3 Perspectives on Reviews

Ok, I know I’m a broken record on reviews, just like I was a broken record on goal setting a couple of months ago.  Well, right now it’s annual review time at the F50C and a couple of months ago it was goal time.

So here’s the deal: I’ve given three reviews now in the 2007 and 2008 cycles where each employee got a very similar score and very similar mix of you-did-some-stuff-well-and-other-stuff-not-well feedback. I should add that all three got an average score, denoting straightforward, solid work that was not insufficient nor was it out-performance. All three reacted very differently to their very similar reviews and now I share with you my perspective on them:

Person A: Lower pay-grade, newer in career. Very resilient.  Took the review score and feedback for what they were: honest reflections of performance, and tools to use to help them improve in the coming year.  Bummed that the score was not higher but generally understood that their performance was not remarkably different from your average analyst.  Since the review has repeatedly stated commitment to improving, has tried out different tactics and is keeping the feedback front-of-mind.  Performance now is not an overnight switch to perfect but I trust completely that this person is committed to learning from mistakes and to moving from a task-checklist way of working to a more sophisticated leadership style. So far, I’m very impressed.

Person B: middle pay-grade, a bit further on in career. The review gave this person pause, although they held it together and remained very professional during the review meeting.  Their style is one to take input and digest it, consider it, analyze it for a while, so this person took the review information and thought it over. They also sought out a mentor they trusted to get a second point of view.  This was smart, because this person helped reinforce that an average score is not a NEGATIVE score, just average, and that the feedback is useful if the person was willing to use it and take action. The employee then spent the year trying out a variety of tactics and techniques to neutralize weaknesses and push out of their comfort zone, and partnered actively with me to figure out how to leverage their natural strengths to deliver more and to build trust and credibility.  This person in the 2008 cycle got a stellar review score and was also promoted.

Person C: highest pay grade, furthest along in their career, least time at the F50C. FLIPPED OUT.  None of the feedback in the review was new, but the person had a very strong negative reaction, tears, defensiveness, and was all over the place in terms of response — could not stop talking, did not finish points, jumped from point to point to point. Most concerning to me was a serious lack of resilience around the score and message. The person used almost exclusively “always/never” language: They will always get a poor score, they will never improve or be promoted, there is nothing they can do to affect their own situation.  They also used a lot of victim language: they did out perform, just none of their partners, clients or management saw it because it was subtle. External circumstances (the project, the economy, their switch from IT to business) caused the problem.  Lots of absolutist and low locus of control language. Lots of exaggeration around how bad things really are — the sky is falling (e.g. average score = worst score ever, mix of positive and negative feedback = everyone hates them).

What about you? Who are you? I mean really, honestly: are you an A, B or C?

My Annual Review

I am delighted by my annual review today: both a raise and a bonus! And I’m super proud of my score. I think this is more good news in the category of, Good things still happen despite this crappy economy.

Here are the major themes of my review:

Communication and Managing Execution are signature strengths. This isn’t news to me; I’ve studied my strengths, weaknesses & preferences enough to know what I’m good at and be able to articulate what I’m good at.  My boss happens to agree.  Also nice to hear is that I got a lot of positive feedback from my clients and even more importantly my team.  My boss thinks I’m getting to be quite good at managing people, and in particular coaching & helping them with career development. Good, because that’s why I like to manage people! Also heartening to hear is that I cut through the spin & confusion and get teams focusing on what’s most important and high-impact.

(By the way, being able to describe what you’re good at is important — often, it’s hard to tell others what our talents are because we’re all, Well duh this is nothing special; it’s just the way I am. Isn’t everyone wired like this? No,  everyone really isn’t wired like this, whatever your “this” is!)

