What a manager can do if the big boss puts a tag on an employee
In my previous post, I described a common scenario and the mess it makes:
An employee meets with the big boss (the manager’s manager) in what is often called a “skip level” one-on-one. Or the big boss sees – or hears about — some output of an employee, representing a small fraction of the employee’s output. The big boss then makes a judgment on the employee – what I call a “tag” on the employee. That tag now sticks on the employee. It creates a big mess that puts the manager in a bind – how do you address this employee’s tag?
Here are tips for what the manager caught in the middle can do to handle the tag – whether good or bad.
1. Keep the tag in mind and wait for observed behaviors that are consistent with “the tag”
Ok, if the manager’s manager (“big boss”) is so keen at identifying employee’s essence and value, then surely there will be plenty of opportunities to observe directly the performance of the employee that has earned that tag. Whether the tag is “negative attitude” or “rock star”, the manager needs to wait for opportunities to see behaviors that fit with this tag, and correct those behaviors.
If the manager is keeping a performance log on the employee, these trends should manifest if they are correct, and fail to appear should they be incorrect.
2. Ignore what your manager says and do your job of managing
Almost the same as the point above, but subtly different. It doesn’t matter what the boss’s boss says. If you are managing your employee, work with your employee to make sure he meets performance expectations, provide feedback that drives to the desired behaviors, then, if the employee is performing the job duties according to expectations, then it kind of doesn’t matter what the boss’s boss says. Your assessment is based on better data and you can justify it.
What to do when you receive a customer complaint about your employee’s performance
In my previous articles, I provide warnings to managers who rely on indirect sources of information about employees’ performance in providing performance feedback. I generally advocate that a manager use direct observation to provide performance feedback, as this is the path that most likely will generate improved performance. Relying on indirect sources tends to erode trust and is often very confusing. I provide some tips on what to do about “indirect sources” here.
But there are times when you receive some sort of feedback about your employee’s performance that doesn’t allow you to wait until you can notice a trend and/or perform more direct observation. A common scenario is when you receive a complaint from a customer about something one of your employees has done. So let’s talk about what to do in this scenario!
1. Get info from the customer about what happened.
When a customer complains to you about what the employee did, try to get the points of fact about the situation, what was said and done during the situation, and where things stand now (has the issue actually been resolved, or does it still need resolution?”) Often with complaints – and if you are speaking directly with the customer – the details are fairly fresh in the customer’s mind – and usually given right away after the situation, so it is possible to get fairly specific quotes about what your employee said, specific info about what your employee did. Try to write these quotes/actions down and understand as many of the “facts” of the situation possible. Of course, if you receive this complaint indirectly (like via a survey), then this option is not available.
2. Resolve the customer issue/inform that you will take action
When a customer complains, there are often two complaints wrapped in one. Read more
Tips for how managers should use indirect sources of information about employees
In my previous articles, I’ve provided warnings about using indirect sources of information about your employees to provide performance feedback. The reasons are numerous, some of which are provided here and here. Indirect sources of information about your employees performance may include “feedback” from sources such as customers, peers or your boss. We may call this “feedback”, but it isn’t really feedback, since it is, by definition, time delayed and usually non-specific. This makes it, for the most part, non-actionable. So this information – while copious — doesn’t merit the high bar that is “feedback.” However, this is information about your employee, so let’s look at some ways to maximize the value of this information – instead of just passing it along as non-specific and non-immediate “feedback.”
What to do with indirect information about your employee
a) Try to get more info
If you get some sort of “feedback” about your employee, at least try to get information about what it is that the employee did to earn the feedback.
Let’s say your boss tells you that your employee, John, “Nailed it this week.”
Bonus! Six more reasons why giving performance feedback based on indirect information is risky
I’m a big advocate for managers to give performance feedback to their employees. But the performance feedback has to be of good quality. So let’s remove the sources of bad quality performance feedback. One of these is what I call “indirect sources” of information. These include customer feedback, feedback from your boss about your employee, the employee’s feedback. These are all sources of information about your employee – and provide useful information, but they are not sources of performance feedback.
In previous articles, further outlined what counts as direct source of information about an employee’s performance (here, here, and here). And in my prior article, I describe how indirect sources are, by definition, vague, time-delayed, and colored by value judgments, making them feedback sources that inherently produce bad performance feedback when delivered to the employee.
