The people in your life are not inclined to tell you the truth. In fact, they’ve been trained not to. Every time your friends, family, and coworkers told the truth (as they saw it) and the recipient responded defensively, their brains got trained –it’s not safe to tell the truth. So they stopped doing it.
Gossip damages relationships and tears families and organizations apart. But gossiping about the things that frustrate us feels easier and safer than talking to the offender directly when we anticipate resistance.
We have all watched our friends at work wear clothing that wasn’t the best choice, over speak in meetings, and make other career-limiting moves. And we said nothing. Because we felt it wasn’t our place to say something, or the input was not invited nor welcome.
If you want to be successful at work and for your career to grow, you need to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth. These people don’t need to be your direct supervisor, the leaders in your organization, or your customers, although they may be. They can be your friends, family, and coworkers.
If you are consistently late, wear clothing that is not appropriate for work, or make commitments and then break them, your friends and family know that. Some people say they are a different person at work and at home. I don’t know that I buy that. We may exhibit different communication methods at work and at home, but our bad habits are the same.
The coworkers you sit near see and hear you work. They witness many of the good and not-so-good things you do at work that either help or damage your reputation. But they won’t tell you what those things are if you don’t ask. And even if you do ask, they still may not tell you. You have to ask for feedback and make it easy (safe) to give.
I recommend assembling what I call a Core Team of five or six people who will always tell you the truth. These are people who like and care about you. They are not the people you distrust and are struggling to work with. They may be current or past coworkers, friends from high school, college or today, and family members. These are the people who really know you and want you to be successful, and will thus tell you the truth –if you ask.
Here’s how to ask for feedback from the people in your life who care about you:
Pick a few people, using the criteria above, to be on your Core Team.
Tell them you want to get a better sense of the positive and not-so-positive things you do that may impact your reputation at work.
Here’s how you could ask for feedback:
“I am committed to my career and I want to eliminate any blind spots that may limit me. You know me well and watch me work. I would really appreciate your feedback. When you see me do anything that may limit my success, I give you permission to tell me. And if you’d like, I’ll do the same for you. I promise that no matter what you say and how hard it is to hear, I will make it easy to give me feedback and I will say thank you.”
Ask for specific feedback.
Examples of questions you could ask:
What is the first impression I make?
What’s my reputation in the office?
What do I do that makes me good to work with?
What do I do that makes me challenging to work with?
If I could change one thing that would make me more successful, what would it be?
What strengths do I have that I should use more and leverage?
Promise that no matter what they tell you and how difficult it is to hear, you will say thank you. And tell them you may come back to them with questions and to discuss further after you’ve processed what they said.
Saying thank you and nothing else, as you react to the feedback, which you will, makes it safe to give you feedback and more likely that you will receive feedback more than once.
Asking for feedback and saying thank you may sound difficult, and it can be. But it’s not as difficult as getting passed over for projects and jobs. You can do this!
I received lots of emails last week about performance appraisals gone wrong. Some made me sad. Some made me sigh. And the ‘best of’ the worst was so outlandish it made me laugh out loud. Really laugh out loud. Not that LOL thing we overuse.
The ‘best of’ the worst examples of performance appraisals are below.
Bad example #1: Giving mixed messages.
• Giving an employee working on a long project gift cards as a reward and then during the performance appraisal telling her she did the whole project wrong and had to start over.
Bad example #2: Waiting too long to give feedback.
• Giving an employee a performance appraisal six months late.
Bad example #3: Being lazy.
• Using the employee’s self appraisal as the final appraisal, without the manager adding any of his or her own comments.
Bad example #4: Never awarding the highest rating possible, to anyone.
• If a one is the best rating and a five is the worst rating, no one ever earns a one.
Bad example #5: Holding people to expectations and standards but not sharing those expectations.
• Not clarifying at the beginning of the year what the expectations are and what a good job looks like.
Bad example #6: Never giving employees feedback about their performance.
• Writing performance appraisals and documenting performance issues, but giving none of the written or verbal feedback to the employee.