My key opportunities right now are:

• Watch out for being too adaptable and picking up the buzzwords & jargon.  Influence w/o authority becomes a lot easier if I keep the technospeak out of it, use plain language, and get my partners to use plain language.  This is the business-world equivalent of my ridiculous ability to pick up regional dialects, y’all, and I’m over-using it.
• Set clear end-state expectations, delegate, and then let others execute in their way. Ah, the pains of moving from heavy on individual-contributor to heavy on doing-through-others.  I know I have trouble letting go of the methodology or process, especially when deadlines are tight or execs are phoning.  And if I don’t do this, how do a) my team members have an opportunity to grow? and b) I hold partners accountable to execute?  Teach others to fish, MFK, just order the fish and stop baiting, casting & reeling for them.

None of this information is a surprise to me, as I keep a pulse check on how I’m doing throughout the year – not just at review time.  I ask my peers, partners and even my team. And I ask my boss all the time.  He has even said, “I can’t physically give you enough feedback,” — Well, yes, fluid in-the-moment feedback is probably an opportunity that routinely shows up on his annual review.  So I go get my own.

But what’s really nice about this review is that my weaknesses are good ones to have, and seen in a positive light by my boss.  He and I both believe I can mitigate them.  They’re pretty sophisticated, and not game-changingly bad, like, Can’t deliver squat, or No one trusts or wants to work with her. These are things that if mitigated don’t keep me from slipping back, but rather propel me forward.

Slightly Shocking Advice

G is a colleague who is one of the most amazing leaders of people I know.  He has been doing it for 14 years. I often look to his example & mentoring for advice. Yesterday at lunch he gave me some slightly shocking advice.

Background: At the F50C, annual and mid-year review time brings with it something I’ll call Leadership Assessment to help me avoid being dooced.  In the Leadership Assessment process, all managers of a department get together for a marathon session in which they discuss every employee: their strengths & weaknesses, potential for promotion, readiness for promotion.  They also set the employees’ review score and any compensation increases above & beyond what the score brings.

What’s nice about this is that important things like score and potential for promotion are not at risk to be in the hands of just one power-mad, jackass boss.  The group is a tempering, if not eliminating, influence on that kind of managerial abuse.  Of course what’s totally uncomfortable about this process is knowing that every manager on the team is sitting around talking about you, judging you, and sharing dirty laundry about you.

The slightly shocking advice:

Before every Leadership Assessment period, G asks his boss, What are you planning to say about me at Leadership Assessment? If that isn’t enough for the timid folks out there, G then tells his boss, After Leadership Assessment I’m going to come back to you and ask you what you actually said about me, and what everyone else said about me.

Wait, it gets better:

Then G goes in turn to each of his employees, and tells them: Here’s what I plan to say about you at Leadership Assessment, and then afterwards I’m going to come back and tell you what I actually said and also what everyone else said about you.

I find this advice amazing, mainly because it never would have occurred to ask this of my boss, or tell this to my employees without their asking first.  As much as I love and crave feedback, I am timid when it comes to asking for my leaders to lay my brand perception, potential and reputation all out on the table like that.  And I was super impressed when G told me he did this for his team.  He says consistently they love it.  I talked about managerial courage a little bit the other day: that’s nothing compared to this courage.

Are you bold enough to have your leadership really lay out for you all the external perceptions & reputation?

Are you bold enough to ask your manger to be frank about your potential for promotion?

Are you courageous enough to tell these things frankly but fairly to your employees?

Rypple Again

I swear this is it.  But I did try out Rypple on my team and 100% of them ended up replying! And they were very candid, which is awesome.   Not just candid, but focused, specific and actionable.  VERY awesome, totally usable.

(Rypple says if you ask 4+ people you have a stronger chance of candid response and full participation.  I think this is because the people you ask can see the count (not the who) of people you ask, and with 4+, folks are more comfortable that they’re truly anonymous.)

So, ta-da, here I share with you:

What my team said about me

Keep Doing

• Empower your direct reports, which makes them feel their commitment and work is valued and does add to the bottom line.
• Be very proactive & take follow-up action.
• Share knowledge, contacts & resources with your tea.
• Hold career development conversations.
• Recognize us, & hold us accountable.
• Give immediate feedback.

