Performance feedback is a means to improve your expectation-providing skills
The Manager by Designsm blog discusses the art of providing feedback, such as making your feedback specific and immediate and attempting to describe the preferred behavior.
Now let’s take this to a new level. When giving performance feedback to an employee, you are in the position to specifically articulate what you want the employee to do. This is handy information, because it could be a clue that you never actually set this expectation in the first place.
Let’s say you are in charge of a team working on a significant systems delivery. The team has been working on it for a couple of months without significant issue, and the Vice President comes into your office saying, “I don’t know what’s going on with this systems delivery project!” OK, so this is a problem. Something needs to be solved. You determine that the VP wants a visibility to the project status, and you work out a format and timing for getting this info to the VP. Nobody wanted this crisis to happen, but it did.
Examples of providing expectations to your team
I have written in the Manager by Design blog about the scourge of public feedback. Public feedback is when managers try to solve performance problems by addressing their entire organization at once. I make the case that doing this a) does not change the behavior of the one needing to change and b) could make worse the behavior of those who are already performing correctly. Public feedback is an example of a manager short cut and should be stopped.
So let’s look at — in a more positive manner — what a manager should focus on doing in a public setting: Setting expectations.
I would like to recommend to all of you managers out there to focus your announcements, all-team meetings and proclamations on the theme of setting expectations. Doing so will help you down the course of leading, and the more you set expectations with your staff, the more likely they will actually do the things that you expect. So let’s look at some of the things you can do to set expectations.
a) Start your presentations or announcements with “I’d like to provide you my expectations.”
Perhaps this is too simple of an idea to even document, but how often do you hear managers doing this? Not enough in my estimation, so let’s increase this introductory statement on the part of managers. By using the “I’d like to provide you my expectations” line, you are now forced to articulate what you do want.
In doing this, you can now embark on a project that allows you to identify the behaviors and values that you’d like to see on your team. Let’s try a few!
How to ask for feedback from your employees on your management skills (part 3)
This is the final part of a three part series on how managers can ask for feedback on how they manage. Managers get spotty feedback on how they manage, and employees are perhaps the best source of feedback, but it can be tricky. In my previous articles, I outlined how the manager can set up the conversation, and how to handle the actual conversation. In today’s article I discuss how to take this feedback conversation to the next level.
Here are the tips!
1. Help the employee provide better feedback
It’s a little “meta” to give feedback on giving feedback, but since employees are not necessarily skilled at it (nor are managers), coaching in this area in private and in a structured conversation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. First, if the feedback is artfully given (behavior-based, not generalizing, no value judgments), then reinforce that this feedback was given well. If the feedback is not artfully given, you need to clarify what you are looking for, and provide examples. For example, if an employee gives you the un-artful feedback that “You are a terrible manager,” ask, “Can you give me examples from your experience that led you to this conclusion?” Then if the employee provides examples, then say, “That’s what I need, specific examples so I can take action.” If you give un-artful feedback on un-artful feedback, i.e., “Your feedback sucks,” then the conversation will not go well.
How to get out of really useless meetings
In my previous article, I propose a simple set of questions to determine the usefulness or uselessness of a given meeting. In it, I explore what to do when you can answer “Yes” to one or more of the questions. Today, I explore what to do when you answer “Yes” to NONE of the questions. That means it’s a really bad meeting and is worthless to you and probably a bunch of other people. You should get out of it.
First, let’s review the five questions for determining the meeting’s usefulness:
Do the other attendees bring some value to me? (Y/N)
Do I bring value to the other attendees? (Y/N)
Does the anticipated value of the meeting exceed what I can get accomplished if I don’t attend? (Y/N)
Will the meeting content get me un-stuck, make my work better, easier, more efficient, or compelling? (Y/N)
Will I have to do something differently in my job as a result of the meeting (Y/N)
Now think of a meeting that you are dreading to attend. Why are you dreading it? It’s because you answered “No” to all five questions. You should get out of that meeting. Here are some suggestions for how to do it: Read more
How to get out of what seem to be useless meetings
In previous blog entries, I propose a simple set of questions to determine the usefulness or uselessness of a meeting. In today’s post, I’ll help you use this framework to get out of the useless meetings! Ready? Let’s go!
