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Do your staff hate annual performance reviews?
19/10/11 14:31
1. Are people getting enough regular feedback?
Because formal feedback mechanisms exist, some managers and supervisors seem to think this lets them off the hook when it comes to providing informal, regular feedback to staff (and to each other). It doesn’t! Employees need regular feedback to be confident and secure that they are putting in the required effort towards the required goals. People starved of regular discussion about how they are performing lose direction, and are more likely to become insecure and unmotivated. Also, if staff are not getting regular feedback, the annual review becomes a much bigger deal than it should be. People working in a high-feedback culture will regard their annual review as a consolidation of the feedback they have been receiving throughout the year. Give your staff weekly, or even daily, reviews and they will be far less likely to regard the annual affair as an ordeal to be endured.
2. Do people know what they should have been doing all year?
Some organisations do not provide proper KPIs and many managers are not consistent at communicating focussed goals. The result of this is a large number of employees with no way of deciding for themselves how well they are doing on a daily or weekly basis, let alone assessing their performance across a whole year. In this context an annual review can be a terrifying prospect. People are aware that a review can have a major impact on their careers but have no real idea in advance whether they have impressed or disappointed. Coupled with the widespread practice of making the reviewee do the heavy lifting in terms of preparation and framing (“Could you complete this self-assessment before your review?”, “So, how do you think you’ve done this year?”) it’s no wonder that many do not look forward to them. It’s unfair to expect people to assess their performance if they are not given clear metrics to start with. If you are a manager or supervisor, make sure you are communicating clear instructions and measurable and goals. Reviewing the SMART goal-setting tool is a good place to start. If you work for a ‘vague’ manager or supervisor, use your questioning and active listening skills to elicit clearer goals.
3. Are people getting balanced feedback?
People like to feel appreciated, and for employees this involves more than simply keeping their job and receiving their pay packet. It also means receiving feedback that balances criticism with praise. However, managers tend to (understandably) focus on identifying and fixing stuff-ups, and can grow to regard competent performance as simply ‘normal service’ which is not worth commenting on (“After all, that’s what we pay them for!”). This means that most of the feedback that many people get is the negative, corrective kind, and they expect the annual review to be a once-yearly mega-dose of criticism. Managers and supervisors who balance criticism with regular praise and reinforcement will almost certainly find that their employees become much more relaxed about feedback in general and also more positive towards their annual reviews.
- Will Moore
The Rugby World Cup & customer service
08/09/11 16:36
OK, I admit it: unlike the owner of the car in this picture I’m not a massive rugby fan, but it’s difficult not to get caught up in the carnival atmosphere as the team flags and pennants go up around Auckland, and no doubt every other town and city in the country. With my trainer’s hat on I can see that the tournament presents a number of challenges and opportunities to New Zealand companies, particularly from a customer service perspective. During the next few weeks hordes of demanding visitors from around the globe will be descending on hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and tourist attractions. Many of them will be getting lost, confused, injured, impatient, anxious (and also angry whenever reality doesn’t match their expectations). Kiwi CSRs and others with a customer-facing role are going to need to display heaps of patience and empathy if they want to help send these visitors back home after their holiday having had a positive and memorable experience.
I know many companies have provided special RWC training to prepare employees for the tournament, but if yours wasn’t one of them you could do a lot worse than visiting (or pointing your staff towards) this excellent, and free, online training programme offered on the government’s NZ 2011 website. Called ‘First Impressions’, the 2 hour interactive course (broken down into bite-sized 15 min sessions) provides a great primer for the competition itself, as well as covering some basic customer service concepts centred around the CARE acronym (Customer, Attitude, Respect, Engagement). I rushed through it to check it out, but it’s really designed to be completed in a more paced way. There are mini web research tasks and interactive exercises and you get to test yourself at the end (it took me two attempts to get 100%!).
Also, it’s not too late to capitalise on Rugby Fever by using the tournament as an excuse for injecting a bit of competition and fun into your workplace. Getting each work area team to pick a country might be a great way to introduce some friendly competition, and this could be expanded to encouraging each team to decorate their work area and celebrate the culture of their chosen nation. It’s also a great opportunity for some overt team-building activities. Maybe you could have an inter-team touch competition, or stick some goalposts on your foosball table, throw in a mini rugby ball and have an indoor knockout tournament. Just dust off your copy of Fish! and use your imaginations. Remember to involve the teams in the planning so you get buy-in (there’s nothing worse than being ordered to have fun) and keep business objectives in mind (so you can frame the activities as relevant to the organisation’s goals and values, rather than a pointless distraction).
