B (3:14)

Yeah, it all goes back to providing feedback. And we won't go into the feedback model again here, but that providing feedback is difficult for people because they don't have a method and a process for doing so, which we've tried to address in some of our previous podcasts as we've been talking about. Giving effective performance reviews is no different. If you have a and a performance management system in place and a method for doing it, it becomes relatively straightforward.

C (3:45)

Yes. I think the two things are the relationship that allows you to lean on it a little bit in order to give the feedback and a delivery method. If you have those two things, then you can do. Then feedback works.

B (4:01)

Yeah. Okay. In the last two podcasts we talked about how to prepare for and write performance evaluations and today we're going to talk about delivery of that evaluation. Right.

C (4:12)

Well, let's first of all do some housekeeping. From the last couple of sessions we've gotten several emails, people saying, okay, you said there would be a self evaluation form on the web and there's not one there. We made an error. It was my fault. In the last couple of podcasts, what we intended to say was this, what you give your employee, the rateee is the annual review form that your firm uses. So that was the form we intended you to give. What we're going to post on the web, by the time you're listening to this podcast, it's already there is the email that you're going to send out requesting their input on the form. And you can attach the form electronically or put it in their inbox, however you like to do it. So sorry, we didn't do that. It wasn't very clear and that was my fault. I also have to share a quote, my very favorite quote, I meant to do it last time, Mike, about evaluations. And it goes in right to the conversation you and I were just having. The common way of doing animal reviews is like dieting on your birthday and wondering why you're not losing weight. I just love that it is so perfect. Gosh, I'm fatter this year. But I dieted on my birthday. I didn't have any cake. That's what people expect. They expect an event to create change. And events do not create change. They create the requisite raw material, if you will, for change. But change happens through a process. It happens over time. It happens with attention and encouragement and regular feedback.

B (5:44)

Alright, now that we get the housekeeping out of the way, in our last two podcasts we talked about how to prepare for and write the performance evaluation. And so now we're going to talk about the dreaded delivery of that evaluation. How do we do that? What are the keys to that?

C (5:58)

Mark? Well, first thing is hopefully when people were listening on how to prepare and write the review, it struck our listeners that delivering a review that is professionally done, that you've taken your time and done well with will be much easier than one that has been thrown together and you don't have your data and you haven't reviewed it and thought about it carefully and so on. And I think an important point to make here because now we're talking about the event that is generally done so poorly and is hated and dreaded and so on. I think it's important to make this point again, and I'll probably make a couple more times during this podcast is managing around events as opposed to processes is almost always an ineffective way to manage. It's counter to the basics of management and it's hard to reproduce. Events tend to be hard to reproduce. They're hard to teach, they're much harder to capture and harder to correct in process as you're moving, moving through them, because they tend to be pretty much reactive rather than proactive. There's no planning around them. So I think it's important that people understand that what we're trying to do is take that event, the delivery of it, and minimize its importance by doing other things throughout the process. That makes the delivery almost an aftermath. That is easy. And certainly if you've been giving feedback and coaching and you've been giving quarterly reviews, the actual delivery of the final review at the end of the year is not going to be a cataclysmic event. People are going to be used to it. It's going to be boring. And that's what good management is. As we've said before, it's boring, it's anticlimactic, it's not appealing terribly, but it's terribly effective. But okay. We're also going to proceed. Just another quick note here. We're going to proceed as if you've already done your prep work and you've written a review. That's what this cast is about, what you do after that. We're not going to assume that you've given quarterly reviews the way manager tools managers should. Nor do you have necessarily a year's worth of data at your fingertips through one on ones and so on. We have assumed here that you have asked each Rate to complete an annual review form as a self evaluation. And I want to make a point also about. I've got so many points at the start of this thing, Mike, you're probably going to kill me. I want to make a point about using the. The term ratee I just put away. I had it on my last trip and I had it on my desk and reread it the night before last. I just put away an article by Peter Drucker called They're not employees, they're people. And so I don't want people to think that we have marginalized the person who's receiving this review as a reyt. We see them as people, believe me. I'm just using ratee to be very specific about the person to whom you're delivering the review. We're not trying to make them one dimensional, we just use that phrase. We use that nomenclature to be clear about the actors in this little play that we're laying out. So there's going to be several things you need to do around the delivery of an annual review of a performance evaluation. The first is a pre meeting email. You'll send this out about a week in advance of the delivery meeting. We'll talk about it in a second. The next thing you're going to do is develop your core message and that's around what is the primary idea that you want the re t to leave the meeting with? You've also got to do logistical preparation, which is pretty simple by now. There's one thing you've got to do the day before the review. Hopefully some of you know what that is. We've got a list for you of what to bring to the review. There's a recommendation here about how to structure your delivery. There is an effective order to delivering these. We have a specific way. We recommend you start in terms of a scripted opening and it actually has three parts. And then we've got some suggestions about how to behave during the meeting. We can't recommend every single scripted step in the meeting because we don't know how your form works. But nevertheless, we think it's effective to give some simple tips on how to be perceived as a good listener, how to be a good communicator during the meeting. So there are eight steps that we're going to walk through. Let's start with step one. The pre meeting email. Really simple. About a week before you meet with Etraitea, we recommend you send them an email reminding them of the meeting and covering the basics. There's a sample of this on the web. In fact, you're going to hear me read through the sample because reading through it gives you a great understanding of how we structure the meeting itself. No matter what your human resources department sends out, whatever standard communications are sent in the form of the organization, whatever are absolutely insufficient. This is a mail from you to the individual confirming your meeting and talking about what you're going to do, which I guarantee you your human resource department is not training you to do. And that's okay. Human resources does good stuff. They're just not doing this. Remember, this is part of the this evaluation. This delivery meeting, if you will, is part of the overall performance management process. If you send this mail out, it's yet another thing you're doing in advance of the meeting to make the employee feel like it's a part of the process and thereby minimizing the impact, the emotional impact, the fear and dread, if you will, of the actual delivery meeting itself. It makes it much more about an ongoing effort at individual improvement rather than about me telling you how you did and how much money you're getting next year. Okay. And in this mail you're just basically going to set the groundwork for the meeting and tell them what's going to happen and why. Here's a simple sample and again we're going to post this on the web for everybody. Dear Bob, this email is a reminder of our performance management meeting on date at time in Locationx. I'm looking forward to sitting down with you and going over your year and talking about what we're going to do next year as well. Between now and then, I encourage you to review your self evaluation. The day before our meeting I will be giving you a copy of your review to go over before our meeting. I found that reading something in front of your boss for the first time is no fun at all and I don't want to do that to you. This will give you a chance to find where we agree and disagree and to take your time and think clearly about any questions you might have. Your salary information will not be on the Copy I give you the night before. And Mike, we just do that just because we don't want people emailing each other. There's something to be said for the privacy of delivering the salary information face to face. I found that when we tell managers to put salary information on in advance, salary information tends to get leaked more easily. It's going to get leaked anyway, but let's reduce the chances it gets leaked.