Start Doing

• Consistently ask for feedback and make those discussions open and comfortable.
• Ask, trust & limit over-advising when it sounds like things might be working out.
• Don’t react quickly to bad news. Let us talk through it together to arrive at next steps or a solution together.
• Provide information on how we each fit into your area and how your area fits into the team space. Provide leadership and direction on how we can add value to the broader business intelligence efforts at our company.

This is only slightly wordsmithed:  I reformatted it into keep doing/ stop doing form, and changed the “Don’t do X” statements into “Do Y” statements, because it’s always more effective declare what you ARE or WILL be instead of what you are NOT or SHOULDN’T BE.  I firmly believe you accomplish much more when you run towards something instead of running away from something.

I really like how candid everyone was. They called out a couple of blind spots which I didn’t know I had! Specifically:  jumping in to give too much advice too soon, and over-reacting to bad news.  Wow, I’m glad to hear i do the latter because I always hated it when I had managers who did that!  I can see it in myself now — I hear bad news and my bias for action goes into  fix it fix it fix it mode.  My team members will be better served by letting them — and holding them accountable to — fix the messes themselves.  This means holding back the advice, asking more questions like, “what do you think we should do?” and tempering my over-reactions.

I’ve sent this same summary to my team and my boss, so that all can see what people like about my management style and so that all can see what I want to hold myself accountable to address.

I hope that some of you are totally shocked that I shared the results back to my team & boss, at review time no less.  Good, if you are shocked you should be! We managers should absolutely be modeling how to know and own our strengths & weaknesses, and if we are going to hold our teams accountable to be more effective & use feedback, then we should in turn model it ourselves and avoid hypocrisy. Try it, try being honest & show your integrity!

If you manage people and think asking your team for feedback and then heaven help it, letting everyone know what that feedback was is too risky or immature or sets a dangerous precedent or whatever, then there is something wrong with you and you shouldn’t be managing people. Also you are a total coward.  I’m serious, go find a new job where you aren’t allowed to manage or review others.

Love Your Weaknesses

Hi, I am guest posting today over at Blog@Work.  Topic: why you should love and embrace your weaknesses. You heard that right, loving your weaknesses is a positive thing!  Here’s an excerpt:

Successful people don’t waste time on their weaknesses. They don’t try to fix them, they learn how to mitigate them or neutralize them, and they insist on only taking roles that play to their strengths. First, identify your strengths. Claim, love, own and advertise them. Then find roles that play solely (or mostly) to your strengths. Then, protect your strengths-based niche claiming, loving, owning & advertising your weaknesses.

Here’s why it works:

• You must claim your weaknesses to get happy….
• You must love your weaknesses to neutralize them….
• You must own your weaknesses to eliminate them….
• You must advertise your weaknesses to keep them away….

Head over and check out all the detail!

I Turned Down A Job Offer I Never Even Had

In this economy? WTF?

As mentioned, I’m here to tell you how I turned down a job offer I never even had, and strengthened two key relationships as a result.

Here’s the deal:  I’ve had some small irons in the fire for a while now, around a possible next move to an organizational change team.  They are doing really interesting work with a huge multi-year project that will have wide-ranging impact.  But as I’ve said to my boss & the hiring managers of this and a couple of other teams I’m interested in, I only want to make a move if it’s truly the right role.

