Embrace – Workplace Navigator

For many of you out there, this time of the year is when the rubber meets the road, when your boss let’s you know where you stand or, as the leader, you need to size up your direct reports. Yep, you guessed it – The Dreaded Annual Review. Ugh. As a Human Resource professional, I have read thousands of annual reviews. Some well crafted, some not. Some meandering diatribes that serve no purpose but to prop up the author, some with one or two sentence milk toast generalizations that do little more than say “hey, you showed up for work.”

I’ve wondered sometimes what would happen if we had to give an annual review to our spouse or visa versa. I can imagine my husband saying, “Great job this year on Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner but can we back off the bell peppers for 2013?” It’s really difficult to summarize the 2080 hours of work into one or two pages of meaningful, pertinent, impactful prose.

Here are some pointers on how to survive the process:

1. Embrace. This is going to sound counter intuitive but – try to embrace the process. If you dwell on the dread, you will delay the inevitable and suffer the process; whether giving or receiving. Drafting the review hours before you have to sit down and give the review will not be your best work. It will be rushed, poorly thought-out and not likely to be thorough. If you set the intention that you look forward to the process, the end product will be all the better (and it will won’t be as painful). If you’re about to receive a review and aren’t open to constructive criticism, you won’t be able to benefit at all from the process.

2. Document. The traditional advice from a Human Resource professional is, “Document, document, document.” I’m not advocating “building a file”, I’m advocating that you make detailed notes throughout the year. Many annual reviews are a reflection of what has happened in the last two months. All the great breakthroughs and successes from last February are a faint memory. Memorialize the high points as well as the low points; there will be both.

3. Dissonance. Most of us look for consonance. We look for information to back up our beliefs. So if we think that our assistant is sloppy, we look for more information that backs up our belief that he is slipshod. So all we will see is misspellings, input errors and crumbs on the keyboard. Look for the dissonance; seek out neatness, examples of straightforward execution, tidiness.

4. Equilibrium. Seek out balance. Focusing on only negative feedback can be demoralizing. Only “pumping sunshine” can be just as detrimental. Most of us want to know what we can work on to get better. In a recent training there was an excellent analogy that a tri-athlete is constantly working for better form and time. You never “arrive” at perfection; we are all works in progress.

5. Craft. Craft the message. Phrasing developmental feedback in the form of what the person can do “more” of is important. As I have posted before, trying to do “less” is much more difficult to measure. Doing “more” is proactive. So I should suggest that my assistant be “more” detail oriented instead of being “less” sloppy. Stay away from negating words like “but” and “however”. They erase any words before them.

6. Eyes. Get a second set of eyes to read what you have written. Getting a second opinion from someone you trust is important for perspective. Sometimes we get caught up in our own “junk”. You could end up dwelling on Excel techniques for a third of the review and not realize that you’ve lost balance in the appraisal. You may use euphemisms that are lost out of context. Having a second set of eyes can help clear up the message.

I hope this has alleviated some of the dread and challenges that come with drafting annual reviews. You can make a difference with a well crafted appraisal and investing the time to deliver a balanced, well thought out message will be appreciated by the receiver.

Have you been in a communication chasm? You need an immediate answer from your boss, your partner or your friend and they don’t respond. Ugh. It’s almost like in today’s day and age of immediate communication and overload of technology that communication comes to a stand still. Some people respond to email. Some people will only instant message or text (hello, anyone under 30) or something really old school: a face-to-face meeting. How often does that happen? Well, if the Millenials only want to text and Gen X only wants to email, the Boomers want a phone call and the Traditionals want to be eye ball to eye ball, how are we all going to all get along?

Sometimes you need to be Sherlock Holmes to try and figure out the “sweet spot” for a response. Hm, I sent an email last week, left a voice mail yesterday…I wonder how I will get the response I need to reach an important decision before this project deadline. We have all this technology and yet we can’t seem to get on the same page. We have a communication chasm.

So how do we jump the divide and start exchanging information and make some decisions? Here are a few tips and ideas:

1. Open Mind. You’re going to need to start with one. We all have our preferences. I would love to email every person in my life and think that it will serve all my purposes. It won’t. Sometimes I need to call. Sometimes I need to be face to face. Get out from behind your PC or smart phone and test the waters.

2. Embrace. If you have a child with a cell phone. Scratch that. If you have a child, they have a cell phone. You will need to learn to text. There is no other way. Embrace the change. My sister-in-law told me that her 80 year old mother can text because that was the only way her twenty-something granddaughters would communicate. It’s never too late to embrace change.

3. Learn. About a year ago at an executive meeting, a colleague brought up that his daughter was traveling over seas. I asked if he had “Skyped” with her. Most of the gentlemen at the meeting were Boomers with laptops and camera phones. They looked at me like I had said a dirty word. They need to dust off their cameras and learn some new methods. Technology is changing at such a rapid pace that you need to stay ahead of the wave.

4. Adapt. Take some of your new found techno intelligence and start using it. Scan your audience and try some different methods. If you notice that someone always leaves a voice mail in response to your email, then call them back. If your child texts a response to your voice mail, text them back. Don’t be tied to your normal communication channel. To be more effective, you are going to need to adapt.

5. Relax. Obviously this is tough for someone impatient like myself. Take a breath…actually a couple of deep breaths as advised by the book, The Willpower Instinct by Dr. Kelly McGonigal. Slowing your breath for about 5 minutes can really take the edge off of the anxiety. Just because information is flooding by doesn’t mean you need to jump into the flow. Unless you are in a fire or earthquake, it will all work out.

6. Give. The Golden Rule. Sometimes it pays to be the one who steps forward with communication. Stay away from building silos in your life because someone has not been communicating as frequently as you would like. Take the first step to reaching out to them. Try using their chosen communication channel as a first step.

7. Assumptions. Check your assumptions. If your husband didn’t return an urgent text, do not assume he has been in a car accident. If your child hasn’t acknowledged a money transfer into his account, do not assume he’s been robbed. If your client hasn’t returned your email, do not assume that the deal is dead or, worse yet, they don’t want to work with you. Assumptions are a dangerous barrier to communication.

Communication channels are an ever-changing landscape of possibilities. You may not stay ahead of the curve or be an early adopter, but if you want to span the divide of the chasm, you’ll need to start taking some steps.

How do you jump the divide?