B (12:34)

Yeah, makes sense.

C (12:36)

Next, during our meeting, I'm going to follow a simple pattern that I found works really well. First, I'll go over our agenda. Then I'm going to give you a broad overview of how you performed, giving you first a core message. I'll do my best to summarize your year, if you will, in that core message. Then we'll walk through each part of the review. I'll start with areas that you and I agreed upon and then move to areas where we disagreed. I found that makes for a little less tension. In the meeting. When we've walked through the whole form, we'll discuss compensation changes. If there's time, I'll be happy to discuss the details of how our company administers annual compensation. And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. If I can't answer them, we'll get you to somebody in HR or finance to do that. Then we'll talk about our goals for next year. These will, of course, be affected by your evaluation, but I'd like you to come prepared to begin a discussion about them. I don't expect us to make it through all of your development planning for next year, but if we do, that's great. We have an hour scheduled. I will not go over that time. I found that if it does take that long, going longer doesn't help. Starting fresh on a second meeting is better. I'll be happy to schedule more time. If we don't finish, my goal is always to finish the review of last year, discuss compensation, and again, at least begin talking about goals for next year. I'll finish by reminding you of the core message I began with. Please let me know you've received and read this mail by replying to it simply. If for some reason you're thinking you may not be able to make this meeting, I encourage you to let me know now. While I urge you not to try to reschedule if necessary, I may be able to be flexible. If you have any questions about the process, please just ask. Thanks, manager. One thing I found, Mike, is if you tell them, if you have any questions at all, Please just ask. What happens is people ask about their review. So I've changed that to include, if you have any questions about the process, please just ask. You'll probably still get some questions from people not about the process, but about their review. Hint, hint. Can you tell me how I did? And the answer to that is no, because it's not enough just to tell them. It's important that you get every opportunity to give them an opportunity to improve. And the best way to do that is to maximize it in the meeting itself. Okay, next step is developing your core message. This is the most important part of this podcast and delivering the review. It's the hardest thing you're going to do, but is absolutely the best, and it's the most overlooked. I suspect that many people listening after they get done hearing it will say, wow, that makes it really simple. I feel much better about what I have to do now. It's not necessary that you actually wait until the week before the review to develop it. You could have done it a month ago. It doesn't have to follow the week in advance email we just sent out. However you want to do it is fine. Don't do it at the last minute. You need to think about this. The reason we need a core message is that the meeting you're going to have is the most emotionally charged meeting you can have with an employee whom you're retaining. They're more scared than they care to admit. You're probably not going to be as good at it as you want to be, so you're going to be a little bit nervous. They're nervous about how much of a raise they're going to get for many years. I advise managers to just tell employees the salary increase they're going to get immediately, like in the first two minutes of the meeting, just to stop the buzzing in the employee's head. That seems so widespread. Until they hear that number anyway. I since learned that while there is buzzing in their heads before the number, there's buzzing in their heads afterwards. And that buzzing is in the form of calculations about what can I afford and what my take home will be and those kind of things. All that said, one of Horstman's laws is that if you say something seven times, half your people will say they heard it once. Because there's so much organizational sandpaper to fight through, it's best to boil any communication you have down to its bare essence and then repeat it over and over and over again. I think Churchill once was asked to give some advice on giving a speech he says, come up with a good idea and then deliver it with a great whack and then whack it again and then whack it one more time for good measure. Something like that. So when it comes to this meeting, you better start with it, flesh it out with details, the core message, and then end with it. If you want the re t to remember anything from this meeting, their heads are going to be buzzing. You must pick a core message and make sure that you have something you can hang your hat on when they walk out saying, okay, give me back the core message. So I know that you got. Would be a great idea to do that just to make sure everybody's got a clear understanding of how the meeting went rather than, well, I don't remember, but I got a 3% raise. That's not. If people say, well, I don't remember what, I got a 3% raise, you failed in delivering the annual review.

B (17:21)

Does the fact that they're not going to remember anything from this meeting therefore imply that this is not the place to be giving people detailed feedback on their performance? Kind of help me understand a little bit the message there that we're giving people feedback on their performance. Obviously it's performance review, yet they're not going to remember a lot out of this process. So where's the balance between providing feedback and not?

C (17:49)

Yeah, it's a great question. First of all, you're a manager. You're responsible to give feedback, period. Now is the time where you're giving them feedback. The fact that you're not going to hear all of it doesn't mean that you're off the hook. So let's be clear about that. Secondly, when you actually deliver feedback from the review, most of it's going to be written and all you're going to be doing is pointing it out. None of this should be a surprise the first time you do this. If you haven't been using the feedback model and you give them detailed feedback, people's heads are going to spin. I don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg. So you can either do it and expect their head to spin after this meeting and have them not hear it and then start doing feedback. Or you can get them used to feedback in advance. And then when you give them feedback in this meeting, it should be tolerable, they should be able to hear it, they're going to be able to take away the review and they're going to study it. I'm not saying they won't learn some stuff, but they're probably not going to learn a lot from you in the meeting. So I think that's important. That's why there's documentation, at least in part, so that they have a record of what you actually told them. Did I answer your question?

B (19:01)

Yeah. I mean, it strikes me that why this process is so difficult for most people is that a lot of managers believe that the annual review is the place that they do give feedback. And given what you said that they won't remember anything coming out of it. It's terribly ineffective as a mechanism for doing that.

C (19:19)

Oh, it is? Yeah, it is. That's why you have the core mess. And the core message, as I'm about to share with you, is not about the details, it's about performance and what it means for the future. So let me cover that. The core message has three parts. The rating, the result, and its ramifications. Now, I admit I chose that last word just to complete the alliteration.