Despite the recent layoffs, the org change team was able to post for an opening. Two separate people approached me about applying; the hiring manager was one of them.  The job looked interesting and was an excellent fit with my  strengths.  But I had a few misgivings:

• I’ve just been positioned in my current job to expand my responsibilities as much as I want to — given the goals we’ve set, I can really run as far as I feel like.
• I have a team of direct reports now and the new job has no direct reports
• It is a lateral move
• My job has a very clear upward path, as well as upward/outward options; the new job has no upward or outward path.
• I have long said, and firmly believe, that I struggle with the question of what adds more value to me & to the company: A) staying in my current area and bringing communication, strategic critical thinking and relationship strengths, or B) moving to a communication role and bringing project management & execution strengths.  I wrestle with this question all the time, and talk about it with hiring managers & mentors all the time.  I usually land on option A. In this case I definitely landed on A.
• I have heard some anecdotal feedback that working for the hiring manager of this open position is really hard, that she may require a lot of managing up, and that she may not be open to being managed-up.  On the other hand, I’m excellent at managing my current boss.

I met with my director-level mentor and the hiring manager, and talked through my concerns, with the exception of the last bullet point (which I did not discuss at all – that would be sooooo not Kosher in any situation).  By doing so, I also reinforced my personal brand, Of COURSE you want me for this position, you want me for LOTS of positions!

Each confirmed that they would love to see me in this role and that it would be a win for the org change team, but that it would be a bad idea for my career.  Each seemed pleased I was making this assessment, and thought I was assessing accurately.  I was able to get to, Thank you for eying me seriously for this role and keeping me top-of-mind, but I’m not going to apply ’cause I don’t want yer ‘ol  job. Not in so many words, right? But I was able to turn down something that was never even mine, reinforce that I should be sought-after for open roles, remind them of my strengths, and build credit in my relationships with these two leaders who are important to me.

It feels really good. And I’m blogging about it to reward this behavior in myself and remind myself how good this feels, so that I keep doing it.  One of my weaknesses is hesitance (and self-perceived low ability) to self-promote; it’s fantastic to practice self-promotion and get positive feedback and  results.

I F#%!ed Up

Days like today are the best days to have a blog, because what else would I do with my angst? With a blog, I can store it all neatly right here and get it out of my head.

So….I f#%!ed up today in a very big and very public way.

Actually, I messed up back at xmastime; it just came out today.  I have a client, who is sunsetting a Small Subject-Area Tool.  At xmastime, I proofread a newsletter release he wrote about the sunset.  I failed to catch a critical error: He stated that Large Important Tool (the parent of Small Tool) was being eliminated entirely in 2009.  Not true. Only Small Tool is being eliminated.  It was my responsibility to catch the error — my client wasn’t in a position to know.

The newsletter went out over email today, to a third of the company.  The newsletter clearly & falsely stated that Large Tool is being eliminated. This caused quite the shock & surprised, and the newsletter began being forwarded.  Within minutes it had hit my boss’ boss’ inbox.  She’s the SVP.  If she got it that quickly, it was only minutes before the Executive Committee and the CEO got it.

The Executive Committee and the CEO loooooove the Large Important Tool. News, even false, of its demise  has likely triggered heart attacks.

But you know what? I’m not worried.

Sure, it’s an incredibly public mistake. Right before review time.  Visible to important people who control my promotion. And I have to publically issue a retraction. And apologize to my client for my mess-up, since he never would have released the news item if I hadn’t green-lighted it. And I don’t get to be a jackass and hide, or point blame at my client, or in any way deflect my responsiblity.

I‘m not worried, because I’m confident that I’ll be judged not on the fact that it happened, but on how I fix it. The fix — the retraction — is already underway, and I’m managing my SVP’s expectations. My boss is in the loop, and I’m over-communicating to him (insurance he likes).

Bear in mind, my personal brand is protecting me. If I wasn’t a great performer, and if my past actions hadn’t consistently showed I deliver results, prevent problems, fix problems and communicate well, then I would be judged on the fact that I caused the problem.  I think about a couple of my employees, past & present, whom I would have judged very harshly if this had happened on their watch, because they were inconsistent performers and this would have reinforced my perceptions of  spotty performance.

Great performance, a willingness to take partners and consistent ownership of weaknesses & mistakes are like money in the bank: I’ve got a little checkbook balance now I can spend, without being over-drawn.  If I handle the fix well, I might break even or end up with net positive credibility.

