as it shows an atmosphere of employee accountability at the highest level and targets the leadership areas which most need improvement in the executives.
In the book Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan, a study of executives showed that those who created an atmosphere of accountability with regular performance review and leadership development programs were found to be more successful than their colleagues who sought business results to the exclusion of development. Conaty and Charan reason that these executives found it easier to attract and retain the most talented people by giving them opportunities to grow rather than just to work toward a number. Talented executives want to be challenged and stretched while they deliver excellent business results.
In fact, in a recent study performed by Korn Ferry International, it was discovered that an amazing 94% of executives want more feedback than they currently receive. Combine this with the Lominger study which proves that leaders who have low self-awareness are most likely to be fired, and you can see why executive 360s are now considered a large part of total benefits packages at some of the most cutting edge companies in the world, such as Cisco, Zappos and NetApp. These companies routinely top the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, in part due to their commitment to leadership development through executive review. The vast majority of executives want continuous learning opportunities that many companies simply do not provide. Without these learning opportunities, their careers can grow stagnant and they look elsewhere. Given the high cost of executive recruitment and retention, this is not a mistake businesses today can afford to make.
2. How does the 360° feedback process work?
When we perform your 360° reviews, the time expenditure for you is quite minimal. Our job is to make the process easy on you so you can continue to produce amazing business results while we develop the reports.
The following steps are the usual process:
a. Question development: First, we do a short research program to determine the correct competencies to address for each executive. We have an enormous database of information on roles, responsibilities, job descriptions and competencies for each unique role. We customize this to your culture and finalize the list of questions to be asked with the CEO and the HR executive.
b. Interviews: When we have your list of 360° contributors, we interview each person individually, including the executive himself, to obtain the most detailed and rich content on the competency, examples for each competency and suggestions for change, if applicable. We ensure confidentiality by cleaning each comment thoroughly for identifiable remarks. In the interviews we are looking for areas of strength as well as areas of development.
c. Customized reports: We then create a customized report for each executive. This report can be up to 40 pages long depending on the number of contributors. An average length is 15-20 pages. The report contains five major parts—the standard assessment results (if applicable), the summary, the graph, the verbatim comments and development materials. Samples of the summary, the graph and the verbatim comments are attached to this document. The executive receives the report in a three- or four-hour session where each part of the report is discussed thoroughly with the coach.
d. Development plans and coaching: After the report delivery phase, we immediately craft a development and coaching plan. If the executive is receiving coaching with the 360° review, we create a coaching plan with deliverables and timelines that match the development plan. At times, it is appropriate for the HR executive to take over the development plan at this point. This is customized for each person.
e. Ongoing review: The first 360° review is intended to be a baseline for the executive and should be updated every 12 to 18 months with a new 360° review.
3. Can our Human Resources department perform the reviews?
As the executives set the tone for the entire company, developing a continuous learning and feedback environment at the leadership team level is of the utmost importance. Having an external company perform this work gives an objective view of performance and allows for a larger measure of confidentiality for those contributing information via interview. It also allows for an unbiased review of the human resources executives in the same process as the rest of the team. Another benefit is that when tempers flare or emotions run high, as they inevitably do with reviews, the internal Human Resources function is shielded from these difficulties which are handled by our team. Our team is intimately familiar with executive problems and challenges and we easily and smoothly handle these issues for you.
Executive performance review must be distinct from other performance reviews in the company. Executive level expectations are higher and contain a long list of competencies, as many as 114 separate competencies. Executive responsibility is extremely high and must be treated as such. It is quite difficult for an HR professional who sits as a peer to another executive to deliver these types of performance reviews.