B (19:41)

Rrr.

C (19:43)

This is the three R's. But you'll just have to accept it. If you want to use a different word, use whatever word you like. Whatever word works for you. By rating, what we mean is their overall score on however your organization rates people. It could be met expectations, it could be superior, it could be top 10%, it could be failing to meet, it could be below standard, whatever. Wherever you are, your firm has a final ranking or overall title, most likely that each employee gets. We're betting if they don't, use your best judgment and come up with an adjective or two or adjective or a two word phrase that captures this rateee's performance relative to whatever standard you want to come up with. So that's what you start with. Next comes the result. I really believe this is a distinct advantage for those of you who are listening. Essentially this is where you tell the ratey what you believe their performance earned them in terms of their career and their job position. Another way of thinking about it is, okay, you did this well, here's what this means in terms of your job and your responsibilities. Now there are four primary result promotion, vertical growth, horizontal growth, and no change. Let's cover each one and then I'll briefly touch on some special cases that exist. But first, wait. Before I do that, I have two notes I want to share. First, Generally these four result classifications we're talking about relate to the kind of evaluation ratings most companies have. If someone were considered superior or some equivalent high level evaluation category, promotion might be a possible outcome. On the other hand, it's possible you could Get a result of promotion even though you have just met expectations. As an example, the results do not follow precisely the ratings in every case. Heck, some companies have 8 or 9 or 10 ratings. There are plenty of cases where someone who meets expectations and you recommend them for promotion, or where someone who is clearly superior has no change or gets only vertical or horizontal growth. It depends on you, your analysis of their situation, them, your company, career, and so on. Do not assume that there's a linear one to one relationship to any company's ratings. There's not. You could easily have three or four different possible results with each given rating depending upon where they are in their career and jobs and promotion and the industry you're in, and so on. Whether there's a recession, all kinds of things. Second note, hopefully you see the power of this technique in terms of communicating your core message. I've really seen it, Mike. I've seen it fundamentally change the way a review happens. From how much am I going to get and pay next year? To here's how you did, here's what that got you, and here's what that means for next year. By communicating them kind of in one paragraph, one sentence in that core message, it makes it much easier to see the overall conversation as being part of a process about performance and not about a salary adjustment. It really does make a difference.

B (22:51)

Yeah.

C (22:52)

Okay, so let's talk about the four first, promotion. Obviously this is usually reserved for superior performers, but there are plenty of cases where a more middle of the road performer might have earned such a result. Remember, this result is your communication to the rateee about what their rating actually means professionally for them in the next year. It's possible that you can't by yourself promote them and all this would mean that you believe they're ready. In other words, if you gave them that promotion result, you believe they're ready and you'll work with them, your boss and HR probably to find a suitable position to promote them into. Yes, it's possible you could be setting yourself up for failure here. There may be no position, your boss may hate you and the rateee and vow never to promote them. Promotion is the rating that requires you to have done. I'm sorry, Promotion is a result that requires you to have done some homework in advance. Ideally, talk to your HR rep and your own manager about what the opportunities are and how to go about getting your employee what they deserve. And you know, try to remember that your primary role is to speak not for the rateee, but rather for the organization. You're a Manager. There may be great people working for you that deserve a promotion that you know darn well is very unlikely, maybe politically possible, to give them a promote result and be clear with them about the uphill battle in front of you in terms of making it happen because of politics, because of structure, because of economics, whatever the case might be. And one more thing about promotion. This result doesn't mean you're going to promote this person immediately. You're saying they're ready now or they will be ready during the next year. And you want to be clear with them now that you want to get them promoted during the coming year. And there may be some work you have to do, and the sooner they know that you're planning on doing it, the sooner they're going to help you get there.

B (24:40)

Yeah. You know, I think it's a very valuable conversation. I found in the past that once you've had that conversation with somebody, it frees the individual up to then focus on helping you over the course of the next year make the case to the rest of the organization that they're ready to be promoted.

C (24:59)

Yeah. They behave differently, don't they? They do, yeah.

B (25:02)

Absolutely.

C (25:02)

Yeah. All of a sudden they get smarter. It's weird. They're willing to take guidance much more easily. They're much more open. They just tend to be better. It's like the Pygmalion.

B (25:16)

Yeah. On the other hand, you got to be pretty clear in your mind that you're committed to making this happen prior to making that statement. Because once you say it, people have an expectation. And I've seen it work the other way, which is the statement's been made and then two years later they're still not promoted. And that results in lots of negative behavior in the future. It's a strong statement and ought to be considered carefully.

C (25:43)

Yes.

B (25:43)

Carefully. Yeah.

C (25:44)

Deliberately.

B (25:45)

Yeah.

C (25:47)

Okay. Next, vertical growth. This is a result for somebody who's done their job well, obviously, and you want to give them more responsibilities in the areas they're already working in. Usually this would mean you delegating more work in their area to them versus doing it yourself. In other words, something that you've held onto that they could do. Now you're going to give it to them. That was maybe at your level, but now you feel like it could be at their level. It might mean giving them some of your leadership tasks, running meetings or administration or reporting. It depends on the job, of course, but usually this results happen after you've already done some horizontal or broadening growth with a re tee Previously. And both vertical and horizontal growth, Mike, obviously are very job dependent. And I generally think that what might be an ideal progression is in the first year somebody does their job well and they get met expectations, they give them a no change. And then after a year or two you think, oh boy, this person's got their job down. I want to give them more to do because there's always going to be more to do coming down from the top. So you grow them horizontally, then after a year of that or so you give them some vertical growth, you increase the kind of stuff that they have that has a higher level of visibility. And the last thing is they're ready for promotion. That's a way to think about changing from I don't really have anything different for you, just keep doing your job into hey, there's a number of different ways I can come at this person. If they've been given horizontal growth for a couple of years and you say no change, and they know that other people have been given vertical growth after that, they might see that as well, I'm doing well, but not as well as my manager might believe I could if I was putting in my best effort. So I'm sorry, I got off track there. The next one is horizontal growth. And this is for somebody you want to broaden their responsibilities by giving them additional tasks in areas that they're not presently active. Maybe if your team possesses five different types of insurance claims, you'll ask them to learn about an additional one to the two they're already working on. Maybe it means asking them to cross train with another team member on something or strengthen the team for personnel strains that may come up. It might mean just getting a new employee to the complete portfolio of their job. You start them out in a small subset of it and gradually over the course of the first couple years, you give them horizontal growth until they understand the job completely. Again, this is highly job dependent. Again, this is usually the first step on the path to an ultimate promotion is to broaden somebody's job. The last one in terms of the four primary ones is no change. I used to call this classification, this result classification, steady state. And I changed it to no change because I think steady state suggests that where this radi is is okay. And I think the world has changed enough, Mike, that I want the employee to understand that staying for several years at no change when the world seems to be spinning ever faster and change is a given and so on, it's probably an untenable position to stake their future on. In fact, in probably the second year of a no change result, I might bluntly tell the employee that one more year is probably all they can afford before they consider broadening their contribution. And yeah, there are exceptions to that rule. I don't mean to suggest this is a dark mark saying three years and they're out. This is not an up or out recommendation necessarily, but I think it's okay to say no change. I think there's a positive there. You didn't, you know, you did everything I asked you to do, but there's going to be no change in your responsibilities. If you're thinking you're going to get more to do, I'm not seeing it. You're going to have to do something more to prove that to me. Does that sound, does that make sense to you, Mike?