Bad example #7: Giving small amounts of vague feedback.
• Giving little to no data in the review because the manager didn’t work closely enough with the employee to observe performance directly and didn’t ask others in the organization to provide feedback.
Bad example #8 (I received this example SEVERAL times): Providing only a written appraisal.
• Handing an employee a written appraisal while in a meeting with other people and never having a conversation.
This is just hilarious:
“During my annual performance appraisal I was asked if I was manic. After a moment or two of trying to understand what my supervisor meant by the comment, I finally asked. My supervisor replied, “Well, you are so upbeat about your job all the time, I just thought you were manic. Nobody can be that happy about working here.””
The winner for being the ‘best of’ the worst:
My manager tossed my performance appraisal on my desk saying, “Just look this over and sign it. I want it back by the end of the day.” Of course, the appraisal was full of feedback and expectations that I had never received.
I told my manager, “There is a lot of information here that was never discussed with me. I would have liked the opportunity to discuss these issues before it showed up in my review.”
The manager replied, “See this is why I didn’t want to meet with you! I knew you would react badly! Just man up, take the feedback, and sign the thing! It’s due to HR today.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Managers: If you do a little better than these ten examples of performance appraisals, you’re outperforming your manager peers. Sad but true.
Employees: You are responsible for your career happiness, success, and satisfaction, not your boss. Ask for expectations at the beginning of anything new and for regular feedback.
Take your performance into your own hands:
1. Don’t wait for your boss to set expectations. Ask your boss for his/her expectations. Get very clear on what a good job looks like, before you start working on a project and/or when the year starts.
2. Write annual goals and review them with your direct supervisor at least quarterly. During your regular one-on-ones, ask for feedback. If you don’t have regular one-on-ones, start. Ask your boss’s permission to schedule a one-on-one at least quarterly to update him/her on projects and to gather feedback.
3. Ask for regular feedback on pieces of work as you complete the work. Don’t wait until the end of a project to get feedback.
4. Ask for feedback about your overall performance once a quarter.
Ask these questions:
• How am I doing so far this year performance wise?
• What mistakes have I made from which I need to recover?
• What aspects of my work have contributed most to the organization?
• What do I need to do between now and the end of the year to ensure a positive performance appraisal?
The performance appraisal system doesn’t have to be rife with challenge and lead to disappointment. Take more control over your conversations and thus your outcomes.
I’ve never had a performance appraisal that didn’t make me want to quit. Throughout my 15-year corporate career, before starting Candid Culture,I had some great bosses. And I always got good ratings and positive reviews. But there was always some comment or piece of feedback, in every performance appraisal, that frustrated me or impacted my raise or bonus in a way that felt unfair.
And each time I got feedback that felt unfair, I looked for how I contributed to the situation.
Which means it’s our job to ask the expectations of the people we work with and collect their feedback throughout the year, so we’re not blind-sided at year end.
Below are some tips to ensure you give and receive a useful and trauma-free performance appraisal.
If you read my last blog post,you know that your boss may not know all the good and not-so-good things you do on a daily basis. It’s your job to let her know about your accomplishments.
Assemble a list of things you’ve accomplished this year. This list might include emails and feedback from people you work with both inside and outside your organization. Ask your boss’s permission to send her the list. And tell her the information is intended to make it easy to write your appraisal.
If you don’t have feedback from your peers and internal or external customers, ask for it. I define customers as anyone you need to get your job done and anyone who needs you to get their job done. Send a short email to five or six people with whom you work closely, and ask them to send your boss some feedback about your performance this past year. If they’re comfortable sending you the feedback directly, all the better. Guide your customers by asking specific questions. That way you’ll get specific feedback, versus, “Dave did a good job this year.”
Ask questions like:
What’s one thing I did this year that made the most difference to you or your department?
What’s one thing I could have done differently this past year?
Don’t be scared to ask for feedback from your customers. Most people are so hesitant to give negative feedback that they’ll typically be easier on you than you are on yourself.
