Why you should already be thinking about your next performance review.

Performance reviews are tricky business... you know the type.. "do I cut the green wire or the red wire?" kind of stuff. It's easy to get it wrong and maybe easier to have it blow up in your face. But when leaders realize the impact these meetings have, they can put in effort year round to ensure a successful delivery.

I won't focus on the performance reviews where you got more than you expected. Because let's face it, we don't usually pick apart a review unless we're unhappy with the outcome itself. we didn't get the rating we thought we would, the bonus or raise wasn't what we had hoped for, or now we have to build a personal performance plan to improve over the next 6 months.

When a leader has to deliver any of these messages through a poor review it can be like attempting to defuse a bomb, or perform a risky surgery (neither of which I know anything about). There's a small margin for success and if you haven't done the work leading up to the delivery, a negative outcome will likely drive that employee further away acceptable performance or even worse they could turn negative and start to distract your team.

Here's some rules for getting it done right. (performance reviews, not defusing bombs or risky surgery)

1) Don't let the performance review be the first time you're talking about performance.

• You'll have a hard time successfully delivering an underperforming review if you aren't familiar with and using the language of the review in your everyday coaching. For the uninvolved, coasting, self centered leader, this formal review is the only time they'll be providing any sense of direct feedback. If the day to day coaching, communication and accountability are absent outside of the two times a year you delivery reviews, then the ONLY option for a successful reception of a review is for it to hold stellar marks.  

2) Be prepared with specific examples

• In addition to socializing the language and meaning of the evaluation criteria consistently across your team, strong leaders will be making notes in the form of follow up to support performance ratings throughout the performance period. This ensures there is a record of communication and awareness of strengths and opportunities and lends to much less debate on delivery day. Of course these notes should be discussed with the employee (so they can improve/continue the behavior) and should include positive feedback as well as constructive criticisms. 

3) Get serious about your team's performance

• Performance reviews are huge for the individuals on your team. Their performance as a whole is a direct reflection of your leadership. Individual performance evaluations should be top of mind year round as you work with, communicate to, and support your team. Be realistic about how well you have provided tools for success. If you truly don't want your people to be surprised on delivery day, then don't surprise them with new information. You're a team, and teams communicate and work together. Even if you are the boss.

If you're the one being reviewed, you are trying to make sure the right wires are cut too. Here's some tips to make it easier on you:

1) Gain alignment long before your review is delivered

• You own as much of the process as your boss. He/She only documents it and (hopefully) provides coaching. As soon as you are collecting a check it would behoove you to get on the same page as your boss. Make sure you understand the objectives and criteria within the review. More importantly get very clear on the way your boss defines them and expects to see them executed. If you think "collaboration" means 'working with peers when asked' and your boss thinks it means 'actively seeking opportunities to partner with others'... Someone is going to be surprised on delivery day, and it will likely be you. 

2) Be prepared with specific examples

• Just like your boss, you should be keeping track of examples that match the criteria. If you have alignment, then you'll know if across time you demonstrated an attribute or ability more often than not. Armed with alignment and examples you are better prepared to accurately assess yourself and openly discuss any discrepancies in your evaluation. 

3) Don't take it personally...er, take it personally.  

• A performance review isn't an evaluation of you as a human being. It's not a measurement of your worth. It's an evaluation of how your performance (what you did) measures up against the expectations of (what they want you to do) your position. At the same time, look at it as an opportunity to learn and grow, don't just skip to the final rating and react. What elements of the review are accurate? How can you improve? What are the benefits of getting even better in certain areas? 

Finally, nobody does anything perfect all the time. I'd be as cautious about a leader who gives me straight A's as I would about a leader who has blindsided me with new information and a poor review.

No matter where you are in your career, reviews will come and go.When the reviews are said and done, ask yourself "Will I grow more thinking I have more to work on, or nothing left to learn?"

What I learned from the hardest times in my life...

Sometimes in life there are those people you look at and wonder how they got to be so lucky. They seem to have it all. Big houses, nice cars, exotic summer vacations, beautiful families and the latest fashions. The world appears to be at their footstool.

This does NOT describe my life.

There are also those who we see and we think, "I don't know how it could get any worse for them." For these people, life appears to be much harder. Things don't seem to go right and it just seems that as soon as they are starting to get their footing, they tumble back down. In these circumstances it's easy to think, at least early on, "things like this aren't supposed to happen to me!"

This was my life.

I remember the first time I experienced the thought, "things like this aren't supposed to happen to me!".

My parents were in the process of getting divorced and my parents were separated. My Dad was staying with a neighbor while they figured things out. I remember one day looking out my window and seeing my Dad shoveling our neighbors snow. He stopped, rested his elbow on the top of the shovel and looked up longingly at our house. Maybe he saw his confused son in the window, maybe he didn't. But that was the first time I realized they weren't going to live together again. As I came to this realization, I thought "things like this aren't supposed to happen to me!"