B (29:23)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

C (29:25)

It's a subtle change, but I've seen some managers get some good traction with it. Okay, now what about the other areas? And there are three of them. Reduce, demote, and terminate. I have found that these are so unique to companies and we're going to discuss each of these situations later in different podcasts. Usually managers don't wait for an annual review to cover them, or at least we hope they don't wait until the annual review. Reduce simply means reducing somebody's responsibilities. Demoting actually means moving them down the organization. It happens. And then terminate, obviously is very clear. So we've covered the ranking and the result. What about ramifications? That third R in the alliteration? Ramifications are really just the broad outlines of what you and the employee are going to do next year based on the result. Giving a little bit more details to the result. Now, key point here, you don't necessarily go into the details of ramifications in your initial delivery of the core message, when you start off the meeting, after you go through the agenda and so on with it. If you figured out what the promotion must be or what specifically must be broadened, of course you state that. If not, you simply identify the need to discuss the ramifications, the results, if you will, further in the planning portion of the value evaluation discussion. Again, it's highly dependent upon your organization, but in general, ramifications of a promotion result are discussing what jobs are right for the rad, what jobs she might be interested in, what career aspirations does he have? Which jobs best help get him there? Whom do we need to talk to about making it happen? Are there relationships we need to foster so that we'll have help from the other side of the table ramifications for vertical or horizontal growth are talking about what parts of their job are going to change and how and considering a timeline and perhaps deliverables around the change. In some cases, you're going to know exactly what you want them to broaden or deepen in terms of their skills. And so you're going to be able to talk about those initially, but you don't necessarily have to. It may change as you engage in a dialogue during the third part of the during the last part of the meeting where you have a discussion. Even in the case of a no change result, I recommend you make it clear that you want performance improvement. You can do that. You can say, look, I'd like to see better numbers here or better numbers there. All that said, here's what your core message might sound like. Bob, you did a superior job last year and earned a fully exceeded rating. I feel that means you're ready for vertical growth in your role in the areas of quality control and variability reporting, period. So you had rating fully exceeded, you had vertical growth, which is a result. And you add ramification, which is quality control and variability reporting are the places you're going to be getting the vertical growth. One final note about core messages. The reason you're doing this is because the employee will not, will not, will not remember everything you want them to from this meeting. So I found it best to just boil it down to one or two key ideas and make sure they get those. It's possible that your organization makes it hard to use this format, but. But I doubt it. This is you in the meeting itself coming up with a way to deliver a key message in a clearly defined, distinctive way. And there's a simple test to use. Will the RADI be able to repeat your core message one month after your meeting? If you're certain they can do that and you might want to test it as well, then you've had a good meeting. So that's your core message. That is probably 90% of the value of today's podcast.

B (33:15)

Okay, cool. You know, one thing that struck me about, you know, I asked earlier about the whole feedback question about whether the balance between feedback and how much feedback you can give. But one thing that struck me is that about this core message is really this is setting up the framework for all your performance management system activities over the coming year. To me, it's almost more about the future than it is about the past. Certainly the past is informing the future, but that's the value of the review is setting up the following year.

C (33:54)

Yeah, it does. It fundamentally changes the meeting. Okay. Logistical preparation is next. Really pretty simple. You've got to reconfirm that you still own whatever meeting room you've scheduled. And something else I don't think I mentioned before, Mike, is if there's a window in which you're supposed to deliver these meetings, like in the month of January or from December 15th to January 15th, do them at the front end of the window. The sooner you do them, the sooner your team will be done with them and they'll be able to get back to work. The later you wait, the harder it is to get done. The more other people you'll be competing with for your boss to sign off on them. Get them done sooner rather than later.

B (34:36)

The added stress of trying to rush it at the end, it's not.

C (34:38)

Yeah, everybody does it. It's embarrassing. It actually is embarrassing. It implies that you're really not ready and you're rushing to meet a deadline. The same thing you don't want them doing when they produce a project for you. And this is important. This is their addiction to food, clothing and shelter. We don't want to mess. We want them to perceive us as being totally professional and ethical about how we handle this critical process and this particular meeting in the process. Okay. Also, if I haven't already said it before, you don't want to be scheduling these meetings first in the morning or last in the day. People say, well, I want to schedule my tough ones for the end of the day. No, you do not. People rushing to get into work first thing in the morning will not be at the best. And if they're going to be late, it's going to freak them out and they're going to panic. And those worrying about childcare at the end of the day will not be in a mood. They're going to be, you know, they're not going to want to be asking questions and so on. So don't do them at 8 in the morning and don't do them at 4 in the afternoon. Do them in the middle of the day. If that means you can only do three a day, well, then only do three a day and figure out how to do it if you can. And if you're wise enough and bold enough, I recommend you sit on the same side of the table as the desk. Same side of the table or desk as the re. Tee. It's easier if you're in a conference room, obviously, than at your desk, across a t, on your desk or whatever. A friend of mine once said what if they hit me? Well, if you're worried about them hitting you, the table is not going to stop them. The table being between you and them is not going to stop them. It's a nice gesture to be on the same side of the table as they are now. Another key point. Learned this from a guy named Leonard Whiteman, one of the greatest managers I've ever known. It is one of the truly beautiful competitive advantages that manager tools managers have over other managers. Not suggesting it's competition, folks. The one thing you must do on the day before any review meeting you have is give the rate a copy of their review form. Of course, minus pay information. This is so simple and so powerful and so many people. Don't do it. Don't ask the employee to read their review for the first time in front of you, frantically looking for stuff to challenge or issues to unearth or where's the pay number? If it's going to be bad, there's a chance they might cry. Yes, it might happen. Yes, it does happen. Why make them do that in front of you? Why make them have their entire emotional lifespan play out in 30 seconds or one minute in front of you? Regardless of whether it's good or bad, the most important point you want to communicate your core message is going to get lost if they're not focusing on you during the meeting because they're so busy reading, trying to read between the lines and understand what it was that you did. Don't give it to them first thing in the morning or they'll come to you with questions during the day and you'll end up giving them the review in the course of the day before it's supposed to actually be delivered during the meeting. End of the day is the ideal time. Go to their desk, hand it to them in a file folder, ask them to wait to read it until they get home to avoid anybody else looking over their shoulder or them dying to share it with other people and remind them of when and where you're going to have it. Tomorrow, have the meeting tomorrow. Simple. That's it. Okay.