Most performance appraisals only contain feedback from the last few months of the year. As managers sit in front of a blank appraisal form, it’s all they can remember. It’s your job to help your manager remember all the good things you did throughout the year. And I don’t know of a manager who won’t appreciate having written, bulleted data from which to write appraisals. Bullets are easier to read than paragraphs. Make it easy to scan your list of accomplishments.
Writing performance appraisals doesn’t have to give you a headache. Receiving appraisals doesn’t have to make you wish you stayed home that day. Plan specific, useful feedback conversations and then move on to planning for 2013.
Managers, here’s a video I created on how to give a useful performance appraisal. And my new book How to Say Anything to Anyoneis perfect preparation for both managers and employees. The book won’t be in bookstores or on Amazon until January, but we have advance copies on our website.
No matter how much you like and get along with your boss, your boss is not your friend. Nor is your boss your confidant or venting buddy.
Unless your boss follows you around all day, every day, she is not aware of all the things you do at work. And if she does follow you around, she probably needs more to do, which I doubt.
Given that your boss often doesn’t see you work, the only exposure you may have to each other is during one-on-one and group meetings. So be careful how you behave during these meetings.
I’ve made lots of career mistakes . . . once. Here’s a mistake I made before launching Candid Culture. I’m hoping you won’t replicate it.
In my last job, I was lucky enough to have a great boss. He was a good coach and mentor. He supported me, gave me exposure throughout the company, and always had my back. We didn’t cross paths much at work, except during our regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings.
I’m what some might call passionate. I have a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. And I can be critical of those who I think don’t do the right things.
I would often share my frustrations with my boss. The head of that department didn’t do this. This person made a bad call. So and so was making my employees’ lives hard. I wasn’t complaining, well I kind of was, but not without a purpose.
One day my boss called me out on my passionate (and at times critical) style. He said that if I was so impassioned during meetings with him, he assumed I was equally vocal in meetings with other people and departments.
This wasn’t the case. I was very careful in how I managed myself with other people in our company. I understood the importance of good business relationships and knew that people work with the people they want to work with and around the people they don’t.
But my boss didn’t get to see any of those interactions. For the most part all he saw was how I interacted with him during our meetings. With no other point of reference he was left to assume that if I vented with him, I did this with other people. If I got a little too soapboxish about an issue with him, I must do the same in other meetings. I didn’t do those things with other people, but he had no way to know that.
My boss and I had a good relationship and I felt comfortable with him, probably too comfortable. I was politically savvy with everyone but him.
Your boss is an appropriate person with whom to express frustration, but manage how you do it. Don’t vent to vent. Every topic you raise should be with the aim of problem solving. Keep things honest but positive. Vent and complain at home, or with someone who doesn’t know the people you work with. Or better yet, spare your friends and family, and take your frustration to the gym, or the shoe department, whatever your preferred form of therapy.
Assuming you have limited exposure to your boss, make the time you have with her count. Put in front of your boss only what you want her to see. I’m not saying to be disingenuous or brush problems under the rug. Speak candidly, but manage yourself with your boss as you would with any internal or external customer.
If you stayed out until two in the morning and you’re dragging the next day, your boss doesn’t need to know that. She will assume you’re not on your game that day and that will be a check mark in the negative category for lacking good judgment and commitment to your job and the company. If you had a bad date, your boss doesn’t need or even want to know. If you think someone you work with is a dolt, ask for help in how to work well with him, and keep your opinion of his acumen to yourself.
Your boss has limited time and exposure to you. Manage yourself by showing him your polished and professional self.
A few weeks ago a fellow business owner told me about one of his employees whose performance had dropped. The work she was producing was acceptable but not as good she had done in the past and not as good as he knew she was capable of doing. So he asked her to rate her performance.
He asked his employee, “If you had to rate the level of work you’re producing, how engaged you are in your job, and how committed you are to the company, how would you rate yourself?” The employee thought about her manager’s question and replied with a score of 65%. He asked why she wasn’t giving the job 100% of her effort and ability. She said she didn’t know.
