It’s performance review season for many people and the curse of most performance reviews – getting or giving accurate feedback – will be the bane of many a supervisor and employee. It does not need to be that hard. Habits, and the usual ways of giving / getting feedback, though, will do in many an attempt to give and get good, helpful feedback.… Read the rest
[When in Doubt] Cliched Employee Performance Phrases
The best way to do any employee’s performance assessments is to do it up front: what are the results to measure, what are the behaviors expected to be evidenced, and what are the milestones / deliverables anticipated along the way? Assess as you go, adjust as required, and sum up at the end of the year.
It’s not how most people do it.… Read the rest
[Building Great Companies] 5 Talent / Location Factors Founders Should Consider
There are a lot of ways to build a company – some by accident, some products of history, and some by poorly conceived thinking (see Charlotte, North Carolina – who would think Charlotte would become a world banking headquarters?). An obvious goal is to base your business where it’s got good access to customers, talent, transportation or perhaps capital: do none well and you suck up time in travel, recruiting, and moving people that could be otherwise spent toward serving customers and making great products.… Read the rest
[Lunch with Harry] Predicting Success
The holy grail of management development programs is being able to assess skills, and predict who will – and who won’t – succeed. The hits and misses of what it takes line the walls: IQ and schools attended have become big misses, perseverance in trying and “grit” have become big hits. While work by researchers such as Carol Dweck, K.… Read the rest
[Trick or Treat] The Trouble with Incentives
As a senior at Tigard High School, the Prom Queen was selected by a canned food competition between the three high school classes. The goal was to incent students to both show school spirit and bring in canned foods for people who were less fortunate and needed the food to eat to live.
Both competitive and adventuresome sorts, my class’ winning solution was to tin-cup class members for cash, and then ditch school to go buy canned foods at discount retailers that sold marred (but perfectly eatable) canned goods at a discount.… Read the rest
[Effective Leader’s Checklist] How Do You Rate?
40 people – including me – who coach leaders and teams as I do, got to spend an evening with Jim Kouzes Tuesday night. It was food for the mind and food for the soul.
Kouzes, along with colleague Barry Posner, authored the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, which has over 1.8 million copies in print. The duo has also been active in doing field-based research, utilizing a leadership inventory they developed, which now has a database of over 1M respondents.… Read the rest