B (37:59)

It's interesting because I think some managers actually, I even hate to say this, but actually will resist giving to the giving the review to the employee, the rateee, prior to the meeting, the day before the meeting because they actually don't feel prepared for the review and are worried about the rateee coming to the review with an agenda. It's almost as if they want to surprise the radius.

C (38:28)

Yeah, I've got to tell you, that is a dirty little secret. You're right. And there are people going, oh, my gosh, I know what's going to happen. They're going to come in with questions. Yes, thank God. They're going to come with questions. This is not a chance to beat him over the head with a blunt instrument. And to keep them from engaging in dialogue. Why not engage them in dialogue? If you've given them a bad review, you want them talking. Now, maybe you think they've got 20 reasons why you're wrong. But if you've done your homework and you come to the meeting with all the things we tell you to come to here in just second, come with here in just a second, then you're going to be able to refute any concern that they may have and reinforce all the points that they agree with.

B (39:05)

I suspect there's some listeners right now who expected this podcast to make giving reviews easy. And in a sense, you're giving folks a process for doing so that eases the burden to give an effective review. But giving an effective review is hard work. There's a lot of work involved in being, getting prepared for a review. So some people might be actually going like, oh, man, this is more work.

C (39:32)

Than, yeah, you know what that goes to, Mike, is that goes to our assumption about management. We believe management is an ethical profession. Brain surgery is hard, too. You get paid a lot of money, and, gosh, I'd like to be a brain surgeon. Well, you got to go through a lot of hard work in order to get there. And then, yeah, you get paid a lot, but you earn every dime. Yeah, it is hard work to do this. Well, if you hear this stuff and go, gosh, this is going to be hard, then you may not have what it takes to be a manager for the rest of your life. If you hear this stuff and say, you know, wow, this is going to make things better, it's going to be tough for me. But after you get done, after you do this a few times, it will become easy, easy, easy, because it'll be your way of dealing with it rather than a fire drill every dang year. It's just a matter of seeing it as a professional obligation and stepping up and doing it the right way.

B (40:19)

Well, I suspect 99.9% of our listeners don't fall into the category of people who aren't willing to put tools.

C (40:26)

There you go.

B (40:27)

They're listening to our podcast every week. They're going to the trouble of downloading, listening to the web, so they've already dedicated themselves to improving their management skills.

C (40:36)

Yes, and they're catching every error I make, which I truly appreciate. I love it when people say, hey, you said you're going to have something on the web about this and I haven't found it. I'm like, ah, gosh, we said that wrong on the podcast. What do you bring to the review? Two copies of the review form. One for you, one for them. This is the one with the salary information on it, by the way. And the reason for that is they may get up and walk around with it. And if they start asking you questions from the review while they're walking around with it, if you don't have a copy for you, it's going to be awkward. Two copies of their self appraisal, one for you and one for them. They'll forget it, trust me. You can compare what they had to what you had. Your supporting materials, which would be a job description in case you want to go back to it. Have it there just in case. Their objectives for the year, any files that you want to have from their work during the year, any work materials from their year, any reports or projects, things like that, your notes and observations organized. This is you looking through all that stuff, of course, and coming up with further examples beyond what you could have put on the review regarding the areas that you were asked to evaluate them in all of your weekly one on one forms. Those are full of information. Any quarterly reviews that you've done so that they can see that there's no surprises. Tissue. It may be emotional and that's okay. So have tissue. It's a respectful thing to do. If you want to keep it underneath the table, put it in a chair next to you underneath the conference room table, that's fine. Put it in a drawer on your desk, that's fine, I don't care. Have it available. Don't make a big deal.

B (42:14)

You're saying you don't like when people walk in, you don't want to, as they sit down across from you, just don't want to take that box off the chair and just slide it right.

C (42:21)

Across and say, here you go, get started. No, no, that's probably not a good idea. In fact, if somebody starts crying, I had somebody once, what do you do if you start crying? The first thing you say is, I'm so sorry, here's some tissue. And you sit quietly. You don't have to say anything, just sit quietly. If they say, you know what, I need a minute, say, it's okay, take a minute. I would encourage you, if you can, to encourage them to Take a minute there with you rather than leaving the room because then who knows when they'll come back. And then you're going to end up probably blowing through your timeline, which you do not want to do, but just address it and say, you know what, it happens. It's happened to me before. I've gotten emotional in getting a review from my boss in the past and I totally understand. Take some time. That may be because of good or bad review. It doesn't matter. Water. If they get choked up, they're probably going to want water to drink after the fact. Having a nice pitcher of water with a nice glass is very helpful. And then a watch or a clock. I like a clock that you can put on the table that you both can see. RE t will naturally self regulate if they look at the same clock that you do. If they don't know that you can see the clock they're looking at, they may not think that you know what time it is. And so they'll take as much time as they possibly can get.

B (43:38)

Yeah, I'd recommend it not be one of those chess clocks. Yeah, that would sound.