We all have times when we coast and do our minimal best. Sometimes we’re tired and need a break, or don’t like the type of work we’re doing, or don’t like the people we’re working for or with. Those are typical reasons for producing so-so work or having a moderate level of commitment to a company or job.
But sometimes none of those things are at play. We’ve just become complacent.
Evaluate where you are today in your level of commitment to and interest in your job. What score would you give yourself? If you’re not giving 100%, why not?
If you rated yourself below 100% ask yourself these questions:
Do you like the work you’re doing?
Are you bored?
Do you care about the work you’re doing or the work the company does?
Do you like who you work with and for?
When’s the last time you took time off? Really took time off, without checking email.
If your performance and level of commitment is less than you know you’re capable of doing, and your performance level is related to the questions above, have a conversation with someone in your organization who can help you do something about those things. Things won’t get better without your intervention.
If you’re not sure how to ask for more or different work, read my new book How to Say Anything to Anyone and get the language you need to have this conversation. The book won’t be in bookstores or available on Amazon until January, but we have some advanced copies for our clients.
If there are no issues to address, ask yourself if you’ve just gotten complacent. Have you gotten into the habit of coasting and delivering work that’s not at the level you’re capable of doing, for no particular reason? If that’s the case, recommit to checking back in and raising your performance –just because you can.
Posted under Managing People on December 28, 2011 by Shari Harley. 0 Comments
I’m in trouble with one of my clients. He asked for something yesterday. I gave it to him yesterday. But he really wanted it last week.
Could and should I have anticipated that he really wanted it last week? Yes. But I’m not unlike your good employees. I’m good at what I do, but I put off the hard stuff that is complex and takes a lot of focus and time until it is due.
I told my client what I tell all the managers I work with, don’t set deadlines as the final, drop dead moment you need something. Build in time to review work and have a few rounds of feedback and edits before final deadlines. The biggest opportunity I see for managers to make their lives easier and less stressful, in addition to giving employees regular and timely feedback, is to how to delegate better.
A sales person I was coaching lost a project because he submitted the RFP on the day of the deadline. The prospect said that because the salesperson waited until the last minute to submit the proposal, she feared he would leave all work to the last minute, and she just couldn’t work with someone like that.
Rather than test people or set them up to fail, just tell people what you really need.
Employees are not you. They don’t do things the way you do. If you have a picture of how a project should look, I’ll bet you any amount of money your employee has a very different picture of how that project should look. As you assign work, if you picture data being put in a table or a graph, your employee most likely has a different picture. If you want a color coded process map, ask for a process map. If you want three bullets rather than a detailed narrative, ask for three bullets, rather than being frustrated by receiving too much information you now have to weed through.
Set realistic and meaningful deadlines. Don’t set short deadlines because you don’t trust your employees to do what they say they will do. If you have an employee who constantly misses deadlines and doesn’t do what he says he will do, that’s a different conversation. That’s a feedback conversation.
You want to give employees enough room to stretch themselves but not enough room to fail. If you have a project that’s due at the end of January, ask to see pieces of the work along the way, perhaps weekly. Give feedback regularly, enabling employees to make changes to small pieces of work rather than to the entire project. Reviewing small pieces of work regularly reduces frustration and rework. Finishing a project and being told to start over because it wasn’t what the other person was looking for has damaged many working relationships.
You get what you ask for. What are you asking for?
Posted under Managing People on December 19, 2011 by Shari Harley. 0 Comments
Motivating employees can be tough. Aren’t you tired of hearing managers say they have no control and there is nothing they can do about:
Long time employees who are so-so performers, are at the top of their pay grade and aren’t going anywhere
Employees who are three to five years from retirement and have no incentive to improve their performance
Employees who are ‘protected’ by a senior person and are ineffective but untouchable
And lastly, but most annoying, that HR won’t let managers do anything about employees who are not producing results.
None of these things are true. Managers at any level and with any amount of formal authority can incent a higher level of performance without raising salaries, promoting or rotating employees to a new job. It’s called management. And it isn’t fun, but it does work.