But GOOD GRIEF, there’s nothing like public massive fail in an area of strength to really make a gal feel like a million bucks! Plus, I broke my mother’s car key today, the remote-access kind of car key that costs $300 to fix/replace. MASSIVE FAIL.

Guess all I can do is keep on dancing, and laugh a little, so as not to end on a sour note.  HAHAHAHAHA!

My Performance Review

My mid-year performance review was yesterday. (Mid-year huh??)  It went very well! One of the things I really appreciate about my company’s culture is that reviews are expected to be no-surprises events.  You should be hearing about your strengths & weaknesses all year long in direct and actionable feedback from your boss.  Your boss is supposed to be  your partner in this — I like that expectation.

Here are my results:

+  I keep teams focused on delivering the high-value items, especially when chaos or scope creep starts up.

+  Excellent communication

+ Excellent execution, especially with large, complex projects.

+ Several partners, including three directors, expressed relief that I’m back from leave. One said, “I just feel more comfortable with her around.”

- Don’t over-use my communication strength.  Influence the communication strategy but hold others accountable to deliver, instead of stepping in to do it for them.

- Leverage my communication and relationship-building strengths to influence more without authority, particularly with a project that is at risk for derailing.

No promotion yet, but I’m working on it!

How I Manage Up

Everyone’s boss is different — we all have our weird blind spots and paranoias and strange weaknesses and hyper-focused strengths.  So my tricks for managing up may not work for you, in fact they probably won’t.  But if my boss ever hires you, you can use these tactics on him.

1.  I debate with him. He likes debate.  He likes to argue the point and the merits.  Once I got some feedback that he & my former director liked me because at the time I was one of the only people pushing back.  That little reinforcement was all I needed to get super comfortable saying, “I completely disagree, and here’s why.”  The real tactic here is that I communicate with him using his preferred style.

2.  I give him direct, relatively blunt constructive feedback. He’s from Jersey, he likes direct communication.  We live in MN, there’s a lot of passive aggressive communication.  I try to be plain & straightforward.  I give direct feedback to him on his performance and style because 1) he’s not very self-reflective and doesn’t always monitor the interpersonal after-effects of his approach.  And 2) he once invited me to give feedback.  The first time I gave it, it felt like a big risk.  But there were no bad consequences to me; in fact he thanked me.  And that encouragement was all I needed to keep doing it.  The real tactic here is that I help identify pain points & friction points, and suggest possible solutions, before they cause trouble.

3.  I demand clear expectations and well-defined, specific desired outcomes. Actually, I need to get better at demanding these things, at the time, in the moment, when the confusion is happening.  He’s strategic, and he’s often thinking out loud at a mile-a-minute clip.  He usually locks onto his desired outcome like a pit bull locking it’s jaw, but often the outcome is not fully baked and it’s up to the rest of us to bake it.  A lot of the time I feel like I’m trying to mind read.  Or, I’ll have to digest our conversation for a while and then go back to say, “This is what I think we discussed, and now that I’ve mulled it over, here’s what I actually think I should do.”  This, more than anything, directly causes most of my stress, so my goal in 2009 is to stand up for myself right in the moment and get specifics and clarifications.  Just like the ROWE people say I should.  The real tactic here is that I [should] insist on specifically defining, and agreeing on, desired outcome and timing. Also I [should] ask for proof/data/objective facts when he makes an assertion that’s way out of left field.

4.  I take abstract, vague ideas and execute them. I take the crazy ideas and make them happen.  Like I said, he’s often stuck in his desired outcome without a clear path to getting there or an understanding of all the steps to take and issues to clear, and a lot of the time he’s lighting a panicky fire to get there.  He’ll be the first to admit, he isn’t organized, task oriented or a process master. (On the HBDI: no green.)  So he hires people like me, who are.  The real tactic here is that I complement his weaknesses with my strengths. Part of the success here is that he hired me to be this complement — however, I spent a lot of time early on figuring out what his strengths & weaknesses were so that I knew where I could add value.