C (43:41)

Yeah, That's good. And again, there's nothing wrong with cutting the meeting off after an hour. You're not going to be terribly effective in the next hour of your meeting. End it in an hour and reschedule for more time. Okay, so that's what to bring. Now, how do you structure your delivery? In your preparation of the review you've done, you'll have noted where your evaluation of the rate differed from their own self evaluation. Rather than going through your eval form from top to bottom, go through the areas that you agree with them first. When you've done this. Excuse me, do you have a cold.

B (44:27)

Or is that a result of only getting two hours of sleep last night for this podcast?

C (44:32)

Thanks for rubbing that in. I spent some time with my family and stayed up late.

B (44:38)

I think it's important people understand the effort, you know, put into it.

C (44:43)

This is good. That's good stuff. I'm glad people are benefiting from it. That means a lot. No sense. If you're going to do something, might as well do it well. We couldn't do it if we didn't do the preparation. We're not just throwing this off the top of our heads, obviously. We've been studying this stuff for years. I've made plenty of mistakes getting to this point right here. Thank you very much. In your preparation, you'll have noted where the REI t and you differed. You. You go through the areas where you agree first. By doing that, you get more comfortable in your delivery. You've gotten more comfortable with them in the room with you doing all this. And so it will be easier to address areas of potential conflict after you've gone through all the areas you agree. And there will be plenty of areas you agree, I'm sure, unless you're just wildly divergent, in which case it's probably because you haven't been giving feedback and coaching and one on one throughout the year. Okay. During individual sections of the review, when you're talking about areas of performance or behaviors or competencies, whatever it is your company calls them, the way to deliver the message in that area is to think about it as nothing more than feedback. We just modify our delivery a bit. We're going to have the three components, behavior, results and confirmation. And it's going to sound something like, Bob, I rated you as exceeded expectations in customer service based on behaviors such as your handling of Chris Jackson situation in March, the leadership you showed the team on the improvement project and your high quality scores on the unannounced forms review. Do you agree with that? I'm going to get agreement on each section if I possibly can as I move through the areas of agreement. Or I might say, Bob, I've scored you as sometimes met expectations in call processing. I base that on behaviors like you're only meeting our volume quota 65% of the year. You never met the quota in any one given month and during one three month period you didn't make it during a single week. And a key point here. I'm sorry, go ahead.

B (46:43)

How important is the agreement on the feedback you're giving them and what do you do if you don't get agreement?

C (46:51)

Two good questions there. First of all, the agreement is important, but it's not critical. In other words, you may not get agreement from them. And that is in part because you don't need it and because you're only halfway there. And that goes to your second half of the question is what happens if you don't get agreement? Remember now, what you have on the review is not everything you have in terms of data on this particular employee. If you've done your homework, if you've prepared and written a good review, you've got more stuff in terms of one on ones and your notes, which you've categorized hopefully according to the review with more data in reserve. So you go through two or three comments that maybe you've written one or two down. Let's say you've got one or two examples for their rating on the review form. And then you mention one other and you ask if they agree and they say no. And you say, well, okay, let's talk about that. Why don't you agree? And you always want to ask them if they express disagreement. You don't want to beat them over the head with more data just yet. You want to say, why don't you agree? And probably what they're going to say is, well, you're forgetting about John Smith or you're forgetting about this or you're forgetting about that. And the correct response is, thank you. I did include those things. And let me add a few more things though, that went into my thinking. And then you give them three or four more comments that support either positively or negatively, whatever rating it is that you particularly gave them. You don't have to ask for agreement the second time. What you're hoping to do is get agreement so you can move on. If in fact it's an issue. And usually this won't happen until later in the session. Of course, if in fact it's an issue, all you want to do is point out, okay, they have an issue and you're essentially telling them, and I've got more data here and my data is going to win. So I don't ask a second time whether or not they agree. I might say something like, I hope you can see it from my point of view based on this data, why I drew the conclusion I had. Let's move on to the next topic. Did that answer your question? Yeah.

B (48:53)

Yeah. I'd suggest that those managers go into the review with the kind of information you're describing immediately get membership in the 99th percentile manager club.

C (49:05)

Good one. Yeah. You simply can't have only the behaviors on the form as evidence. You've got to have more evidence as backup. You've got to have it written down elsewhere. This is really, again, this is the way to cut off potential problems and disagreements. So you say to them, let me give you some more data that caused me to come to the conclusion I did. I'm referring to you achieving only 50% of quota in 18 weeks over the year. That's below standard for even new representative. Having this backup data, Mike, is so powerful and again, it just significantly reduces the chances for that contentious meeting that everybody's trying to avoid. The fact is, your core message and all the work you've done in advance is going to make this meeting go so much smoother than you can possibly imagine. The chances of being contentious on any One of these issues is not going to be that big a deal. It's not going to be that likely.

B (49:56)

You know, I don't know how many views you've been in where your manager was this prepared. I've been in none. But can you imagine the reaction on the subordinate's face when you walk in and have this kind of data and conduct the review this professionally?

C (50:13)

You know, it's funny. This is management. You know what? People have been living in a dream world thinking that what they're doing day to day is management. It's not. It's being a boss. This what we're talking about here. This is management.

B (50:27)

Yes.

C (50:28)

Powerful.

B (50:30)

I love the distinction between being a manager, being a boss.

C (50:33)

That's Peter Drucker said management is a profession. Well, if it's a profession, then you're a professional. Professionals in meetings like this, which is a critically important meeting, got to be one of the top 10 most important meetings you have all year. If not top 5 or even top 3. A professional knows how to address, knows how to handle, has a plan for and delivers his top most important meetings every single year. No question. Okay, so that's structuring the delivery. Now, how do you actually start the meeting itself? We've already alluded to this above, and it has three parts. The agenda, the ground rules, and the core message. And the agenda, it's real simple. You run down what you're going to go through, the core message, the form agreements, the form disagreements, compensation, and next year's performance planning. For ground rules, I recommend some simple basics and I do recommend you go ahead and state them up front. It's not rocket science what we've got here. They are simple. Start and end on time. Future meetings are fine if we don't finish and we'll schedule them when we're done. If we don't finish, we're going to stick to the agenda we just covered. I just walked through. No comparisons to other employees. Everybody else sees it differently. Everybody sees everybody else differently. Doesn't work. We're not going to do that. Stay professional. That means polite conversation, no personal attacks, no raised voices. Either of us can end this meeting at any time or take a break if necessary. Active listening on both our parts. Questions are encouraged. I reserve the right to move on. If we seem to be stuck, we can always come back to an item if we have time, or at a later meeting. No cell phones or pagers, no calls taken or made, period. If an employee sat across from me and checked their pager while they were in a meeting with me about their annual review, I'd be very disappointed. I understand about families, but there are plenty of times where an hour. This is one of those times where an hour is well worth it. And then the third thing is, of course, the core message. And we already went through that rating, results, ramifications right there in the very beginning.

B (52:47)

Bang.

C (52:50)

Okay. The last thing we're going to talk about is how to behave, Mike. And again, we're really getting into the subtleties of each manager, the company, the form and everything else. But we do have some general recommendations. Simple smiling, using first names. Very, very powerful. I would add to that that if you go into this believing it's going to be okay, and that no matter what happens, even if the employee threatens your life, you smile and you say, I'm sorry you feel that way, or, I'm sure we're going to get through this if you stay cool, calm and collected, no matter what. And don't kid yourself. Managers, you're responsible for how you feel. The employee doesn't make you feel anything. I'm sure I've used my umbrella story. They're poking with an umbrella, but you're getting mad. If you get mad, you get mad all by yourself. You own your emotions. You're responsible for your emotions. I don't. Go ahead.

B (53:48)

I don't think you've shared the story, to be honest. You've alluded to it.

C (53:52)

Let's share it now.

B (53:53)

I don't know that you've ever told the story.

C (53:56)

Got on an elevator once, actually. It was out at pebble beach, believe it or not. Got an elevator and was going up, and a guy got on after me, and I was actually with a friend of mine, and we were going up in the elevator and this guy got on after us. And my buddy and I were standing in the back of the elevator, and he. This guy got on after us and stood in front of us and pushed a button to go up a floor or two. And he turned around, and now his back is to me. And it had been raining outside, and so he had an umbrella underneath his arm. He had a long trench coat on and a hat and so on. And in the course of the elevator going up a couple of floors, he started looking in his pockets for his keys. Well, in doing so, his umbrella started poking me in the chest.

B (54:34)

Pow, pow, pow, pow.

C (54:36)

Well, I'm at the back of the elevator, and I got nowhere to go. He doesn't know. It's totally inadvertent. He does not know. He's doing this. And I look at my buddy, kind of raising my eyebrows, like, can you believe this guy? And he's like, hey, I'm kind of glad it's not me. Sorry, buddy. And I'm getting ready to tap this guy on the shoulder and say, hey, man, I don't know if you know this, but you're knocking the crud out of me with your umbrella. And the door opens and he gets off. And I turned to my buddy and I said, man, that guy made me mad. And my buddy said something I'll never forget. He said, no, he didn't. He poked you with an umbrella. You got mad all by yourself. And the point of that is if the employee screams at you. And I remember there's a movie called Road House that stars, excuse me, Patrick Swayze. And in it, there's a part where he's coaching the bouncers. He's the cooler in a bar, and he's coaching the bouncers. And one of them says, you know, he says, you know, be nice. No matter what. Be nice. And one of them says, what if they call my mother a name? And he looks right back at the guy and says, well, is she. You know, just because a guy calls your mother a name doesn't mean you get to get mad. Even if you're from New York, you know, you don't. You're responsible for your emotions. If they get in your face, you stay calm, stay cool, stay collected. The chances of them taking a swing at you are virtually nil. But if they do that, then you're going to fire them. So it doesn't matter. The chances of that are just trivially unimportant to deal with. But basically, you can go in and say, I'm going to be cool. I'm going to be calm. It's not going to bother me if they get upset. I'm going to be attentive, I'm going to be kind, and I'm not going to let it rattle me no matter what. If you need to take a second, that's fine to put your thoughts together. But okay, so first names, smile, stay cool, calm and collected. Never, ever interrupt the re t. In fact, let me take it a step further. If they interrupt you, stop talking immediately. Don't continue talking. Don't make it a war of wills between you and them. If they interrupt you, stop, put your hands down on the table and listen. And the way you listen is you make great eye contact and you use active facial expressions in terms of active listening. And yes, there are ways to say, mm and aha. And yes, I agree, or I can understand why you feel that way. In fact, one of my favorite phrases is I can understand why you feel that way. Privately, I don't agree with you, but I certainly can understand why you feel that way. You know, if an employee says to you, boy, I'm Matt, I really feel that you're not giving me a fair rating here. It's completely normal for me to say, I can understand why you feel that way. Gosh, I feel that way too. So those are some simple things you can do. I want to give two concepts to put in the back of your mind that will help you diffuse tension. If in fact it goes there, which, of course, with this process, the chance of you having tension is greatly reduced. The first one I call the medicine ball technique. When someone gets angry at you and they attack you, it's a bit like they're throwing a medicine ball at you. Well, if you know what a medicine ball is, it's a leather thing. It's bigger than a basketball. It's about the size of a beach ball, and it's filled with sand or something, I don't know. And they weigh like 20 pounds. They're heavy. If you get thrown one when you catch it, you're going to get knocked back. What I mean by this is that when you get thrown a medicine ball, you don't catch it by sticking a hand out in front of you the way you would with a baseball glove on to catch a ball, and you do it stiff arming it. When you catch the medicine ball, you put your hands out in front of you like you're cradling a baby. And you catch it and you gather it to your chest and you actually take a step backwards. When someone attacks, you accept their attack. Confident people are willing to be attacked because they're secure in who they are, what they're doing and why they're doing it. You don't have to be defensive, you don't have to defend it. You don't have to. When they yell at you, don't have to yell back at them. Don't do it. Yelling is. Yelling is just wrong. Nothing could be effective that makes you look so stupid. People look stupid when they yell. If you ever seen a movie where there's no sound and people are yelling at each other, it's hilarious. Their veins on their neck are popping out and their mouth is open so big they could swallow a grapefruit. It looks dumb. Don't yell. The other person yelling is digging their own grave and let them do it. You can give them feedback about it if you want. At some point during the meeting, hey, can I give you some feedback? When you yell at me during a review, it makes me less willing to spend more time helping you see what you need to do differently next year. It makes me think that you're not going to be willing to put the extra effort in next year. It makes me think that we really are not going to finish today. What can you do differently going forward from this point? That's powerful feedback in the course of a review, and you can absolutely do it at any time. You can also give them positive feedback if they respond positively and say, boy, I see why you're saying that. You can say, hey, can I give you some feedback? When I give you a point where you can improve and you tell me that you agree with me and you can see how I drew the conclusion I did, it really makes me think you're a professional. It really makes me appreciate that you've got the right attitude about this. It makes me really want to work hard with you to improve that, to get you where you want to be in your career with this company or wherever it is you want to go, period. Thank you. Keep it up. That's simple. That's powerful. So think about catching a medicine ball. It's okay to step back. I understand. Sure. I can understand why you feel that way. Gosh, I'm sorry you feel that way. It's okay to say all those things. You don't have to attack back. You don't have to win the war of words at all. It's not a battle. It's not a debate. You're in charge. You're the manager. You're going to win every time. If you know you're going to win. You can smile even when you're being attacked if it's late in the game because you're still going to win. Last thing I want to teach is a sales technique. It's called Feel Felt Found. I often use it in conjunction with the medicine ball concept that I just shared. And it goes like this. The employee says something like, I can't believe you do that. I mean, I'm really a good employee here. I don't think you're seeing me fairly or they're attacking you in some fashion. You use the Feel Felt found technique. And it sounds like this, gosh, I see how you feel. You're telling me that you feel this particular way.

B (60:54)

You know what?

C (60:55)

I felt that way too when I got a Review like this. I was kind of angry that my boss was giving me the short end of the stick and I really didn't feel like I'd been treated fairly. Here's what I found. It doesn't do any good. It didn't do me any good then. I don't think it's doing you any good now to attack me. I found that it's better to keep our voices level and even keeled and talk about our differences. It's okay to have differences. The definition of conflict is two human beings in the same county. We're going to disagree about some stuff. It's okay. I don't hold you any less for the fact that we disagree. But I understand how you feel, and I felt that way. And what I found is keeping our voices even keeled, being calm and professional about it will tend to lead us toward a resolution rather than raising our voices and being upset at one another.

B (61:42)

Yeah. I can't help but go through some martial arts.

C (61:46)

Oh, gosh. Yeah.

B (61:49)

Last night at my taekwondo school. I think we've probably talked about it before, but I'm a partner in a taekwondo school. We were testing one of my friends for his second degree. The analogy, though, is that as you advance in the martial arts, a person attacking you becomes a friend, so you accept the attack to put yourself in a position to attack yourself. And in this case, it's similar. I hesitate a little bit with analogy because this is not a contest in the review. But the sense is you're accepting the medicine ball. You're accepting their statement to put yourself in a position where you can then give them constructive criticism or constructive feedback on how to move forward in a positive manner. Yeah.

C (62:41)

If you don't, if you yell back, they're not going to be of a mindset to listen to you give them managerial guidance. But if you behave like a professional, if you behave calmly and rationally and even in an even keel, they will tend to come back down to your level and then be more likely to hear the other suggestions and recommendations you have. Remember, the whole purpose of the core message is to get them thinking about next year to think about performance. And if all you're doing is fighting over last year because you're raising your voice too, you're not going to have a good meeting talking about what the plan is for next year. You're just not doing your job. In fact, Mike, it's interesting you mentioned that because I was just looking at a book on my bookshelf called the Magic of Conflict. It's About a martial arts instructor that talks about the fact that it's okay to be in conflict with other people. And you can actually there's energy in that conflict that can be rerouted in a positive way. It's a great book.

B (63:35)

Yeah. And to make my analogy even clearer, I wish I had said this earlier is when I say accepting the attack, I have a visual in my mind that most people obviously do not. But when I say accepting the attack is a junior level person, a junior black belt, for example, will still be at the point in their development where they're blocking attacks as opposed to when I say accepting. There's techniques for taking the strike, redirecting it, and instead of being farther away from the opponent, you're closer to the opponent so you're actually accepting. When I say accepting, I mean moving closer to the individual. And so by, I think by accepting this people's somewhat negative or hostile feedback and accepting it, you actually end up moving closer to him or her and then putting yourself in a position that you can influence them in a more positive way.

C (64:30)

Yeah, Fundamentally, it's the exact same principle that I've got in my head when I'm talking about feel felt found in the medicine ball. Yep. You're attempting to build a relationship even when they're attempting to tear it down. There's no excuse for a manager ever tearing down a relationship. And so you must be willing to do the hard work even when the employee is emotionally not comfortable doing that.

B (64:53)

Yeah, that's powerful. Again, 99th percentile manager club.

C (64:58)

And that's it. That's the seven steps. We started with the email, pre meeting email. Developing the core message. That's the key lesson. That's the 900 pound gorilla in this podcast or two. Logistical preparation. The day before, you got to give them the review. The day before, what to bring. We gave a list, how to structure your delivery. Talking a little bit about using the feedback model to think about how you talk about each portion of the review, how to start in terms of kicking off the agenda and how to behave during the meeting. Obviously it goes without saying that to wrap up, you probably want to repeat your core message, thank them for coming and of course, if you need to schedule another meeting. And that's it.

B (65:43)

Well, great. We got a couple, you know, we're early on in the process, so hopefully we've covered preparing and delivering reviews early enough for people to actually apply them this year. We also have time, I think, for folks to give us some feedback and ask questions and allow us an opportunity to come back and clarify things that we weren't clear on. So I'd encourage folks to send us some feedback on email or at the website and we'll come back and cover areas that maybe we weren't clear enough on.

C (66:14)

Thank you.

B (66:14)

Alrighty. Thank you, my friend. Bye. We'll see you.

C (66:17)

Bye.

B (66:18)

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you found today's podcast useful. As we noted earlier, we have a couple of weeks available to cover specific questions about preparing and giving performance reviews that we may not have covered in today's show. So please take the opportunity to send us an email with your questions. You can reach us@showmanager-tools.com Also, please note that our members only podcast will be delayed by two just a bit. Mark came to Virginia this week to work with me on the January show, but before we got to the Registered Members show, he decided that he'd rather hang out in my basement with pneumonia than work on a podcast. Now, he's recovering quite nicely, but he's not quite ready to record again. So with that, thanks again and we'll see you all again next week.

A (67:10)

Sa.