Feedback - Managing difficult conversations

Feedback – a process that, incidentally, both the person who is giving and one who is receiving dread. What makes feedback so difficult for both the parties? It is primarily because both people do not know what to expect. When the associate walks into the room, she is unsure of how her manager interpreted her performance over the period. Similarly, manager is unsure of how her comments would be received by the associate. Both the parties are walking into the room expecting a confrontation, which creates a tense environment. Not a great place to begin having a feedback conversation.

Let me play out a typical scenario:

Raj (Manager) walks into the room to have feedback conversation with Jennie (associate). Raj is confident as he has prepared well for the meeting. He has all the details, data points captured well. He structured his conversation with all the right words. He sits down with Jennie and takes her through his evaluation. Jennie interrupts multiple times to ask questions. They disagree on many points as she has a different interpretation of the events from Raj. Raj, being the manager, finally prevails, gives her the rating, talks about what Jennie should be focusing on for next 6 months. Raj walks out of the meeting relieved that it is finally over and that Jennie would work on the action items for next 6 months. Jennie walks out of the meeting feeling angry that her performance has not been evaluated right and since there is no buy in on the points mentioned by Raj, there are no action items for her.

Where did this conversation end? What is the outcome of the time spent by both the manager and the associate? For both of them, it is an ordeal that has to be done with. Raj can now focus on other things for next 6 months and for Jennie, she will get over her anger (over time or through a role/job change) until it is time to have another conversation with her (old/new) manager.

How could this change where the feedback conversation is not an event but a process? Into a meeting that both the manager and associate could look forward to, a conversation that could translate the potential of the associate into performance, a conversation that would setup the associate for greater success?

Following are few building blocks that could make this conversation more effective:

Trust – Foundation for any effective interaction is trust. There has to be trust between manager and associate. Manager trusting associate that he/she has the right intent, willing to do what is right for the organization and for herself; and associate trusting manager that he has the right intent and is willing to invest in associate to be successful. More often than not, we find this missing. There are always questions about the intent. Manager has to take the first step to build this trust. This has to be done over a period of time (and not just at the merit or bonus time). Manager has to invest time to understand the associate – who she is, her aspirations, objectives, strengths, weaknesses, what excites her and what would not interest her etc. The best way to do this is through Listening. We usually find managers talk more while associates listen. To build trust and to understand the associate, it is important for manager to listen and for associate to talk. This should ideally be done through frequent short conversations as against one very long conversation.

Timely – It is important that manager shares his observations in a timely manner - as soon as he observes – both good and not so good behaviors/actions/outcomes. None of us are perfect and there are areas where we do well and areas we struggle. Manager has to be objective and share his observations with the associate in a timely manner. Doing it once in 3, 6 or 12 months brings in recent effect (where only actions/outcomes of the recent past are remembered or measured).

Fact based – While sharing observations it is important for Manager to be fact based. The conversation has to be data driven (as against based on interpretations). Managers always have to be cognizant on where they are operating on ladder of inference. Higher we are on the ladder, we are looking at the events based on filters/lens that we wear and hence we would be on a very slippery ground. It is important for manager just to be focused on the underlying data (without any filters). How many times have we seen that a manager does not find any weaknesses in a top performer and does not find any strong areas in a weak performer? Manager has to be data driven to ensure that there is a balanced view.

Team approach – Manager and associate have to work together as a team. It is important for the manager to give an opportunity to the associate to react to the data points (Note: Not interpretations). Manager and associate have to come to an agreement on what has worked well and what are the opportunities for the future. Through this approach, if there are certain points that do not have an agreement, it is ok. They should agree on an approach to observe together in those areas and to bring them up in their regular 1-1s. For the areas (both strengths and weaknesses) that they have agreement on, they should formulate an action plan and work on it. Action plan should have items both for the associate and for the manager.

Future oriented – One key aspect of any feedback conversation is that it should be future oriented. Past is gone and nothing can change it. It is important to focus the conversation on how it could mean a better future for both the associate and the manager as against focusing on the past mistakes/outcomes.