I had the same thought several years later when I lost my Mom to her third bout with breast cancer. I was 16, she had fought for more than a year with shunts, chemo, radiation and a spreading cancer that made her bones so brittle she broke her femur rolling over in bed. Again, this time as a 16 year old, I sat and thought "things like this aren't supposed to happen to me!".

The familiar feeling returned later that year I sat in front of the principle of my high school and was told I was being kicked out of school indefinitely for misconduct. No other school within a 40 mile radius would let me in. This wasn't great news for my probation officer OR the judge I already had a court date with. Again, I surveyed the situation and thought "things like this aren't supposed to happen to me!".

In September of 2010, just 3 days before the due date of our first child, we went to the hospital when my wife hadn't felt our son kick in several hours. Once we were hooked up to the ultrasound machine, one nurse turned to two, and then four and then six, and eventually we were left alone. In a dark room and sitting next to a silent ultrasound machine, we held each other and through our tears we thought, "things like this aren't supposed to happen to us."

My story isn't special.

I don't write any of this to solicit sympathy or pity on my behalf. In contrast, I've learned that my story isn't special and many others have experienced tragedies and hardships equal to or greater than my own. What I have learned is these circumstances cause significant grooves in our life's path, and where they lead is totally up to us. Truly, it's not what we experience but how we respond to it that yields our return. It's one thing to experience hard times, it is entirely another thing to grow from them. Through my experiences and incredible leaders around me, I learned I was thinking the wrong way. Instead of thinking "things like this aren't supposed to happen to me!" I started thinking "What can this experience teach me, and how can I use it to help others?" This has made all the difference.


Life's challenging moments (and everyone has them) can plant and nurture the seeds of determination, persistence, toughness, and fortitude. When we cultivate these seeds by facing our fears, tackling hard things, seeking out new challenges, and most importantly, helping others to do the same... we develop Leadership Grit.





Photo Credit: Kristen Self Photography

Running... and Leadership

I try to be consistent in my efforts to become a strong runner. I've competed in several marathons, ultra-marathons and Ironman triathlon events but have never really considered myself a true “runner”. Maybe it’s because I have a brother who qualifies for Boston almost as easily as he ties up his Nike’s. Or maybe it’s because I have never felt that “runner high” that avid runners claim to crave and enjoy.

This fall, after a poor showing at a race, I re-motivated myself to become a “runner”. To do this, I sought out more difficult courses for training runs. One of these courses includes a hill by my house about a half mile long and about 20% in grade (a highway onramp is about 7%). It’s painful running this hill but this hill has taught me.   

FOCUS!

The hill teaches me Focus: A runner must focus consistently on technique, a critical component to a successful run.  Focus must be maintained for more than a few seconds or one hill, it must last across miles, and in some cases for hours. Many don’t think about running as something to be learned. But when technique gets sloppy efficiency diminishes, injuries occur, and overall performance suffers.

CONTROL! 

The hill teaches me Control: A runner must use control. When running this hill, charging too hard on the ascent will result in a shameful walk (or crawl) up the remainder of the hill and possibly throughout the remainder of your run. On the descent, allowing yourself to go too fast can injure your knees, hammer your quads and sap your energy.

These principles are easily applied to leadership.

Focus: Like proper technique for the runner, leaders have to be intensely focused on what they are doing and how it is impacting their overall objectives. This focus must be consistent. When leaders get sloppy meetings become diluted, objectives become murky and new projects creep in and threaten the strategic direction of the team/organization. This focus can’t only be for a meeting or for a day, it has to be constantly, maintained in good times and bad.

Control: Great leaders exercise control of their emotions, passions and expertise. When these things are not controlled, leaders can damage relationships, miss opportunities for innovation, praise, correction or communication around critical areas. A controlled leader is well positioned to help others accomplish their goals and reach new heights.   

As a bit of a bonus, and perhaps most importantly, this hill teaches and reminds me about responsibility. There is no excuse for the way I run a hill other than me. Sure there are rainy days and wind and cold but anyone who runs the hill will have to face those. They aren't inherent problems only for me. Some may tackle the hill almost effortlessly while others of us slog slowly up the hill mired by self doubt and aching muscles.  

But in the throes of suffering, the hill asks the most pointed questions that only I can answer. Did I get enough sleep? Am I eating/fueling right? Should I have eaten that 2^nd (and 3rd) donut? Have I stayed consistent enough to perform at a high level? Have I prepared enough, educated enough and sacrificed enough to tackle this hill and others? Are my physical abilities lacking or is it my mental toughness that fails me when things get hard? 

Only you will know the answers; but the hills can teach you.

Thankfully, I learned all at once these are just excuses for poor leadership.

If you have been in almost any type of management or leadership position, you have likely said or heard another leader say the following about an employee. "They don't want to be here", "They are so lazy" or the nails-on-a-chalkboard worst "I shouldn't have hired them". Early in my career as a leader, I had some of these same thoughts.

Thankfully I learned all at once these are just excuses for poor leadership.