5.  I make sure he recognizes the team. I show off their wins to him, insist he send thank-you’s or notes, nominate them for awards he gives.  Because it’s not a strength of his at all, and because it helps him not be scary.  The real tactic here is just a variant of both #2 and #4.

6.  I make him look good. Because: DUH. His priorities are my priorities. I’ll drop everything to get him a deck for a meeting with his boss or an important client.  I scan his calendar to figure out when big-deal meetings are happening and either offer or ask what he needs. I feed him wins & measureable successes from my team so he can in turn show them off to his boss and partners. I get shit done. I warn him when trouble or stupidity happens, if it’s likely to get back to him — no surprises. The real tactic here is that I make him look good. Dang, I wish my own team would take this one more seriously with me! LOL.

7.  I delegate up. I am not afraid to give a clear request or assignment back up to my own boss.  I particularly like to deploy him when I think some particular action on his part will make it easier for me or my team to cut through an obstacle and move forward.  Becuse our success is his success. Also sometimes I just think there’s something he should be doing, not me. The real tactic here is that I protect the boundaries of my own work, and ask for the resources (usually action from my boss) I need to be successful.

How to Tell If Your Goals Are Good

Team, of all places, Babycenter has a great article about how to make sure your goals are reasonable and you’re focusing on what’s important.

How to Fail-Proof Your New Year’s Resolutions is (duh) actually about setting good new year resolutions that you can actually achieve. But aren’t new year resolutions just a type of goal?

Some of the rules tie together good goal setting practice with other key traits of successful people. This list is fresh. Here’s the excerpt:

1. Know the purpose of your list. (Uncover your core values by asking yourself  “What kind of person do I want to be?”

2. Focus on what you already like about yourself and your life, and take it from there.

3. Make sure your goals are intrinsically motivated. (Meaning: Don’t use your life to try to impress other people.)

4. Think about what you want to do, not what you want to have.

5. Keep it fun. (If it’s not, you won’t do it.)

6. Keep it positive. (Language counts. More action, less reaction.)

7. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. (Think small, easily digestible bites, instead.)

8.  Read your list to yourself. (How does it make you feel? Intimidated, empowered, challenged?)

9. Include your wildest dreams, and be ready to abandon, or change any items on the list at any time.

My reactions:

#2. You’re always going to be more successful when you focus on maximizing strengths instead of improving weaknesses.  When it comes to weaknesses, figure out how to neutralize or mitigate them and be done with it.  Why sign up for a goal that’s going to be painful or impossible to achieve? If you’re consistently asked to take on goals that involve fixing a weakness or having to primarily use traits that are weaknesses, then you’re probably in the wrong role.  And PS for resolution-setters: I don’t mean we should give up on difficult outcomes like losing weight.  But if portion control is a huge weakness, don’t focus your goal on portion control – focus it on lifting weights or cooking whole foods, or cycling more often.

#3. This is a big problem for me.  I do like me some extrinsic attention from authority figures.  How annoying! This trait does not serve me at all.

#4.  This is right in line with some of the best career advice I’ve ever been given

#6.  Absolutely. If you focus on eliminating something you don’t like, you’ll still get the outcome you don’t like, because even focusing on something’s absence still keeps the “something” front and center in your conscious and subconscious focus.  My boss & I are constantly trying to get our team and partners to define business cases for projects and strategic initiatives in terms of what we will do instead of what we are not. It’s a much better sell.

#7. Oh, I struggle with this every day during our goal setting process!  I think we absolutely have bitten off too much.  We’re not so good at tightly defining success, and I am weary, weary, weary of trying to boil the ocean.

PS – Gotta credit Free Money Finance for the quote-react format, which he uses all the time. Love it.