Links:
http://firstimpressions.nz2011.govt.nz/
http://www.fishpond.co.nz/product_info.php?ref=1391&id=9780340924587&affiliate_banner_id=1
- Will Moore
"It's not just managing up, but managing across as well"
04/08/11 10:49
Peck describes how she very proactively ‘managed’ various Pfizer CEOs in order to maintain and advance her profile within the company. One of the points she makes is that her close working relationship with a particular CEO did not mean her position was weakened when he moved on. She states that managing up is just a special case of internal networking, and that managing across is equally important if you want to weather changes and upheavals with your position and reputation intact.
The only comment I’d take issue with is her suggestion that her approach is only relevant to large organisations. Certainly her assertive ultimatum to one CEO (“I’d like a new role. And if not, I’ll look on the outside”) might not be appropriate in a small NZ company. But that, to me, is just an issue of style. Managing up when your boss is someone you rub shoulders with every day can be more conversational and subtle.
Article: http://wp.me/pgbQp-2jD
Video: http://youtu.be/_gcvEYZdGgY
Reducing Jealousy & Envy In Your Team
13/06/11 15:18
Jealousy and envy can occur in our private and professional lives. They are both complex mixtures of feelings.
Jealousy
- Fear of losing something (or someone) important
- Suspicion of betrayal or anger about being betrayed
- Low self-esteem or lack of self-confidence
- Feelings of doubt, sadness, isolation and distrust
- Sense of inferiority or of losing out to someone
- Longing or pining for something somebody else has
- Resentment of current circumstances
- Spiteful feelings towards the envied person
- Guilt and disapproval of one’s own negative feelings
In terms of their impact on team cooperation, both emotions can be extremely negative. They may sometimes provide individuals with the motivation to protect what is theirs or achieve more, but these benefits come at the price of mutual resentment and decreased trust (things that are toxic to teamwork and collaboration). Unfortunately, we are, among other things, a competitive species prone to insecurities, so both jealousy and envy are likely to rear their heads from time to time. Even if it may not be realistic to eliminate them completely, however, it is certainly possible to reduce the risk of them occurring and limit their impact when they do...
Top Tips for managing jealousy and envy in your team:
- Recruit staff based on emotional maturity, not only skill and experience
- Use participative management and empower team members when opportunities arise
- Incentivise cooperation to give people reasons to maintain good relationships
- Encourage a high-feedback culture where people communicate openly
- Make high-flyers into team mentors to keep them involved with their workmates
(adapted from Dogan & Vecchio, 2001)
Don't Worry!
31/05/11 14:09
1. Realise it’s OK not to worry
Occasionally, worrying can serve a useful purpose by bringing our attention to something that needs dealing with and spurring us into action. Usually, however, worry serves no useful purpose at all and we’d be better off not doing it. Unfortunately, many of us have been conditioned to regard worry as a necessary part of being an adult (“It’s about time you started worrying about your career”) so it can take time to break the habit.
2. Talk it over with someone
Don’t worry alone. Discussing things with a trusted workmate, mentor or friend can help to reduce worry. You may get some good advice or a useful alternative perspective. Often, however, just having the opportunity to talk things through with someone can help you to work out your own solution to a nagging problem.
3. Make contingency plans
If you are worrying about a possible future event that hasn’t occurred yet, try sitting down and planning what steps you will take if the worst happens. Doing this can help you to regain a sense of control over your life. Start by making a list of the things you fear may happen and prepare a contingency plan for each of them.
4. Schedule your worrying for later
If you find yourself preoccupied by worries when you should be sleeping or getting on with other tasks, plan to worry later. Some people find that keeping a worry list, or even a worry calendar, allows them to put their concerns aside because their minds are reassured that they will return to the issue at the allotted time.
5. Do something!
Worry is often the result of procrastination. The longer we put off something unpleasant, the greater its negative influence over our lives may become. If this is the cause of your worrying, give yourself a deadline and stick to it. In the workplace, this kind of worry can be linked to a lack of social confidence or assertiveness, so communication skills training might help you to be more proactive.