There are more reasons a manager should hesitate using indirect sources of info as “feedback.” Let’s go through them.
1. Have to spend a lot of time getting the facts straight
Let’s say your boss tells you that one of your employees, Carl, did a “bad job during a meeting.” The natural tendency is to give feedback to Carl about his performance, using the boss’s input. When sharing feedback from this indirect source, you will need to go through a prolonged phase of getting the facts straight. First you have to figure out the context (what was the meeting about?), then you have to figure out what the employee did, usually relying on some combination of what the feedback provider (not you) observed, which, is typically not given well, and what the employee says he did. This usually takes a long time, and by the time you’ve done this, you still aren’t sure as to what the actual behaviors were, but an approximation of the behaviors from several sources. So the confidence in feedback of what to do differently will be muted and less sure.
Areas of focus in providing performance feedback based on direct observation: Tangible artifacts
I advocate that managers provide performance feedback using direct observation as much as possible. In my previous articles, I recommend that managers set up practice environments and attempt to observe the performance directly to understand how an employee performs. I feel that if this is not done in your work environment, this is bad management design.
There is a third form of “direct observation” a manager can use to provide performance feedback: tangible artifacts.
When an employee does their job, they create all sorts of “artifacts” – the things they are supposed to produce. These can be things such as a project plan, software code, an analysis, an engineering schematic, a recording of a customer service call, a plate of food, etc. I call these things tangible artifacts. If you can print it out or touch it, then it is a tangible artifact. So email would be considered a potential tangible artifact. It is basically something that the person produces, whether digital or physical.
With tangible artifacts, the manager can provide performance feedback to the employee. In many cases this is a great source of direct observation of the employee’s performance. The manager can sit down with the employee, observe the artifact, and say what it is that is good or should be changed about future artifacts. If it a call center agent, the manager can listen to a recent call by the agent, and discuss what was correctly done and what should be done differently. The manager can also look at the “artifact” of what the agent did in the Customer Relation Management system, and provide feedback on this. In a restaurant, the manager can taste the food and look at the presentation of the foot, and provide feedback on what the employee did that created the results. Too much salt?
There are times when the artifact is so far off the mark, it is hard to determine what the employee did to create it. If this is the case, then the observation of the artifact is not direct enough, and more direct observation is needed. Read more
When to provide performance feedback using direct observation: On the job
In today’s article, I continue my series of sources of direct observation managers can use to provide improved performance feedback. Previously, I discussed how a manager can use practice sessions to provide specific and immediate feedback that dramatically increases the chances of high quality (and aligned) performance when it counts.
In today’s article, I discuss direct observation of the actual on the job performance as a source of performance feedback.
I advocate that managers should give performance feedback based on directly observed performance. However, there are some guidelines that need to be observed in attempting this.
1. Give performance feedback during the performance only if it doesn’t ruin the performance
When to provide performance feedback using direct observation: Practice sessions
In my previous article, I discuss how managers tend to rely on indirect sources of information to provide feedback, rather than direct sources of information. This creates a common mistake for managers. They have to rely on some form of hearsay about the employee, and then they provide feedback on what the hearsay says. It is only an assumption that the hearsay is correct, and, for this reason, employees generally don’t like getting “performance feedback” on such hearsay. Also, the feedback tends to not make any sense.
In today’s article, I’d like to discuss how to increase the amount of performance feedback based on direct observation.
Here are three “sources” of direct observation that a manager can engage in:
- Practice of the performance
- Direct observation of behaviors while they are being performed
- Artifacts that provide evidence of the performance
Let’s talk about “practice of the performance.” Not many managers consider this an option or utilize this, but this is a rich and useful source of providing performance feedback. Imagine an employee needing to do a critical presentation. The manager can improve the chances of success by scheduling a “practice” session of the presentation, in this case, “the performance”.
There are many advantages to this:
–The performer practices and gets better, both by practicing and by getting feedback
–The performer gets performance feedback that doesn’t get conflated with evaluation, since it isn’t the actual performance. That is, the performance feedback is “safer.”
–The performance feedback is specific to the performance and immediately given. You can stop the “practice” at any time and give feedback. That makes it as specific and immediate as possible, and increases the chances that the feedback will be behavior-based.