Employees will hit whatever bar managers establish. If the bar is at 80%, employees will hit 80% or below. If the bar is at 50%, employees will hit 50% or below. Exceptional employees will achieve results higher than whatever bar managers set. Managers don’t need to push their best employees to set high expectations and achieve outstanding results. Driven employees excel on his/her own. But it’s not your best employees we are talking about here.
We’re talking about the employees who are coasting, doing their minimal best, clocking in and clocking out, biding time, hoping not be found out. Many people think this kind of performance is limited to the public sector and that corporations are exempt from unmotivated employees. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I hear the same complaints from my clients in corporations, not-for-profits and government agencies. No organization is exempt.
As sexy as it doesn’t sound, managers need to get back to the basics.
The formula for motivating employees:
1) Set clear expectations with employees at the beginning of the year – a.k.a. now!
Write clear, specific and challenging goals either with or for employees. Seasoned employees should write their own goals. Managers should review and edit those goals, if necessary. Managers should write goals with or for resisters.
2) Managers should meet with employees regularly to discuss progress or lack thereof, and give feedback.
Now, for the part no manager wants to do.
There is no employee on earth who enjoys being told s/he is not doing a good job. People have a need to be seen as good, if not perfect. When anyone calls our competence into question – in the form of feedback – we get upset. Being defensive is an inevitable part of being human.
The unsexy, tedious but effective way for managers to motivate even the most blasé employees is to give feedback about unacceptable behavior every time s/he sees it. Every time. If Lauren is late, give Lauren feedback about being late –every time she is late. If Brian is heard complaining about new policies and initiatives, give him feedback about it –every time you hear it. If Amber is late in turning in reports, give her feedback about it –every time a report is late.
No one likes to be told s/he isn’t doing a good job. If managers address behavior often enough, employees will change their behavior or leave. Both achieve the desired result.
Your best employees are watching how you manage your weaker employees. Top performers are annoyed that they are working hard while others are allowed to coast. Moving your so-so performers up or out raises your best employees’ morale and commitment to the company, and raises everyone’s performance.
Posted under Managing People on December 12, 2011 by Shari Harley. 0 Comments
The locker room at my gym is becoming a dump. If it wasn’t enjoying the privilege of paying more, a.k.a. this is one of the most shi shi (overpriced) gyms in town, I wouldn’t care. But it is, so I do. I joined this gym because it’s really, really nice and was really, really clean. I tell myself that perhaps because the gym is so nice, maybe I’ll use it. This self brainwashing hasn’t worked yet. But I’m still hopeful.
Last week I made a rare visit to the gym. Perhaps I just wanted to be sure it was still in the same location. The locker room, which is more like a spa than a gym, was trashed. There were used towels and paper cups strewn everywhere, and people had left their dirty gym clothes draped on the benches. Being the Queen of Candor, I HAD to write a comment card.
I told the gym’s manager that I was disappointed that members don’t take better care of the locker room and that it is not the cleaning staff’s job to clean up after us. I also suggested that the membership team set expectations with new members and guests about what it means to be a member. “Clean up after yourself in the locker room. We are all responsible for keeping the gym as nice as it is.”
The manager promptly sent me an email. He told me he too is disappointed that members didn’t take better care of the gym, but that he can’t tell members and guests that they are expected to clean up after themselves. He said it was too condescending. “It’s a given. People should know that they are expected to clean up their messes. I can’t tell them that,” he said.
Yes, people should know to clean up after themselves. But clearly they don’t.
His response surprised me. Clearly if people knew they needed to put away their towels and garbage, they would do it. Why not tell them?
Other people are not us. They don’t do things the way we do. I highly doubt that people will be offended if we tell them what we want. We actually make their lives easier by telling them how to win with us.
All the sales staff has to say is, “We’re proud of how nice this gym is. Thank you for helping us keep the facility as nice as it is by putting away your dirty towels, being sure you throw out all of your trash and taking your gym clothes with you when you leave. If everyone does these things, the gym will remain as nice as it is today.”
Condescending? I don’t think so.
