Performance Management - Using 360 Degree Feedback

One of the tools that I believe is under utilized and/or poorly executed in performance management is 360-degree feedback.  I have found it to be worth the effort it requires both as it relates to my own performance assessments and to those that have received evaluations from me.

The value of a 360-degree assessment comes from the fact that no one individual or supervisor ever has a complete picture of an individual's performance.  As I've noted in my recent blogs on performance management, a leader often has many individuals reporting to them and has their own individual tasks and duties to perform.  So there isn't the time on the part of one person to get the full story.  In addition, with only one perspective in play, we run the risk of maximizing our personal biases.  This can mean either overly positive or overly negative performance assessments.  So the ability to assess the performance of a direct report in a comprehensive fashion is significantly aided by enlisting the assistance of others who interact with the person being evaluated either on a more frequent basis or in ways that the leader can't possibly replicate. 

The way that I have approached 360-degree assessments in my past leadership roles has been through a partnership approach with my direct reports.  We work together first to identify categories of people that we would engage in the evaluation process.  Oftentimes this has meant that we are looking to capture feedback from peers, subordinates, and external clients/customers for the process. 

There are several keys here.  First, we are looking for a representative sample of key groups of individuals that the employee interacts with.  We are not going to be exhaustive in this process and work to capture all people in a given category.  Second, I strongly believe in having subordinates be part of this evaluation process.  They are the people who, on a day-to-day basis, directly experience the quality of leadership skill that the individual being evaluated brings to bear in their work.  Third, I also see value in including external contacts in the evaluation process.  These evaluators provide an unique perspective on relationships outside of the work unit or organization that are critical to organizational success. 

One of the first reactions to this sampling procedure might be "Well, wouldn't the person being evaluated simply make sure they picked people that would give them a positive evaluation?"  If left entirely to the individual that could happen.  However, the way I approach the final selection of the 360 degree evaluators is more by way of elimination.  Once the key categories of evaluators has been established the next question I ask is whether there is anybody that the employee would not want me to talk to and the reasons why.  There may be very valid reasons for non-selection, including both personal and professional conflicts that would not support constructive feedback.  That being said we might still proceed to include these potentially "hostile" evaluators.  I have done this with 360s performed on me.  The feedback received might in fact be very constructive and valuable in helping to improve personal performance and should not be discounted out-of-hand.  However, both the leader and the person being evaluated should understand the context or circumstances in which the feedback might be provided and weigh it accordingly.  Ultimately, I believe the entire evaluation is not about getting 100% positive results, but rather forms the basis for goals and objectives for ongoing leadership development.  Our harshest critics might in be our greatest source of knowledge about where to focus our improvement efforts!

I strongly believe that anonymity in the 360 degree evaluation process is critical in getting good feedback on performance.  I believe this is the most effective way to get honest and open feedback.  It does have the potential drawback in that you cannot do follow-up or seek clarification on information provided.  However, I have seen some extraordinarily bad outcomes when this anonymity was not assured.  While some individuals are prepared to provide feedback regardless of format many others tend to water down their feedback in the interests of preventing hurt feelings.  In the worst case, particularly where a leader is being evaluated, there can be huge actual or perceived risks to the working relationship or even the employment status of the evaluator.

The 360 process must also include self-assessment.  Ultimately assessment, learning and action come from personal insights and commitments.  So there is great value in personally evaluating one's strengths and opportunities for improvement, identifying potential challenges in achieving greater levels of success, and finally (and most importantly) setting goals and objectives for the coming year. 

Make no mistake.  A 360 degree evaluation process is a lot of work.  As a leader (and as the person being evaluated) you are putting additional workload on others to give time, thought and effort to an evaluation process.  As a leader, there is also significant effort required on your part to manage the process and synthesize the diverse perspectives into one common evaluation report back to your direct report.  This is often one of the main reasons that leaders or organizations do not pursue the 360 degree evaluation option.  In addition, the culture of the organization must be supportive of this type of assessment.  If your organizational culture isn't one that can handle giving or receiving constructive feedback or isn't one that is "trust-based" a 360 degree evaluation process is unlikely to succeed or accomplish much.

However, I believe the benefits of a 360 degree evaluation process far outweigh the challenges - if properly done.  Individuals should be assured of getting a comprehensive assessment of their skills and abilities; they get feedback from more than just one person and can have more confidence that the evaluation is less subject to personal bias; they have a better sense of how their personal assessment does or does not match with the views of others; and, ultimately the 360 degree assessment provides a strong base for developmental efforts. 