6. Let it go
Finally, people frequently worry about things over which they have no real influence. If there’s nothing you can do to change or prevent the thing you are worrying about, treat your worrying as a stress-management issue. Get some exercise, do some deep breathing or distract yourself by doing something enjoyable with friends or family. Calm, resilient people are, in any case, better at dealing with the problems life throws at them.
© Will Moore 2011
Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Competence?
18/05/11 14:21
To some of these, intelligence is a word they associate with cognitive ability and they think it's wrong to apply it to the messy and subjective realm of emotions. I understand where this objection comes from, but when it comes up in courses I generally deflect it to lunch break or post-course discussion, otherwise things get far too interesting and more appropriate to a linguistics or psychology seminar than a time-limited training session.
Other people, however, just find the concept, or at least the phrase, demotivating. They get the comparison between EI and IQ, and their own experience tells them that some people are more emotionally 'smart' than others, but the very success of this analogy makes them sceptical about the usefulness of EI training. Most people know that there's not much you can do to boost your IQ, which remains pretty stable over your lifetime. So, they reason, if your emotional life is also dependent on a kind of intelligence, surely there's not much you can do about that either.
To deal with this second reaction I'm finding it more useful to emphasise Emotional Competence (EC) during my training programs, at least after the introductory session. Most people are already familiar with the idea that people can learn to manage emotions better, from concepts like anger-management and stress-management. They also accept that, although some people might have a head-start in emotion management (e.g. they are more phlegmatic or resilient), all of us can improve in these areas through effort and practice.
Emotional Competence seems, to me, a better term for what EI pioneer John Meyer and his colleagues are referring to when they define Emotional Intelligence as: "an ability to recognize the meanings of emotion and their relationships, and to reason and problem-solve on the basis of them." (download PDF article here). Meyer refers to the four branches of Emotional Intelligence, which actually look very much like competencies:
- Perceiving emotions
- Facilitating emotions
- Understanding emotions
- Managing emotions
So, just to be clear, if you're coming along to one of my EI courses expecting an in depth debate about the meaning of intelligence, you might be disappointed. To me, it's all about competence.
- Will Moore
Active Listening With E=MC2
12/05/11 16:17
This well known formula might help you remember the essential elements of active listening (apologies to Albert Einstein)...
E=MC2
E = Empathise
- Validate how the other person is feeling
- Acknowledge their situation and priorities
- Listen and show understanding
- Use reflective body language
- Be attentive and interested
- Ask open questions to get their story
- Prompt and encourage, verbally and non-verbally
- Emphasise common ground and shared interests
- Restate what the person says using paraphrasing
- Use closed questions to check understanding
- Summarise the situation, and any agreed actions, in your own words
- Invite the other person to correct any misunderstandings
Unlike the original version of this formula, the active listening version is safe to experiment with at home and in the workplace.
© Will Moore 2011
Anticipating Customer Needs
19/02/11 11:03
The best time to handle customer enquiries is before they happen!
Successfully anticipating customer needs allows you to reduce complaints and queries by tailoring your service to meet those needs in advance. When the calls do come in, it allows for a quicker, focussed response and improved customer relationship management overall.
Here are some Top Tips to help you achieve more proactive customer service...
1. Pay attention
What situations are your customers getting into? What issues are important to them? What are they telling you? What questions are they asking?
2. Look for patterns
What kinds of issues do your customers have regularly? Can you make a list of categories? How do they tend to react to certain types of situations? What specific help or information do they tend to ask for in these situations? Do particular kinds of customer react in predictable ways?
3. Identify ‘issue flags’
What are the first things that customers say or do which let you know they are a particular category of customer in a specific kind of situation? What lets you know it’s “one of those”?
4. Be pro-active
When you identify that a customer is in a particular kind of situation, use some pro-active empathy to show that you understand their predicament and you’re awake to the kind of support or information they need. Show your expertise and commitment by seeing a few steps ahead of the customer and confidently taking charge of their problem.
5. Take preventive measures
At an organisational level, once you have identified repeating problems or common information roadblocks, look for ways you can change your processes, or introduce new ones, to prevent customers getting into difficulty in the first place.
6. Pay attention
Always listen to what an individual customer is telling you. Otherwise there’s a danger that you’ll recognise a certain issue flag and go into a rehearsed routine to solve ‘the usual problem’, only to discover too late that in this case the customer’s needs were quite different.