The above steps would make the feedback, a conversation that both the manager and the associate look forward to, a conversation that would happen many times a year (as against just around merit or bonus). More importantly, these steps would make feedback an easy and healthy conversation and such conversations would have significant impact on retention. How has been your experience on giving/receiving feedback?

Leadership Beliefs

I need to start by acknowledging that I had my first failure in the series of blogs. I made a commitment to myself that I’d write a blog once every 2 weeks. While I met that commitment through the first quarter of the year, I failed to deliver on it last weekend. I could state many reasons why I could not write the blog but the reality is I missed it and that’s not acceptable to me. I learnt a very valuable lesson and such a miss will not happen in the future.

This week, I take the opportunity to share my leadership beliefs. I thought it would be a simple task to just put them on a paper but as I started on it, I realized it was difficult – not because I did not know what they are, but to put them on a paper is like committing them and I had to be honest with myself whether I truly believed in them and do I practice them most of the time. So here they are (not exhaustive but few key ones that I strongly believe in):

1.       People should respect you for who you are, not for what you are – This definitely is one of the most important beliefs of mine. ‘What you are’ is primarily determined by the title, position that we carry. Any respect we get because of our position is limited for the period of time we hold that position. People should respect us for what we stand for, for our values and more importantly, for value we are able to add to them. The key part is to ensure that we are authentic in all our interactions. This ensures that we gain the respect even when we do not carry the title or position.

2.       Learning is a journey – It is important to continuously learn in our life. Learning ensures progression (not of title/compensation but of our mind). It’s a journey and as long as we are open, we can find many sources that we can learn from. These could be books, web, videos but the best sources are our colleagues, associates, managers, mentors, coaches and friends. There is an insurmountable experience around us and we just need to keep our mind open and it will get filled with many learning. Always ask – What did I learn today?

3.       Prioritization in life – This is a key takeaway from Transformational Leadership program that I attended last year at ISB and I was blown away by it. We all have to juggle multiple balls in our life and it is always difficult to manage all of them in an appropriate way (primarily due to lack of time). The best way to prioritize is to determine which of the balls that we are juggling are glass balls and which are rubber balls. A rubber ball can always bounce back and we would have a future opportunity to still put them in play; however if a glass ball drops, then we would lose it forever. Examples of glass balls in our lives are Family, Health, Friends – those interestingly are the ones that we usually ignore.

4.       Staying with the question – One of the biggest fallacies of human beings is that we like status quo. Whenever we are not in equilibrium, we feel highly uncomfortable and strive to come back to that position as quickly as possible. Hence, when we are faced with a difficult question, we tend to rationalize it by attributing a response. Similarly, when we come across two different, divergent view points, we just lean towards one and accept/acknowledge it while ignoring any data that drives us to the other view point. It is critical to understand that an intelligent mind is one that can hold two equally opposing thoughts at the same time. It is important to stay with the question. Stay in the uncomfortable zone and let new ideas/thoughts emerge. Enjoy the butterflies in the stomach. This would lead to success.

5.       Everyone is talented – Popular western management practice on people state that it is important to segment people into multiple categories to better manage them. But the reality is everyone in this world is talented. Every human being who comes into this world comes with certain strengths of their own. It is important for people to realize what their strengths are and should find opportunities that can leverage on them. Doing this would ensure success. However, we find many people trying to follow or replicate others in the pursuit of success, while ignoring their own attributes. It does lot more good to look inside for answers than outside.

6.       Definition of Success – Definition of success is relative and it is driven by what gives you happiness as against what others think of you. We all have two scorecards – Internal and External. Internal scorecard is focused on what’s important to us while external scorecard is focused on what others think of us. If we are constantly driven by external scorecard, we may put ourselves in a situation where we are living our life to meet others expectations as against our own happiness. Hence, it is important to ensure that we meet and exceed our Internal Scorecards. Go ahead and pursue your passions. Pursuing passions would enable us to score high on internal scorecard and at the end of the day, that scorecard is more important than the other one.

Well, these are not exhaustive but I thought I’ll write those that are important to me. When I started to write, I thought I would pen down Leadership beliefs. However, I now realize that these are my personal beliefs that characterize my Leadership. Penning these down has given a lot deal of clarity to me. What are your beliefs and are you practicing them? Please do share. We can all learn from each other.