With the right effort, commitment, intent, transparency and connection to organizational goals, a 360 degree evaluation can help you build leadership skill and capacity - including your own. 

______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Performance Management - It's Not a Magic Act!

If you are old-school like me, one of the enduring images of magic is the proverbial rabbit out-of-the-hat trick.  For some reason I even conjure up images of magic being performed by looney tunes characters - Bugs Bunny turning the tables on Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam.  Aside from Bugs making whatever scheme backfire on his nemesis at the end of the skit, the lead-up to the end is always characterized by more than a few chase scenes and a lot of gunfire.  It seems to me that too many of us adopt this same approach to the performance management process.  The evaluator and the person being evaluated look forward with some element of dread and anxiety to the "required" annual (if we are lucky) performance appraisal, both hoping to pull the rabbit out of the hat at the end of the session. 

In my last blog entry on this topic, I focused my attention largely on development of performance objectives.  In this blog, I'm going to advocate for meaningful, ongoing continuous performance feedback relative to those mutually agreed upon goals. 

A major reason why both a supervisor and a direct report approach the annual performance meeting with so much anxiety is that all too often they are not sure what to expect in this once-per-year session. In preparing for an annual meeting, the supervisor tries to come up with a meaningful assessment and dredge their memory for examples of good performance or areas for improvement.  Too often as well, the supervisor is pressed for time as they attempt to fit in a one-hour appointment with their direct report while trying to deal with a myriad of other demands on their time.  How many of us can relate to the experience of a performance appraisal being postponed multiple times?  For the direct report, who may have been tasked with self-assessment as part of the performance review and has had limited feedback on performance since last year, they walk into the annual review guessing at what might come up in the meeting - are they doing as well as they think they are, what things might they have to defend against if they disagree with their supervisor's assessment, and so on.  Both supervisor and direct report are waiting to see whether they pull a rabbit - or an elephant - out of the hat.

There is a far better alternative.  If an organization and its leaders are truly interested in effective performance management - and in creating an environment in which their staff grow and develop over time - then performance feedback must be provided to an individual on a continuous basis.  I'm not suggesting that there has to be daily monitoring and reporting back to an individual, nor anything that starts to smack of micro-management of individual performance.  I believe that one of the key objectives of performance management has to be growth and development and that is only going to be achieved by allowing individuals to work on their own, make some mistakes and get regular support and guidance.  Again, as identified in the previous blog, the focus of such monitoring should be on results being achieved, individual behaviours and other factors impacting agreed-upon objectives.

So what does continuous feedback look like?  There might be immediate concern or questions about how can I as a leader provide continuous feedback to a direct report if I have trouble even finding the time for an annual performance review?  The answer lies in providing this continuous feedback in a different way.  I do not believe it has to be as formal as the annual performance appraisal and it should be incorporated into other opportunities that likely already exist.  I expect that on a regular basis a leader and their direct report interact as it relates to projects, tasks or duties that have been assigned.  These project/task updates provide not only an opportunity to evaluate results being achieved but present a chance to touch base with the individual and provide immediate and personalized feedback in the moment.  The leader can immediately reinforce and support good performance or provide coaching to better performance related to specific events.  The leader and the direct report have a concrete example that can be used to reinforce expectations and goals set in the annual performance appraisal.  There may even be an opportunity to adjust objectives based on real time information, changes in priorities for the organization since the last formal meeting, or to identify the need for extra support for the direct report to be successful. 

Continuous feedback, coaching and performance feedback provides great benefits to both leader and direct report.  The leader has opportunity to demonstrate their skills, can ensure that projects/ tasks are in fact progressing as planned, and ultimately ensures effective advancement of organizational objectives.  For the individual receiving continuous feedback, they are assured of ongoing support as required, they are clear about expectations at all times, and they feel valued and recognized for their efforts on a consistent basis.

More importantly for both parties there are no surprises in this approach to performance management.  Neither is waiting for the curtain to rise on the magic show.  Neither party should be approaching the performance appraisal with dread or uncertainty.  All this should have been done away with because there has been regular communication throughout the past year.  Both the leader and the direct report are on the same page, both understand each other's expectations, both understand the realities that may have impacted on performance, and both know what yet needs to be done to achieve or set new goals. 

Make no mistake, ongoing performance monitoring and feedback still requires effort and energy.  However, it comes in smaller doses and has the benefit of not letting performance issues fester for a whole year - far easier to course correct in small doses than having to address a major performance issue later on. 

If you engage with your staff on a regular basis your job as leader becomes easier - and you won't need any magic to get a great performance!
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Performance Management - it is what you make of it!

A previous blog entry of mine on team-based compensation generated more than a few e-mails, questions and comments.  The themes that came back to me included:

• Are we willing to remove the people or teams that hold everyone else back?
• How do you get everyone engaged and moving in the same direction?
• If I'm a high achiever/performer why would I want to carry the weight of those that don't perform?
• What if the goals and objectives set for me are not achievable or simply don't make sense?  I'm set up to fail from the beginning!

I believe that one of the most - if not the most - important mechanisms to address these questions and concerns is a well developed and managed performance management system.  There are so many aspects to what I believe constitutes a good performance management system that I'm actually going to tackle the subject in more than one blog entry.  I'm also going to approach the issue from the basis of what I've seen be successful from my own personal experience and learning over the past 20 plus years of management.

Unfortunately, too many of us - leaders and followers alike - approach the performance management exercise with anxiety and dread.  Historically, the process seems to have been defined by its potential for conflict and disappointment - and tremendous relief when it's over.  However, I'm going to suggest that performance management, if well done, can create the exact opposite feelings in most cases.

I'm sure most leaders recognize that effective performance management is key to maintaining and increasing employee commitment and productivity.  Moreover, with current and projected labour shortages no organization can afford to lose current staff through poor, or non-existent, performance management practices.  Yet we seem to miss a golden opportunity to retain staff - and develop them - through an effectively structured and supported performance management process.

First of all, there must be some fundamental building blocks in place to set the stage for the performance management process.  At the outset, the organization itself must have clearly established strategic directions to which it is expecting to align all individual goals and performance expectations.  It's more than a tad difficult and frustrating for an employee to be told they are not making the grade if the organization itself has not been clear about what its goals and objectives are.  Just as importantly, the organization should take time to clearly articulate its vision, values, and expected behaviours - basically be clear about the culture that defines the organization.  An organization might be very clear about its objectives (e.g., revenue generation) but not be at all pleased with how those goals were achieved (e.g., illegal activity).  Both the goals and the cultural expectations should be well articulated to set the stage for performance management.

This is just the start, however, of the goal setting process.  Large strategic goals need to be translated down to goals for individual business units of the organization and then down through to the individual.  A large strategic direction like revenue generation may have very different application and meaning for the Finance department versus the Human Resources department versus an operational division or program.  Time must be taken to make the large strategic goals relevant to the individual in their day-to-day performance and as part of the formal performance management process.

In addition to the establishment of the hard metrics around organizational/sub-unit performance, goals should be clear as it relates to the performance behaviours identified above.  Just as with the work required to explicitly describe what realization of strategic goals looks like, similar work must be undertaken to describe in factual terms what it means to be a good performer/leader within the organization.  The organization must be able to paint a clear picture of what it means to be a good performer within the organizational culture - and each organization will have distinct features and performance expectations of its staff, so this is not just a cut-and-paste effort from looking at what has worked for other businesses.

Finally, there must be meaningful discussion between a leader and the person who reports to them on the goals, objectives and performance expectations.  This is critical in not only establishing the performance parameters but also in ensuring that there is understanding and buy-in to the objectives.  This conversation goes a long way to ensuring that both the leader and the direct report agree that the performance objectives are in fact achievable or actually even relate to the job the direct report is doing.  There may even be opportunity to understand or appreciate under what circumstances the desired performance might not be achievable - e.g., key environmental variables change.  Moreover, this is a point at which other non-strategic objectives and goals can be discussed.  There is much in the day-to-day role of any employee or manager that is not strategic in nature but is critically important to maintaining and advancing operational effectiveness of a business unit - good fiscal oversight, resolution of operational problems, hiring of other staff, etc.  These basic functions require attention and consideration in setting performance management objectives. 

At this point I have only discussed what is required as the base foundation for effective and meaningful performance management.  In subsequent entries I will focus on processes of continuous feedback, 360 degree performance reviews, and connection to reward and recognition systems.
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

How engaged are we with employee engagement?

I recently came across two different articles focused on the same fundamental issue - employee engagement.  The first article by Dov Seidman started with the very provocative headline of "(Almost) Everything We Think About Employee Engagement is Wrong".  The article  http://www.forbes.com/sites/dovseidman/2012/09/20/everything-we-think-about-employee-engagement-is-wrong/  got a lot of reaction from the author's readers and from those I shared it with.  And just this week there was a complementary article in my local paper entitled "The fine art of faking it".  

Both articles, in one way or another, touched on the "cost" of employee engagement efforts.  In one respect, this cost was referenced in terms of actual expenditures on extensive morale boosting efforts undertaken by all manner of companies and industries.  In another respect, the cost of not having engaged staff was identified in its impact on quality of customer service, product quality and other objectives.  In health care, there have been number of connections drawn between engaged staff and better patient outcomes.  So clearly there is a business imperative for leaders to improve their employee engagement and positively impact their ability to deliver on organizational mandates.

It's not as though there hasn't been a lot of effort and energy put into employee engagement efforts.  Certainly many organizations have put a significant amount of resources into surveying their staff, holding staff forums, revamping their employee recognition programs, emphasizing the importance of performance reviews and feedback, and trying to implement team-building exercises.  Unfortunately the effort, and the cost, has not been reflected in the results.  In some cases, despite these efforts, employee engagement scores have actually gone down.

So what's going on?  What are we missing?  What do we have to do differently as leaders to get better employee engagement and impact our ability to deliver quality service to our customers?  There are certainly a few clues to be found in both articles that certainly resonate with me personally and that I believe passionately in.  First, I believe that we have to make a very deliberate and conscious effort to move away from some of the mentality that exists in our leadership/management ranks that employee engagement is a cost or expense line on our financial statements.  This becomes a particularly challenging notion to overcome when employee engagement scores aren't going up as a result of current efforts and the need to achieve other "bottom line" results would seemingly benefit from a redirection of resources.  We need to change the tone of our approach from one of cost management to one of investment in our most valuable resource.

Second, we need to reconsider whether our customers are in fact our #1 priority - or should staff be our #1 priority?  In healthcare particularly this can be a very challenging discussion and one that I have struggled with myself.  However, if you accept the connection between quality of service and an engaged workforce then it seems clear that there must be a greater emphasis on staff and enjoyment of their work environment.

Third, and touched on by the picture above, leaders/managers must take steps to align all elements of the workplace to make it easier for staff to do great work.  Slogans, lunches, team-building exercises and similar exercises may create hope at the beginning of an effort.  They may also create expectations of positive change as well.  However, all of this effort is easily derailed once a staff member encounters the reality of a poorly done (or not done) performance appraisal, the lack of equipment to do his/her job, or the barrier of some bureaucratic process which confounds an ability to do good work.  Hence, why engagement scores can often go down when an employee engagement effort is launched - reality fails to meet expectations and cynicism rises.

Finally, I believe it is fundamentally important in all of these efforts at employee engagement that leaders be sincere in their commitment to such efforts.  Leaders cannot just be engaged at the launch of an employee engagement effort.  Even more frequent events - monthly or quarterly - in large settings are not likely to demonstrate to staff an understanding of their challenges or the barriers they face in trying to do good work.  Nor can an employee engagement merely be a priority or initiative of the human resources department.  It has to be a specific performance expectation of all senior leaders and departments. 

Ultimately as well, I believe that to be truly successful an employee engagement effort must come from a leader's own interest in other people.  If you really don't involve yourself with your staff and set that tone for your direct reports it's unlikely that you will make major headway in engagement efforts.  In addition, individual leadership actions outside of formal employee engagement events and pronouncements must match the direction and philosophy of the initiative.  Nothing will do more damage more quickly to employee engagement efforts if leaders are seen as not sharing in the same challenges, making the same sacrifices, or reaping the same rewards as their front line staff.

Ironically enough the best success in employee engagement is likely to come less from a focus on bottom line results as a driving force - profit, revenue stream, customer satisfaction, market share - than from a sincere interest in your people for it's own sake.  If you are genuinely interested and committed to your staff, prepared to truly engage with them on a day-to-day basis, then success on the organization's bottom line metrics will come.  Your employees will know when you are being genuine versus just seeing them as a means to an end.  Your leadership shows in every interaction you have and every action you take.

So how engaged are you with employee engagement?  It's a major effort and requires a lot of your energy.  Are you prepared for this leadership challenge?
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.