Here are some Top Tips to help you achieve more proactive customer service...
1. Pay attention
What situations are your customers getting into? What issues are important to them? What are they telling you? What questions are they asking?
2. Look for patterns
What kinds of issues do your customers have regularly? Can you make a list of categories? How do they tend to react to certain types of situations? What specific help or information do they tend to ask for in these situations? Do particular kinds of customer react in predictable ways?
3. Identify ‘issue flags’
What are the first things that customers say or do which let you know they are a particular category of customer in a specific kind of situation? What lets you know it’s “one of those”?
4. Be pro-active
When you identify that a customer is in a particular kind of situation, use some pro-active empathy to show that you understand their predicament and you’re awake to the kind of support or information they need. Show your expertise and commitment by seeing a few steps ahead of the customer and confidently taking charge of their problem.
5. Take preventive measures
At an organisational level, once you have identified repeating problems or common information roadblocks, look for ways you can change your processes, or introduce new ones, to prevent customers getting into difficulty in the first place.
6. Pay attention
Always listen to what an individual customer is telling you. Otherwise there’s a danger that you’ll recognise a certain issue flag and go into a rehearsed routine to solve ‘the usual problem’, only to discover too late that in this case the customer’s needs were quite different.
A reliable way to share interactive presentations?
26/11/10 21:59
I've been looking around for a while for a reliable way to share PowerPoint quizzes and other e-leaming slideshows on-line, but none of the tools I discovered seemed ideal. Slideshare is great for sharing sequential slideshows (and is an excellent source of presentation ideas) but doesn't really support hyperlinks and interactivity.
Microsoft's SkyDrive makes uploading and sharing PowerPoint shows easy, but I couldn't find a way to prevent viewers from ignoring my hyperlinks and clicking their way through my interactive quizzes in sequence. The possibilities of WiX are unlimited for creating interactive Flash presentations, but it doesn't allow conversion of PowerPoint shows, the learning curve is a bit steep and the editing interface is somewhat clunky.
Well now I seem to have stumbled across a solution which addresses all of the above concerns. SlideRocket is an online presentation creation and sharing service which, although Flash based, allows easy conversion of ppt and pptx files, supports hyperlinks and (with some tweaking) allows the creation of interactive presentations which can't be 'clicked though'.
Currently I've signed up to the free version of SlideRocket, which is all you need for creating and sharing slideshows. However, for US$24 per month the 'Pro' version offers a whole host of other features including forms, polls, audio-narration, offline viewing and full customer branding.
SlideRocket seems to prefer ppt to pptx, and be prepared to fix some formatting and repair some hyperlinks, but the conversion process is pretty seamless compared with the other tools I've tried. The editing interface is more intuitive and quicker to get the hang of than WiX (although unlike WiX, SIideRocket isn't a tool for creating fully fledged Flash websites). I uploaded a PowerPoint version of my recent assertiveness quiz to test it out. Click here to see the result.
Microsoft's SkyDrive makes uploading and sharing PowerPoint shows easy, but I couldn't find a way to prevent viewers from ignoring my hyperlinks and clicking their way through my interactive quizzes in sequence. The possibilities of WiX are unlimited for creating interactive Flash presentations, but it doesn't allow conversion of PowerPoint shows, the learning curve is a bit steep and the editing interface is somewhat clunky.
Well now I seem to have stumbled across a solution which addresses all of the above concerns. SlideRocket is an online presentation creation and sharing service which, although Flash based, allows easy conversion of ppt and pptx files, supports hyperlinks and (with some tweaking) allows the creation of interactive presentations which can't be 'clicked though'.
Currently I've signed up to the free version of SlideRocket, which is all you need for creating and sharing slideshows. However, for US$24 per month the 'Pro' version offers a whole host of other features including forms, polls, audio-narration, offline viewing and full customer branding.
SlideRocket seems to prefer ppt to pptx, and be prepared to fix some formatting and repair some hyperlinks, but the conversion process is pretty seamless compared with the other tools I've tried. The editing interface is more intuitive and quicker to get the hang of than WiX (although unlike WiX, SIideRocket isn't a tool for creating fully fledged Flash websites). I uploaded a PowerPoint version of my recent assertiveness quiz to test it out. Click here to see the result.
