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Getting the Message Across

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McKinsey’s have just published a great interview (free registration required) with a guy called Chip Heath.  Chip has spent much time, effort and money researching what makes ideas ‘stick’ in a business.  So his interest is in sticky ideas.  His research suggests that sticky ideas share six basic traits.

  1. Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they are short and deep. (Good feedback fits this description)
  2. Unexpectedness. Something that sounds like common sense won’t stick. Look for the parts of your message that are uncommon sense.
  3. Concreteness. Abstract language and ideas don’t leave sensory impressions; concrete images do. Compare “get an American on the moon in this decade” with “seize leadership in the space race through targeted technology initiatives and enhanced team-based routines.”
  4. Credibility. Will the audience buy the message? Can a case be made for the message?
  5. Emotions. Case studies that involve people also move them. “We are wired,” Heath writes, “to feel things for people, not abstractions.”  (Again the feedback model provides us with the opportunity to talk to people about emotional impacts of their behaviour as well.)
  6. Stories. We all tell stories every day. Why? “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation,” Heath writes. “Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

This is all sound advice.  However sometimes the message that the managers needs to get across is not especially sticky.  In this case I think Chip underestimates the importance of repeating the message frequently and clearly.  This is one of the reasons why weekly 121s are so effective in building relationships.  The non-sticky message can be given repeatedly until behaviour starts to change.

Performance Review Time is Here Again!

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Many of the managers I know hate this time of year. Because it is not just Christmas that is coming into season.

It is also that time of the year when thoughts turn to performance reviews and annual appraisals. For most managers and staff this is a painful and seemingly pointless and unfair process largely driven by HRs obsessive need to have the paperwork completed and correctly filed.

In many organisations, the annual performance appraisal is a phenomenally stressful exercise with little discernible impact on results. If we’re going to manage and lead high performing organisations, we can’t afford to have performance appraisal “systems” that don’t affect performance.

Writing performance reviews for many of us is a memory feat of Derren Brown like proportions. Our intuition throws up a grading for an individual and then we trawl the recesses of our minds for incidents to justify it. And too often because our memory fails us we just play it safe with a ‘satisfactory’.

And if we do rate one of our reports as performing poorly then aren’t we just shooting ourselves in the foot? As the manager we are paid to manage performance – not just to report on it at the year end.

For many managers the difficulties of preparing and conducting effective performance reviews stems from two major causes:

  1. They have not documented enough of the performance management process through out the year – so they are forced to rely on memory. They have very limited notes on which to base their performance review. This means that often the annual review is actually heavily skewed towards performance in the most recent quarter – where evidence is near to hand and memory is reasonably fresh.
  2. They have not been close enough to performance throughout the year to really understand what any one individual has contributed to the success or otherwise of the team. They really don’t know who has been performing and who has not. They have not played a full and active role in either understanding and managing individual performance issues or in developing people to improve performance.

But all is not lost. There are things that you can do to make the preparation and delivery of performance reviews less stressful and more effective.

Through December and into the New Year PMN is running half day workshops in Leeds, Harrogate and Hull designed to help make the process of writing and delivering performance reviews more effective and less painful! Packed full of practical tips and useful tricks to make the process work more effectively and efficiently these workshops will help to make the performance review process much less of a headache.

You can find out more about the workshops here and can book your place on-line here

Great Feedback Post at Slacker Manager

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If you have done the feedback workshop with me then I think you might find this post useful.  It makes the powerfulpoint that feedback can’t be positive or negative.  However it can be affirming (designed to encourage behaviours to be repeated in the future) or adjusting designed to discourage behaviours from being repeated in the future.

The post provides a great list of 11 tips to encourage effective feedback.  I recommend them to you highly!

From Good to Great Manager – Part 4 – The Power of Delegation

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Good bosses delegate.

Great bosses set up sensible monitoring routines so that they know how that delegation is going.

Good bosses engage employees in helping them with major projects.

Great bosses give their team members the major projects and are available to support them as required. They give the team members room to operate – without cutting them off.

Good bosses walk around the office talking to people – what Tom Peters calls Managing by Wandering Around or MBWA.

Great ones do that too, but they are careful not to ‘intrude’. They use MBWA as a way of getting information that helps them to give accurate feedback, to coach effectively and to delegate.

From Good to Great Manager – Part 3 – The Power of Appreciation

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The third in our occasional series on making the transition from being a good manager to being a great one.

Great managers know who does what.

Good managers are able to get a team to pull together to produce the goods.

Great managers know exactly who contributed what to the team effort. They take time to acknowledge and appreciate each person’s contribution.

They also know who has piggy backed on the hard work of others.  They give feedback and praise based on their own analysis and understanding of the person’s contribution.  They make sure that the feedback is based on firm evidence.

They use feedback and praise lavishly and effectively.

They know that by increasing the amount of appreciation in the organisation they increase esteem, confidence and self belief – vital ingredients to building high performing teams.

What opportunities does the Power of Appreciation hold for helping you to make the transition from good to great?