I had an employee who was consistently underperforming. In spite of multiple warnings and written warnings his performance hadn't improved. Finally I moved through the HR process and submitted a request for termination. About the time I submitted the request for termination this employee came to me on a Monday morning and said "I realized this weekend that I would be foolish to not take advantage of the opportunity to be on this team and work for this company." I had heard similar affirmations before so I didn't believe this was any different. But over the next few weeks something amazing happened. This employee was more committed than ever before, and as a result was working harder and getting better results than he ever had. You can imagine how excited I was for him, and my team. But reality set in, and my request for termination was approved. I was told that since the request had been approved, the termination had to take place. I was surprised when my boss had me join him in his office to deliver the news to this employee that we were letting him go on the grounds of poor performance. We collected his belongings and walked him out of the building.

I had two career altering  learning moments from this experience.

First, I learned that when people connect what they do each day to a bigger picture, they are often unstoppable. This employee had connected his daily tasks, his job, to some vision for himself in the future. I didn't know at the time what that vision was or how he saw it fit, but I'm confident it had little to do with team or organizational goals and more with who he wanted to become, and what he wanted to accomplish in the coming months and years of his life.

Second, I learned that when making that critical decision to terminate someone, a leader should be very confident that they have done all they can do. In that moment where I sat across the table and watched this man lose his job at my request, all I could hear in my mind was "you didn't do all you could to help him succeed". While I did send emails, set expectations and have "hard conversations", I didn't spend enough time sitting with him to understand how he worked, practicing with him to fine tune his craft, or spending enough time helping him learn to be more efficient and effective by demonstration. Worst of all, I didn't take the time to understand what motivated him and how I could connect what he does on a daily basis to that vision.

Think about those who work for you, what gets them through the door in the morning? What do they see for themselves in 2, 5 or 10 years? How do the tasks you ask them to accomplish each day contribute to that vision they hold for themselves? How are you helping them to succeed? Are you committing adequate time to coaching, demonstrating efficient methods to complete critical tasks and facilitating successful experiences?

If you find the right answers to these questions, you are well on your way to helping your team realize success you have never imagined.  

If you have a smart phone, this is happening to you...

We are all busy, you and I both have dreams and aspirations of what we WISH we could do, if we only had more time. Here's the reality though, you, we, likely have more time than we want to acknowledge.

Apple has built a "time accountability" feature into their IOS 9 update, and I'm not sure they intended to do it. The new battery usage feature shows you not only what is killing your battery but also shows you what is killing your time. This update shows just how much time is being spent on what phone applications across a 24 hour and 7 day period. If your heart just skipped a beat, or you took a big gulp, you may not want to read on.

I think of myself as a productive person who wastes very little time. I have a family, a full time job, am a small business consultant and public speaker, I volunteer at a non-profit and I'm an employment specialist for my community. And, like you, I have dreams and aspirations of what I want to do and accomplish, if only I had more time. Here's the top 4 time sucks I on my smart phone in the past week:

Application	% of battery usage	hours spent
Facebook	44	5.5
Text Messages	9	2.4
Email	7	0.75
Phone	3	2.6

There's 168 hours in a week, and certainly, the above calculation doesn't account for much of it. But what it does account for is a lot of time that could be spent on something productive. Now, only you and I know how each minute is spent and if it's worth our time. But in my career as a mentor, leader, coach and consultant I constantly see potential unrealized by none other than an unwillingness to sacrifice time. 

What would you do with the time you wish you had? More importantly, are you willing to use it?

The Platform of Opportunity

When I was younger, my dad would take us to a local swimming pool. Like many pools, there was a low-dive and a high-dive that we enjoyed jumping off of. But this pool was different in one particular way. High above the high-dive was the "Platform" there is probably an actual name for it but the platform wasn't even a diving board. It was a long runway leading to an inevitable free fall that left you breathless. Those who dared to jump off the platform, had to first, make it up the long set of stairs. This was a trek of self-doubt and self-reflection. Only those who found the courage on the way up, managed to jump. Those who let fear get the best of them, arrived at the top only to descend back  down the stairs with only dreams of what might have been...

Great Opportunity is a platform, towering above us. And the path leading up to it is the choices we have to make. Sometimes, those choices, the climb towards the opportunity to do something great, are scary and riddled with self doubt, fear and worst case scenario thinking. But, for those with a drive to experience something special, the desire outweighs the fear, and opportunity is realized.

Not all opportunity, is a perfect swan dive, or splash-less entry. There will still be belly-flops and back-slaps. But you will walk away able to say, "I did that".

What is Choice?

A recent Toyota Camry commercial says "one bold choice, leads to another." While buying a Camry, might be fun, wise, or other, It's not a bold choice. The phrase makes a lot of sense though. And for those who recognize the the bold choices and the, not so bold choices, will have more fortuitous circumstances. 

Choices precede opportunity and you have to see the choice standing in the way of the opportunity.