–The performer and the manager are aligned in what the expected performance is
–The manager has “skin in the game” for the performance
And it doesn’t have to be only on “big events” like a presentation. You could have a manager sit down with a software developer to see how they perform some of the expected tasks in a non-production environment. If the software is doing it right, the manager can say, “you’re doing it right.” Performance feedback is provided and everyone is happy and aligned. If there are some behaviors that can be corrected, the manager can provide that feedback. Read more
When you add something to an employee’s plate, you need to remove something from the plate
A common practice for a manager is to ask their employee to do something for them. We’ve seen this a lot. One example: The VP asks for some sort of recommendation, analysis, or revision on a strategy document that wasn’t expected before. Now your team has to do this new thing. It’s going to take time, effort, money. Perhaps also teamwork, new processes, sourcing new information. Lots of stuff. This is one example, and I’m sure you can think of other times where your manager has said, “I need something from you. . .”
As the manager put in this situation, you agree to your VP to get this done and you decide to put your top performer Jackie on this. Jackie is great at doing all sorts of things, and fulfilling this important request is something she can do.
So you go to Jackie and you say, “Jackie, I need to get a revised strategy document ready for the Vice President’s briefing next week. I know that you can do this.”
Jackie replies: “OK, I can do that. I appreciate being trusted to do this. However, I have the following things that I’m working on:
–I’m interviewing six candidates over the next three days
–I have meetings with our vendor to resolve issues with our contracts
–I need to present updates to our stakeholders on our top six projects in the next two days
–I have a deadline on creating a project plan for the project you assigned last week
–I’m filling in for Alex who is out of the office this week and next week
–I’m in the process of resolve a few issues that came in this morning from our operations team
–And I fly out early next week to meet with a potential new partner
(etc.)”
Clearly Jackie is a busy woman! However, the manager replies, “I need you to get this done for our VP.”
Jackie replies, “OK, so what should I drop?”
Your answer: “You need to get it all done.”
Wrong answer.
The Value of Providing Expectations: Positive reinforcement proliferates
In my previous article, I noted how setting team expectations can help a manager identify when and how to provide corrective feedback.
There is another value to providing expectations to your team: It allows you and your team to provide reinforcing feedback, and more of it. Reinforcing feedback, also known as positive feedback, is much easier to give and receive than corrective feedback. The key is to reinforce the right thing!
That’s where the expectation-setting comes in. If the team expectations have been set, then they can be reinforced. On the flip side, if no expectations have been set, then what gets reinforced will be generally random. Some of good behaviors get reinforced, and some of bad behaviors get reinforced.
So if you set team expectations, then you and your team are much more likely to reinforce the desired behaviors. As previously written on this blog, the manager should be spending a good chuck of time reinforcing positive behaviors.
In the example I used in the previous article, was the manager set the following general team expectation:
The team will foster an atmosphere of sharing ideas
In this example, let’s say the team actually conducts a meeting where the various team members support each others’ ideas, and allowed everyone to provide their input. The manager observes this and agrees that this reflects the expectation of “fostering an atmosphere of sharing ideas.”
Now the manager needs to reinforce this! The manager can reinforce this in a few different ways.
1. Feedback to the group at the end of the meeting
At the end of the meeting the manager can say:
“This meeting reflected what we are looking for in fostering an atmosphere of ideas. I saw people on the team asking others for their ideas, and I saw that ideas, once offered, weren’t shot down and instead were praised for being offered. This allowed more ideas to be shared. Thanks for doing this, and I like seeing this.”
The value of providing expectations: Performance feedback proliferates and becomes more artful
I’ve written several articles lately about providing expectations to your team on how to perform. These articles describe how to increase the artfulness of providing expectations or setting expectations for behavior. For example, the expectations should:
— be set earlier rather than later
— include standards of performance where documented
–provided general guardrails of behavior
— should attempt to tie into the larger strategy
I’ve also written articles about how providing performance feedback to your team as a key management skill. Now let’s take a look at an example of how providing expectations can help you in providing performance feedback.
1. Performance feedback you provide happens more naturally, immediately and specifically
If you have provided expectations for how the team works together, and the guardrails of behavior are established in some form, you now have a context and standard of performance to start any performance feedback discussion when you see the need for someone to change what they are doing. Let’s take a look at a performance feedback example:
