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By Susan Trivers

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By Mike Krutza, Co-Author, Jodi Wiff

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By Mike Krutza, co-author, Jodi Wiff

High Achievers In The Workplace

In the workplace, we encounter different kinds of people who work with us. There is a stream of different personalities, different attitudes, different capabilities, and different competencies among employees. Along the way, as we dig deep and spend time with each other, we tend to know more about how to deal with specific personalities or potentials of people. In the case of an employee who is a high achiever, it is a challenge to keep and teach him or her.

As a leader, you must know how to deal not only with stubborn employees or poor performing individuals. But also, you need to know how to deal with the few high achievers in your organization. Unlike the former, high performing employees have only a few methods to keep them motivated and perform at their best.

Strategies To Deal With High Achiever Employees

• Identify the keen approach, styles, and practice of such individuals. Let them do their performances in their own methods. Remember that these people may not fully conform to the “controlled process” you set. They may have already done things using their own techniques to accomplish the tasks rather than follow your prescribed method. You may not teach them how to fish when they already know how to.
• Challenge them. Because they are the assets, maximize them. Give them tasks that challenge them more, those which trigger them more, make them more enthusiastic and more thrilled. Allow them to grow by feeding their strengths. They become more happy and satisfied if their strengths are well addressed. When they respond positively, do not forget to give them incentives and rewards for the efforts they shared.
• Know what induce them to work. As a leader, you need to discover the things that would help motivate your people. Understand the needs of your high achievers. If they need less supervision, innovative solutions, or freedom to choose and decide, give it to them. Do they want more complex tasks? More challenging endeavors? More difficult jobs? Give it to them to keep them at their feet and not get bored. Make sure that their tasks match or challenge even more their level of abilities.

High performing individuals in your organization are your assets. They need to be carefully tended and maximized to serve the business. Your goal is to retain the high achievers. Basically, dialogue with them about job satisfaction and together, discover how to make a profitable business hand in hand.

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By Scott H. Brown

You know the feeling. All day you have been distracted by that 2pm appointment on your calendar; “Annual Performance Appraisal with Supervisor”. Your palms are clammy, your thoughts are distracted and you find yourself questioning whether your boss really knows your true value and what you accomplished this year.

In many organizations, the annual performance appraisal is tied to merit pay increases and possibly future promotional opportunities. When supervisors look to promote from within, often the first question they ask is “may I see the candidate’s performance appraisals?” But are these annual performance appraisals really the best source of data to measure someone’s promotional worth or merit increase?

Annual reviews mean keeping records

To answer that question, let’s first take a look at the timing. Annual performance appraisals take place annually, just as the name implies. This means that a supervisor should have been keeping records of all the positive contributions the employee made to the Company in the past year as well as all of the mistakes the employee has made over the past year.

More often than not, the record of the employee’s performance contains far more of the negatives from the past year rather than the accomplishments. Because let’s face it, there is a far bigger need to keep records of issues than there is to keep a record of accomplishments in the mind of most managers.

Most supervisors have not been trained

Secondly, most supervisors have not been trained on how to write and conduct performance appraisals effectively. This lack of training, when coupled with a lack of oversight from a third party, can lead an employee to be reviewed on an incomplete and sometimes biased recollection of his/her body of work. Managers commonly make rater errors, not because they mean to, but because they don’t know how not to make these errors. Included in these rater errors are the mistakes of:

Recency – giving far too much weight to a recent success or failure

Halo/Horn effect – looking at a miniscule sample of the total body of work and deciding the employee is either better than actual (halo effect) or worse than actual (horn effect).

Same as Me Effect – if the employee takes a markedly different approach, he/she may be reviewed more harshly for not doing it like the rater would do it.

Comparison Effect – comparing employees only to each other rather than to a pre-determined set of criteria. The best employee on a rotten team may be rated as a star when his/her performance may only be average compared to the job description.

Bias Effect – placing personal bias against an individual because of any number of reasons can affect the rating either way significantly. If the rater does not like people from cold weather climates, the individual’s performance will have little bearing on the outcome of the performance appraisal.

Conflicting Messages – telling the employee all year that his/her performance is acceptable and then delivering a different message during the review process can erode the confidence the employee has in the supervisor and the company. This issue is much more common when the employee’s supervisor changes during the year and rates the performance against a different standard than the previous supervisor used.

Critical Incidents – providing too much weight to a spectacular incident that occurred throughout the year. While it may work in the employees favor is the incident was positive, it can have devastating effects if the incident was negative.

In addition to these rater errors, timing of actual feedback can have a significant impact on actual employee performance. Feedback, either positive or negative, that occurs at the time of an incident or at the close of a project is far more effective in shaping employee behavior than feedback that is only provided once a year.

This is especially true for younger workers in an organization who are accustomed to receiving immediate feedback from immediate rewards for most everything in their life.

Younger workers expect immediate feedback

From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to drive-thru’s to microwaves, younger workers have been programmed to expect immediate feedback and immediate rewards. If praise is consistently not delivered when a success is achieved, the employee can begin to feel as though he/she doesn’t matter.

Conversely, if coaching feedback is not delivered, it loses its value of being applied to the specific discrepancy of performance.

For all these reasons, it is apparent that the annual performance appraisal, when used individually, is not only a poor tool to use when looking to make a promotional or compensation decision, but is also a poor tool to use when looking to impact employee behavior and performance. But I do not recommend scrapping the annual review process all-together.

Combine appraisal with other tools

Rather, I promote using the annual performance review in concert with other tools:

•Train all raters on how to effectively rate an employee’s performance
•Train all managers on how to document the good as well as the bad that is witnessed over the course of a year
•Establish a vetting process to ensure oversight in to the review process to reduce rater bias and rater error
•Implement a coaching in the moment program to ensure all supervisors become excellent sources of immediate positive and constructive feedback
•Augment the annual review with a monthly touch base between the manager and the employee
•Ensure other metrics are utilized to verify the employee’s true contribution to the success of the organization

These tools will contribute to better business decisions

By putting all of these tools to use in your Company, you will not only increase engagement of your employees, but you will also have the tools necessary to make better business decisions in regards to your people.

My HR Business Partner is an Orlando, Fl based human resource consulting firm specializing in delivering expert human resource advice and solutions to ensure our clients build a competitive advantage through their people. We specialize in helping small-to-mid sized businesses who either can not afford their own HR department or who need specialized services not available from their in-house staff. Visit us today at http://www.myhrbusinesspartner.com.

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From: Leading Effectively, Center for Creative Leadership, (CCL)

Have you ever been assigned to a team and thought it was a waste of your time? Or been named “team leader,” but unsure where to start? Or found yourself on a team that’s floundering or falling apart, unable to work together?

If so, it’s time to go back to basics.

It may seem impractical (even silly) in some work settings, but the best thing you can do is take time to create a team charter.

“For teams to be successful, they need to have a basic understanding of why they exist, where they fit, and how they’ll accomplish their objectives,” says CCL’s Laura Quinn. “The process of talking through the team’s purpose, context, roles and how people will work together will boost your efficiency in the long run.”

A team retreat may feel like a relic from the past in some companies, but it’s important to set aside several large blocks of time for the team to work on the charter. During your planning sessions you, or another team leader, will want to walk members through key questions, capturing responses on flip chart paper or other visible way. Consider rotating the facilitation and note-taking roles as team members discuss:

• Team Purpose: What kind of team is this (work team, project team, management team, coordination team)? Why does the team exist? What “work” does the team do? What topics belong “in” this team and what’s “out?” What is the team responsible for accomplishing?
• Context: Who are we accountable to? With what other groups/teams do we connect? What do they want/need from us?
• Goals: What specific results do we expect from our efforts? What outcomes? (cost, quality, speed, service, quantity, coordination of X, innovation of X) How can we measure that?
• Roles: Who is on the team? What perspective does each member bring? Are there special roles (e.g., leader, facilitator, etc?) or sub-groups within this team? What do subgroups require of us?
• Work Processes: What processes will we use to do the team’s work? (step by step) How often will we meet? Who determines and manages our agenda? How will we connect with our stakeholders and other sponsors of our work?
• Decision-Making: What decisions are made within this team? What is out of bounds? What level of decision-making responsibility do we have? What decision process will we use?
• Communication: How will we communicate and connect to others within the organization?
• Norms: What do we expect of each other? How do we agree to handle conflict? What are our team norms and/or operating principles?

Once you’ve tackled the topics above, have a person or subgroup combine the team’s agreements into a single document. A written team charter can be creatively displayed in your team’s work area, posted electronically and referred to in meetings and discussions.

Team Evaluation should follow

Periodically, the team will want to go back to the charter and consider these questions:

• How well did our work actually reflect our stated purpose? Did we get distracted or did we stay true to our purpose?
• How well did we meet the needs of this team? Did we meet stakeholders’ expectations? Did we coordinate well with others who rely on our work?
• Did we reach our intended goals? Do the measured results of our work demonstrate that? What got in the way of us being as successful as we might have been?
• How clear were roles on this team? Did we make good use of a variety of perspectives? Were roles executed well?
• Were our work processes effective? Did we stick to what we had agreed to in our charter? Why not? What new processes might help us be more effective?
• Were decisions made efficiently and effectively? Did we include the right amount of input? What surprises or frustrations did we encounter, if any? How might we do it differently?
• How well did our communication plan work? Did we stick to it? What methods worked particularly well? Where did we not do so well?
• How well did we live within the norms we created? Did they help us achieve our objectives? What norms do we want to add? Delete? How can we be better in the future?

By David Tighe

As managers become more senior, they start to run out of peers and superiors  on which to rely for effective coaching. Mentors still abound, but mentors do  not truly “coach” you, as Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan notes  in a recent leadership article published by McKinsey and Co. Mentors usually  serve as sounding boards for advice, and rely on input from you, the manager,  about the situation that is challenging you.

That information naturally comes  through your mindset filters, which limits the mentor’s ability to spot and  correct your flaws or errors. Coaches truly observe you in action, and critique  you from their own perspective, offering more “tough love” than a mentor  can.

When third party coaching feedback gets scarce

So, as middle managers rise up into the senior hierarchy, true third-party  coaching feedback on their performance gets scarce. The issues:

• Fewer superiors above them actively observe how they go about their  business.
• Fewer peers around them are willing to act collegially and provide useful  criticism that could help make them better.
• This is both because there are: too many like-minded people among their peers, with similar habits and  mindsets, which drains the senior management pool of perspective.
• Too many competitors for a narrowing funnel of promotional opportunities.  Helping a colleague can hinder a manager’s own chances, naturally reducing the  incentive to help unless top management sets a strong collegial example (a rare  occurrence.)

 As you rise in the organization, people become less connected to you

Plus, by the time you become a senior executive, you have a set of  experiences from your own successful career that form your leadership mindset.  Earlier in your career, you probably set up coaching and mentoring relationships  using people senior to you which helped you climb those career rungs. As you  rise, those people become less connected to you. Perhaps they are now  subordinate to you. Perhaps they lost out to you for a new position, and moved  to another company.

As Kaplan notes, “many executives find that as they become  more senior, they receive less coaching and become more confused about their  performance and developmental needs. They may also become increasingly isolated  from constructive criticism-subordinates do not want to offend the boss and may  believe that constructive suggestions are unwelcome and unwise.”

Here is the paradox: To rise up the ranks, you naturally focus sideways and  upwards, adopting and adapting the vision coming from the top, running friendly  competitions with peers, and managing staff to meet your career goals. Now that  you have made it up the ladder, you need to change that heretofore successful  mindset of looking up for counsel and direction. With fewer “up” options, you  need to start focusing down for advice and ideas.

This concept sounds a bit nuts  to newly senior managers, but it is the key to their long-term success.

Don’t overlook developing mutually trusting subordinate relationships

Kaplan states: “At this stage of their careers, they may not have focused  sufficiently on developing mutually trusting subordinate relationships that  would make getting feedback and advice a lot easier.”

Too frequently, when these executives ultimately do receive feedback in their  year-end reviews (as part of a 360-degree-feedback program, say) they are  surprised to receive a lot of criticism about leadership, communication and  interpersonal skills. “These leaders may even learn, often too late, that the  various criticisms and concerns have been widely discussed among their  subordinates for an extended period of time without them being aware,” notes  Kaplan, a comment I strongly agree with based on my own coaching  experiences.

Frankly, when working with senior executives I spend a lot of time getting  this upward-looking mindset uninstalled and replacing it with a more productive  approach that embeds the spirit of the 360 Review into their daily leadership  routines.

360 Reviews are very successful

Here is what I mean by the 360-Review Spirit:

When you run a 360-degree review, everyone above, at your level and below you  get to offer frank assessments of how you have been performing. These reviews  are predicated on the idea that the formally structured environment encourages  people to be frank, while remaining constructive in their input. The underlying  assumption is that people (subordinates especially) will not share feedback that  is ‘negative’ without clear institutional protection against retribution and  need this special artificial construct to let their guard down.

So, once a year a lot of managers find out that while they may be managing  tasks and projects well, they are failing as leaders. This creates all kinds of  angst and hurt feelings. People react negatively to the whole process, and hurry  back to the culture they feel more comfortable in, whether or not it is  productive.

If 360-degree reviews are so effective, it strikes me as a great idea for  senior management to move heaven and earth to embed such an open, sharing  environment directly into the corporate culture. It’s hard work to establish  full employee engagement into the mindsets of employees and their managers, but  the 360-Review Spirit would have huge organizational advantages in  fostering a proper leadership culture.

Goals to shoot for include:

• Signal strongly that true feedback is valued and desired, as long as it is  forward-thinking and action-oriented. No snipping. sniping and  blame-laying.
• Eliminate the mindset that seeking help from subordinates signals weakness  as a leader. Replace it with one that admits a leader doesn’t know everything,  and relies on trusted lieutenants to inform him or her of the true nature of  events, and the full range of options for moving forward.
• Assume that everyone wants the best for the organization, and will  contribute at a high level if the organization finds a way to publicly value  that contribution consistently.
• Break the mindset that senior managers know more than subordinates. They  don’t. Perhaps they did at one time, but that time is gone.

A great leader knows that his or her subordinates know far more about the  current state of customer mindsets and potential than senior managers (and  perhaps even all of them put together!) They should not wait for formal review  processes to gather input on job performance and goal-setting.

The ongoing goal for every senior manager must be to create subordinate  relationships based on the three core tenets that we focus on in embedding a  full-engagement mindset:

Unshakable Trust:

• Encourage full and open truth in meetings.
• Expect the best of everyone. Everyone you hire is talented. Challenge them  to make full use of their skill sets.
• “Tuesday is Tuesday” (Stick to your commitments.)
• Take true accountability for your own results, good and bad.

The Pursuit of Truth:

• Take genuine interest in the truth at all levels.
• Center conversations on how to be “the best we can be,” not just meeting our  targets and beating our competition.
• Look way beyond the metrics and never settle for “good enough.” Pre-set  goals are pretty arbitrary, and may blind you to potential lying beyond those  limits.
• Encourage authentic, transparent and complete two-way communication from  bottom to top, by celebrating the truth whether good news or bad.

Communication that Counts:

• Keep communication “next action” focused. No dwelling or looking  backwards!
• End all communications with mutual commitment to action.
• Check up on commitments, see that delegations are fulfilled, and run  meetings with a forward focus on decisions that help to complete the  commitments. No updates that could be sent by e-mail!
• Instill a belief in everyone that every communication improves the  relationship.

Focusing on embedding these three habits as a day-to-day mindset will  generate better feedback, particularly from subordinates, that will help you to  materially improve your personal performance, often in 90 days or less. This, in  turn, should support your future career ambitions, because you will be basing  future decisions more on the truth than on the hunches that may come from your  own past experiences. And your team will be 100% behind you, pushing you up the  ladder.

Here is a link to Robert Kaplan’s article. Registration is  required, but it’s free.

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From: Leading Effectively, Center for Creative Leadership

It’s easy to be impressed by the natural leader, the brainy student, the gifted musician or the star athlete. “What talent!” we think. But talent alone doesn’t lead to success, says Carol Dweck, noted psychologist and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. “Success comes with a growth mindset.”

People with a “growth mindset” believe that ability or talent can be developed, says Dweck. In contrast, people with a “fixed mindset” see ability as built-in: “You either have it or you don’t.”

Dweck’s research has shown that our beliefs about innate talent can either support or stifle success. If you have a growth mindset, you are willing to take risks, accept mistakes and seek out chances to learn. You become resilient and view setbacks and challenges as learning opportunities.

The belief that you can’t improve your ability actually stunts achievement. If you have a fixed mindset, you feel the pressure to repeatedly prove yourself in areas of “strength” and you avoid activities and experiences that may reveal weaknesses. As a result, you don’t gain the experiences, perspectives or skills that are needed to succeed at work or adapt to change. A fixed mindset also makes it hard to admit to or correct mistakes.

Growth minded individuals gain self confidence by taking on challenges

Dweck has also challenged the view that innate ability fuels self-confidence. In the short-term, people feel good and confident because of their natural abilities — until setbacks or challenges cause them to question themselves. People with a growth mindset derive self-confidence from the very act of taking on challenges and pursuing them with vigor.

What are the implications of Dweck’s work for leaders? “To succeed in a world where our work is always changing, where challenges are unpredictable and competition abounds, we need to be agile learners,” says CCL’s President and CEO, John Ryan. “We need to apply our new knowledge. Perhaps most of all, we need to believe we can rise to the challenge.”

It takes hard work and real focus

“By taking on a growth mindset, we can learn new behaviors and modify deep-set behaviors at any age,” Ryan continues. “It takes hard work and real focus, but all of us really can learn new and effective behaviors — and help take our organizations to new levels of performance.”

Dweck agrees. “If an organization believes in natural talent, they are not developing the potential talent,” she says. “Not only are these organizations missing out on a big pool of possible leaders, but their belief in natural talent might actually squash the very people they think are the naturals, making them into defensive nonlearners. The lesson is: Create an organization that prizes the development of ability — and watch the leaders emerge.”