4. What do 360° reviews cost?
The cost for 360°reviews varies widely but the normal range is from $7,000 to $15,000 per executive. Most companies currently pay approximately $10,000 per executive, however, top executives like Bill Gates and Michael Dell pay upwards of $100,000 per report for their reviews which can run as long as 100 or more pages. Costs are determined by the size of the executive team, the list of competencies and numbers of reviewers. Coaching packages are an additional cost which can be cut down substantially by the quality of the 360° review itself. As an example, one CMO who recently received a review from our company was able to make the necessary changes within two months rather than the original six-month estimate on his development plan. He credited this to the ability to pin-point the correct issues. Our reports focus with laser-like precision on development areas and this precision can often make development steps obvious and rapid, saving the company money in coaching and education costs. A benefit of using our company is that we are so experienced with 360° reviews that we can save you time on the development plan as well as on the process itself.
5. Do executives enjoy receiving the reviews?
The overwhelming majority of participants enjoy receiving reviews. 94% of our clients have found the process challenging and intellectually stimulating. Less than 3% found it unsatisfying or too difficult. The level of satisfaction with the process correlates with the positivity of the report, however, we have universally discovered that executives do indeed desire more feedback. As mentioned above, 94% of executives want more feedback.
6. What do executives say about receiving the 360s and coaching?
Below are a few excerpts from the success stories of executives who have received their reviews from us:
“I took my relationship with my CTO to an entirely new level in two weeks after my review. I literally would never have believed this could happen so quickly.”
--C-level executive
“I was surprised how focused this review was. There was nothing in the report that was extraneous and we didn’t try to fix what wasn’t broken. That was a relief.”
--SVP executive
“I had a prior 360° with another company and I could not decipher the results. This 360° was easy to understand and made creating the development plan a breeze. My development plan was completed in three months and I was ready for a new set of challenges. Our business went up 18% during my development plan.”
--C-level executive
“Applying the techniques I learned made me more organized and crisp. Most importantly, I learned how to quantify my unique value and stop making excuses. During the coaching, I was able to drive bottom-line results in less than 60 days.”
--SVP executive
7. What do 360° reports look like?
Below are sample excerpts of the 360° documents to show how the information is presented in the report.
a. The Executive Summary: The summary is intended to bring out the main strengths and development areas for the executive. The summary is also presented to the executive’s manager in a separate meeting and is used to create the slide show where the executive presents his 360° (if applicable). Below are partial sample excerpts. The summaries are usually one page for strengths and one for development areas.
b. The Chart:
The chart shows a visual summary of the verbatim feedback by color coding the comments into strengths and development areas. A person with very mixed review comments would have a chart similar to the one shown below. In the example below, the Openness to Learning and Technical Acumen categories are largely positive while the Managing Upward category is more negative.
c. The Verbatim Comments: This example shows a few comments from the Openness to Learning category. Each category contains a set of verbatim comments matching the chart and aligning with the summary.
8. Are there any best practices for 360° reviews?
Absolutely. The following are the summary guidelines for implementing a 360° review process.
a. Give 360° reviews to the whole team rather than a few team members. The process works best when the entire team gets used to giving and receiving feedback. This creates a cultural change which allows for more rapid adjustment of non-optimum performance and behavior. It also creates a sense of fairness and camaraderie on the team. If one executive is performing poorly, the other executives are usually contributing in some way to the behavior, even if only by tacit consent.
b. Respect the confidentiality of the process. The CEO and HR Executive should assist the team members to uphold the confidentiality of the reports. The CEO is a role model for receiving the report and summarizing the feedback to the group. Her attitude will be closely watched and imitated by other executives.
c. Grant the executives the importance of having separate and distinct reviews. Do not use the same type of feedback process at the executive level that is used at the lower levels of the organization. Executive responsibility and standards are much higher and should be treated as such. If you have a poor performer on the executive team, this situation must be remedied rapidly as the consequences hold much more importance to the company.
In short, the 360° process is a unique and time-tested approach for delivering a high quality learning and development experience for the executive team.
Years after receiving a review and three months of coaching, one executive left this message on our voice mail:
“ . . . I wanted to call and update you on my progress since our 360 process three years ago. I not only completely changed my approach to work, but I have been promoted twice and am now the Board’s choice for the new CEO of our company! I credit this entirely to the 360 process. I cannot thank you enough for the deep and lasting impact this process had on my career. I called my HR person to thank her as well for bringing this into the company. Of course, as the CEO, I will continue the process.”
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Up and to the Right
Take a moment and tally up how many people work in and for your business. What if every one of those people were suddenly 25% better at their jobs? What if they were each 50% better? How would this impact your business? Leadership studies have shown that a “feedback culture” improves team member performance faster than any other organizational change. Don’t miss out on what could be your chance to have a high-performing team.
It’s long been a part of business culture to have regular performance reviews and the purpose has, supposedly, been the improvement of the employees and, therefore, the improvement of the business. The idea is that if you give someone a review of his performance, he can improve it. Sounds simple. Unfortunately, few times of the year are less productive and more stressful for managers than “performance review” time. Perhaps you too have dreaded the performance review of your employees, knowing it might be contentious or upsetting, or, at the worst, a nightmare of legal vulnerability. Sometimes the reviews are a surprise. Other times they are a boring, repetitive exercise in paperwork.
A new trend has been sweeping American companies over the last few years that is intended to end this once-a-year feedback-fest which is usually littered with half-baked opinions and squishy goals. Many companies are now working to create “feedback cultures”, cultures where open communication about job performance occur on a daily or weekly basis, sometimes even minute-to-minute, to increase awareness of strengths and weaknesses and to take the pressure off of the yearly performance review.
If you have decided that you want to up-level your team in a hurry, nothing is better than creating an instant feedback loop for your team. Follow these simple steps to get started.
Creating a Feedback Culture:
1. Set expectations for the entire team. Have a meeting to let your team know that you intend to improve performance by trying new feedback methods. Tell them not to roll their eyes yet. Explain the feedback method will include metrics as well as individual feedback to each person. The idea is to get everyone used to feedback so when it comes along, it isn’t so bothersome.
2. Get agreement. Get the team’s agreement that feedback is not only a good idea, but that it will be accepted routinely. Next, have each person work out one major metric that measures his job performance and graph it on a line graph. For example, if the person is a receptionist, have him track the number of incoming calls, packages or visitors that are correctly routed. Make it a game to get this number higher and higher. The game is UP and TO THE RIGHT on his graph. Next, work on "soft skills" such as tighter communications, better grammar, a more pleasant tone of voice. Make it a game to improve these things, rather than focusing on them being "poor" right now.
3. Educate about feedback. Help the team distinguish between performance feedback and useless or harmful opinions. Example: “You need to be more organized. I suggest a schedule including each client, time of appointment and outcome” [performance feedback] VERSUS “You are so disorganized!” [useless/harmful opinion]. Good feedback is specific and actionable. Make sure all your feedback meets these criteria. Realize you may need to give a piece of feedback in several ways, over several conversations. Also educate the team about metrics, how to track them and how often you will be reviewing them. Start with weekly metrics and review them at a short, end-of-week meeting. Push everyone for an "up and to the right" graph.
4. Practice. Start right in the first meeting to give on-the-spot feedback. Get the team members used to it. The only way to do that is to practice. Remember to balance positive feedback and “improvement” feedback.
5. Prepare for reactions. The most important thing to do is to be committed to your feedback process. Don’t change simply because you hear some grumbling. Those who are good performers will like the new feedback because their graphs and their feedback will set them apart. The winners will be very obvious. You can call them the “up and to the right” crew.
If you are already skeptical about whether this can work for your organization, consider the story of a small team at a major technology company that decided to jump headfirst into trying this new method of feedback. The first thing that happened was a bunch of noise. “I don’t like it. It’s cruel.” “Is this what they call ‘thickening our skins’?” “Seems like an excuse to be mean.” Yes, the adjustment was rough at first. After a week or two, the whole crew was used to sporting graphs for every team meeting, looking for “up and to the right” curves. They started making feedback, the specific and actionable kind, a part of the daily routine. The team became a study in high performance with some of their best-performing members being promoted within the year. This same team was responsible for creating the laptop on which you might be typing your email.
And of course, you can always remember the words that came from the same person who threw away his performance review: “All that matters is graphs that go up and to the right.”
And, in the end, it’s true isn’t it?
It’s long been a part of business culture to have regular performance reviews and the purpose has, supposedly, been the improvement of the employees and, therefore, the improvement of the business. The idea is that if you give someone a review of his performance, he can improve it. Sounds simple. Unfortunately, few times of the year are less productive and more stressful for managers than “performance review” time. Perhaps you too have dreaded the performance review of your employees, knowing it might be contentious or upsetting, or, at the worst, a nightmare of legal vulnerability. Sometimes the reviews are a surprise. Other times they are a boring, repetitive exercise in paperwork.
A new trend has been sweeping American companies over the last few years that is intended to end this once-a-year feedback-fest which is usually littered with half-baked opinions and squishy goals. Many companies are now working to create “feedback cultures”, cultures where open communication about job performance occur on a daily or weekly basis, sometimes even minute-to-minute, to increase awareness of strengths and weaknesses and to take the pressure off of the yearly performance review.
If you have decided that you want to up-level your team in a hurry, nothing is better than creating an instant feedback loop for your team. Follow these simple steps to get started.
Creating a Feedback Culture:
1. Set expectations for the entire team. Have a meeting to let your team know that you intend to improve performance by trying new feedback methods. Tell them not to roll their eyes yet. Explain the feedback method will include metrics as well as individual feedback to each person. The idea is to get everyone used to feedback so when it comes along, it isn’t so bothersome.
2. Get agreement. Get the team’s agreement that feedback is not only a good idea, but that it will be accepted routinely. Next, have each person work out one major metric that measures his job performance and graph it on a line graph. For example, if the person is a receptionist, have him track the number of incoming calls, packages or visitors that are correctly routed. Make it a game to get this number higher and higher. The game is UP and TO THE RIGHT on his graph. Next, work on "soft skills" such as tighter communications, better grammar, a more pleasant tone of voice. Make it a game to improve these things, rather than focusing on them being "poor" right now.
3. Educate about feedback. Help the team distinguish between performance feedback and useless or harmful opinions. Example: “You need to be more organized. I suggest a schedule including each client, time of appointment and outcome” [performance feedback] VERSUS “You are so disorganized!” [useless/harmful opinion]. Good feedback is specific and actionable. Make sure all your feedback meets these criteria. Realize you may need to give a piece of feedback in several ways, over several conversations. Also educate the team about metrics, how to track them and how often you will be reviewing them. Start with weekly metrics and review them at a short, end-of-week meeting. Push everyone for an "up and to the right" graph.
4. Practice. Start right in the first meeting to give on-the-spot feedback. Get the team members used to it. The only way to do that is to practice. Remember to balance positive feedback and “improvement” feedback.
5. Prepare for reactions. The most important thing to do is to be committed to your feedback process. Don’t change simply because you hear some grumbling. Those who are good performers will like the new feedback because their graphs and their feedback will set them apart. The winners will be very obvious. You can call them the “up and to the right” crew.
If you are already skeptical about whether this can work for your organization, consider the story of a small team at a major technology company that decided to jump headfirst into trying this new method of feedback. The first thing that happened was a bunch of noise. “I don’t like it. It’s cruel.” “Is this what they call ‘thickening our skins’?” “Seems like an excuse to be mean.” Yes, the adjustment was rough at first. After a week or two, the whole crew was used to sporting graphs for every team meeting, looking for “up and to the right” curves. They started making feedback, the specific and actionable kind, a part of the daily routine. The team became a study in high performance with some of their best-performing members being promoted within the year. This same team was responsible for creating the laptop on which you might be typing your email.
And of course, you can always remember the words that came from the same person who threw away his performance review: “All that matters is graphs that go up and to the right.”
And, in the end, it’s true isn’t it?
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