Assume nothing. Set expectations when things begin. Don’t wait for breakdowns, miscommunications or violated expectations. Just tell people what you expect. Making requests is a form of conflict prevention. Asking for what you want when things begin is much easier than telling someone they’re doing something wrong. The better you set expectations, the fewer difficult conversations you’ll have to have. Ask more. Assume less.®
Posted under Managing People on September 5, 2011 by Shari Harley. 0 Comments
Last week one of my clients called to talk about one of her employees whose work contained errors and thus appeared to be done quickly and carelessly. The employee works in the Marketing Department and posted a few items to the company’s website with commas in the wrong place, without periods at the ends of sentences and with incorrect links. The manager told me, “Her work was reliable until about two weeks ago.” And then the manager began to question herself saying, “Are my complaints valid? Maybe I’m being too picky.”
Regardless of how picky or precise our requests are, we want what we want. And trying to talk ourselves into wanting something different is a futile exercise. If you’re at an ice cream parlor and you want a double scoop of rocky road ice cream loaded with chocolate and marshmallows but decide to ‘be good’ and get lemon sorbet instead, you most likely won’t be satisfied and will probably be hunting through your kitchen cabinets at 11 p.m. at night looking for anything dipped in chocolate.
Get what you want. Don’t apologize for what you want or question if you expectations are reasonable or valid. Find someone who you think will meet your expectations, and communicate EXACTLY what you’re looking for when they begin working with you, rather than after you are disappointed.
Posted under Managing People on July 29, 2011 by Shari Harley. 0 Comments
Hiring the Right People is the Most Important Thing Managers Do.
I serve as an HR resource for an 80-person, professional services firm. As a result I interview candidates for the company’s most senior roles. Last week the Managing Partner and I were having breakfast with a potential candidate who was being considered for a Partner role at the company. My client wants to retire in five years and is looking for the right person to whom to transition his book of business and in time, his share of the company. It’s a huge decision. He and his Partner started and grew this company. It’s their life work.
We asked the candidate why he wanted the job and how it fit into his career plan. And as he was talking, my client turned to him and said, “This decision is way more important to me than it is to you. You can make a mistake here. I can’t.” His comment was incredibly wise.
When a professional takes the wrong job, it’s a career blip – a disappointment and an inconvenience. It will surely impact the person’s self confidence and make him question his judgment. But unless it’s a habit or he stays in the wrong job for years, it’s not incredibly expensive or damaging. But making a hiring mistake, especially at the most senior level, is very expensive and very damaging to an organization. Training people is expensive, and each new hire impacts the company culture. Employees who come and go impact the remaining employees’ perceptions of the organization.
The right employees will be successful, in a box, under water, with their hands tied behind their backs. Without support, projects will take longer, but the right employees will succeed. The wrong employees – who either can’t do the work or don’t want to – won’t be successful no matter how long you spend coaching them or how much money you spend training them.
Hiring the right people is the most important thing managers. Yet most of us see hiring as a burden. It takes too long. We don’t have time. And perhaps we don’t know how.
As William Ury said in his book Getting to Yes, “Go slow to go fast.” Good hiring decisions are deliberate and disciplined. Disciplined hiring managers know exactly what they need and say no to candidates who can’t or won’t do those things. They follow interviewing best practices by asking behavioral questions and listening keenly for what’s said and not said. They watch body language – comfort and discomfort. They use scenario-based interviews, giving candidates a chance to demonstrate whether or not the candidate can do aspects of the job. And they do a mean reference check. But most importantly, disciplined, hiring managers don’t let an urgent need or fear of losing the headcount drive their decision making.
The company’s vision for the future and strategic plan drives hiring decisions and the pace of those decisions. Red flags are not ignored. “Maybe it will work out” or “I have some concerns, but we’ll see” result in declination letters. Good hiring decisions are disciplined, deliberate, patient and thorough.
“Go slow to go fast.”
I’m in trouble with one of my clients. He asked for something yesterday. I gave it to him yesterday. But he really wanted it last week.