Ok, so the first thing to do is to become familiar with the set of questions you need to ask before accepting or walking into the meeting:
Do the other attendees bring some value to me? (Y/N)
Do I bring value to the other attendees? (Y/N)
Does the anticipated value of the meeting exceed what I can get accomplished if I don’t attend? (Y/N)
Will the meeting content get me un-stuck, make my work better, easier, more efficient, or compelling? (Y/N)
Will I have to do something differently in my job as a result of the meeting (Y/N)
Now think of a meeting that you consider worthless and ask yourself these five questions in regards to this meeting.
Let’s clarify what “dealing with ambiguity” means
Managers should help bring clarity to their team and make decisions on the best available information. That is a key role of managers. But somehow this gets lost. Let’s look at the concept of “dealing with ambiguity” and see how this can happen:
In many work environments, one of the key competencies managers and employees are expected to have is “dealing with ambiguity.” For example, if you look at Microsoft’s education competencies (listed here), “dealing with ambiguity” is defined as follows:
Dealing with Ambiguity: Can effectively cope with change; can shift gears comfortably; can decide and act without having the total picture; can comfortably handle risk and uncertainty.
With this definition, it appears that one who “deals with ambiguity” could be someone who accepts the ongoing state of ambiguity. That is, “dealing with ambiguity” means “living such that ambiguous things stayed ambiguous.” Or in other words, “Keep things ambiguous—that’s OK.”
Nowhere in the description of this competency, surprisingly, is the ongoing effort to reduce ambiguity.
Nine simple tips to make meetings more compelling
In my previous posts, I described a common mistake that managers make in regards to meetings: Calling mandatory meetings. In subsequent posts, I’ve listed criteria what makes a meeting more compelling from the participants’ view, and how you can even measure and track your meeting quality based on this criteria. In this post, provide nine baseline tips for making meetings more compelling, and helping you move your meetings up the meeting quality index.
1) Wait until there is a reason to call a meeting.
Instead of scheduling a regular meeting, and then try to find a use for it as that meeting approaches, wait until there is a reason for the meeting, and then call the meeting. For large groups, sometimes it is difficult to find a meeting time at the last minute, so the way to work around this is to have a regular meeting scheduled (such as a quarterly meeting). But if you don’t have immediate and obvious ideas for what will fill that time with, then cancel the meeting. Even if you have paid a deposit on the room, you’ll still save money if you don’t have immediate ideas for what the meeting is for.
A leading indicator for team performance: Chart your meeting quality
This is part of a series of posts designed to help break the mandatory meeting cycle. The better you make the meetings, the less you’ll need to make them mandatory. In my previous post, I described some basic criteria for what makes a meeting valuable and compelling to the attendees. With these criteria, you can start to measure the quality of your meetings or any meeting you attend.
After a meeting, it is often ambiguous whether the meeting was a success. The person calling the meeting may have obtained or shared the information they wanted to, but was it a compelling meeting?
Here are some ways to measure whether the meeting was compelling – for all participants. You can then chart this out and create an index over time to create a leading indicator index of meeting quality that you or your team members attend. Read more
Criteria to generate a virtuous cycle for meetings
How do you make meetings more compelling? This is the latest of a series of blog posts discussing how to transition from making meetings mandatory to having an organization with meetings that people actually want to attend.
Many meetings are not compelling, they are just required. Meetings should be required to be compelling. I previously discussed some alternatives to even calling a meeting – if it is unidirectional communication, then a meeting isn’t necessary. In today’s post, I discuss the criteria for what makes a meeting useful and compelling, and thus not required to be mandatory.
Your basic goal should not be attendance at the meeting. Your goal should be instead to create value in the meeting, whether it is a large group meeting or a small team meeting.
Here is my set of criteria for what compels an employee to attend any meeting, whether or not it is deemed mandatory:
The first step to getting out of the mandatory meeting cycle: Don’t call meetings if you were planning one-way communication
In my previous posts (here and here), I discussed why calling “mandatory” meetings is a bad idea. It doesn’t work at getting more attendance and it creates contempt for the meeting before it even started. Yet, many meetings are still called “mandatory”. This blog post is the first in a series dedicated to help you break the cycle of making meetings mandatory.
As explained in the prior posts, if you feel compelled to make a meeting mandatory, then it is an indicator that the meeting isn’t worth having.
So the first question should be: Is the meeting format even necessary?
If you were planning to convey information to your team or group – and had no plans for additional interaction — then the meeting format isn’t necessary. This is also true of other “guest speakers” you may have planned. If they were planning to talk in front of the group – and nothing more—then the meeting isn’t necessary. Read more
