C (4:30)

Okay, so question one. I see strong evidence of effective leadership from my departmental leader.

B (4:36)

Yeah. Now, departmental leader might be a lower level exec. Like this would be a manager giving feedback about the organization, frontline manager, individual contributors are responding and they might be talking about somebody two levels up from you. But it's really simple. What are examples that you can remember of either effective or ineffective leadership from our department leader?

C (5:00)

Okay, next one. My department leader is open and honest in communication.

B (5:05)

We have to restate our interest in open and honest. There are people who are open and dishonest and people who are honest and not open communicators. Nevertheless, again, ask and capture what has our department leader done that shows he or she is open and honest in communication or not? Yeah.

C (5:25)

When you say department leader there, you're suggesting they would actually fill in the name of the department leader again to make it clear what department we're talking about. Is that correct?

B (5:35)

Yes. But if my boss two levels above me is what me and my team, I'M a frontline manager. Me and my team think of as my boss. Two levels above me is the department leader. And I don't have a good relationship with the department leader. And I don't think my team thinks highly of the department leader. I might choose to leave the name out simply because I don't want 4, 5 comments that potentially could get out. Because remember, you're going to prepare a report, but your people are going to be talking about senior people and they're going to know who's on your team. And like so many situations, they'll say, oh, yeah, well, I know who said that. And now we've got problems associated with the assumption presumption of anonymity, but in fact, not de facto anonymity.

C (6:21)

Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay.

B (6:23)

Yeah.

C (6:23)

Makes sense. Okay. My department leader cares about what is on employees minds.

B (6:29)

Yeah. Again, almost all these are ask and capture. What does our leader do or not do that makes you think he or she cares or doesn't?

C (6:38)

I trust the director's senior management to deliver the vision goals of the org.

B (6:43)

Okay. Ask and capture again. What do you trust or not trust about directors to deliver the vision?

C (6:50)

My department leader is appropriately visible and accessible to employees.

B (6:55)

This might actually catch a lot of leaders. Too many leaders don't drill down into the organization. They think email is how to manage and lead, which is sad, of course. So ask and capture. Do you see and hear from her enough or not?

C (7:12)

I trust my department leader to balance employee interests with the organization's interests.

B (7:18)

Again, ask and capture. What does he or she do or not do that shows you they can balance the organization and its people.

C (7:25)

Okay, looks like there's a trend here.

B (7:27)

Yeah.

C (7:28)

My department leader acts in ways that inspires commitment to our goals.

B (7:33)

Same thing. Ask and capture. What does our leader do that inspires you or doesn't?

C (7:37)

Yeah. Again, behaviors. Behaviors.

B (7:39)

Yeah.

C (7:40)

I see strong evidence of effective leadership from my department leader.

B (7:45)

Yeah. So ask and capture. What is our boss leader doing that shows he's a leader or not?

C (7:51)

My department leader acts with integrity.

B (7:54)

Ask and capture. What examples do you have of our leader acting with integrity or without integrity?

C (8:01)

My department leader fills me with excitement for the future of this organization.

B (8:05)

I love this one.

C (8:06)

Yeah, that's snarky.

B (8:08)

Yeah.

C (8:08)

Don't mean that.

B (8:10)

Ask and capture. What does our boss do that fills you with excitement for the future?

C (8:15)

My department leader treats employees as this organization's most important asset.

B (8:21)

Same thing. We're going to stay skinny here. What does our boss do that shows he values us?

C (8:26)

I Understand the mission purpose of my department?

B (8:30)

Same thing. What is the purpose of our department and how do you know I have.

C (8:35)

A clear understanding of this organization's direction?

B (8:39)

Same thing. What is our leader doing to tell us about our direction?

C (8:43)

My department leader helps me to see how changes of today will affect the organization's future.

B (8:49)

What does our leader do or not do to connect today to the future?

C (8:55)

Okay, those are pretty straightforward.

B (8:57)

Yeah, there's a political angle here that I don't recommend. Creating 10 pages of notes about all the things department leaders are not doing. Sorry.

C (9:08)

Yeah, particularly if you don't have much context to understand that. All right, so let's move on with the next category, which are questions regarding opportunities.

B (9:20)

Yeah, so questions about opportunities are interesting because your organization will generally see opportunities that might be available to people as a shared responsibility. Communicating them and finding people for them and so on. A shared responsibility between you, your leadership, and to some lesser degree, hr. Don't assume that a review of the company's responses is only to find out about changes to be made about corporate wide systems or processes. There's also a thread in here about every single manager. HR and leadership might think that they're doing fine. If most of the company seems fine in this category, but your scores are low, that's going to be noticed and reflective of you as opposed to opportunities that do or don't exist, or whether HR and leadership has a good succession plan and good talent management processes in place.

C (10:11)

All right, so on to the questions. First question, my future career opportunities here look good?

B (10:17)

Yeah. Your directs don't know their career opportunities are good if you don't tell them. So now we're not recommending you tell everybody. Opportunities are good if they're not performing well. But too many of us managers think that more senior people are figuring out who's going to go where and HR has all this data sitting around and they're looking to move people around. Well, that's just not so. Managers play a huge role in finding opportunities for their people, lobbying for their people, explaining how promotions work, preparing them for important meetings with politically powerful leaders. Even just one presentation where one of your people really shines can make an enormous difference in his or her career arc, if you will. They prepare people for interviews, so on. So we recommend you talk to your directs once a quarter about how they're doing relative to where they want to go. Now, there are some people who don't necessarily want to go anywhere, and that's okay. But for those people who do, don't assume that there's something happening in HR or elsewhere that is causing your people to get a fair shake. You may have to push and your people to apply for opportunities. And we have some guidance in manager tools and career tools about how to apply. Even if you're not quite ready, you apply early even though that you know they're going to tell you no because now you'll know the process you're going to go through when you are ready. Going back to the point about people who don't want to change, that's okay. Some people can say, no, I'm good here. I don't want to be a manager. I don't want to go try to go crazy. But staying in the same job does not allow them to take on an I don't want to change mindset. It's so prevalent. In fact, we have specific guidance for it called My direct doesn't want to change. And I've gotten tons of email over the years, Mike, about this one. Because what we basically say in the guidance is their role is not changing, but the organization is changing. And when the organization is changing, responsibilities change and roles. Even though job descriptions, which we talked about earlier as being largely useless other than necessary for hiring, according to hr, job descriptions don't change and the role is changing. When people say, well, you know, my job hasn't changed. And I say, do you use a phone at work? Yeah. Your job has changed. You have apps. Yep. Your job has changed. Processes and systems are always being updated. And basically if the company grows by 5% and somebody says, well, my role is X and I did X last year and this year you're saying, actually no, you need to do 1.05x next year if the company's growing at 5%. Otherwise we're creating a demand for outside hiring that's expensive. So everybody has to grow when the organization grows. Or put differently in the negative, if nobody grows, the organization is not going to grow.

C (13:06)

Yeah, essentially. I've also found in my experience that if you go into a new organization, new manager, new director, whatever, and one of your direct says, I'm not really looking for new opportunities or to grow beyond where I'm at. Take that with a grain of salt. Because you may find, assuming you're an effective manager, you may find that changing and their unwillingness or their lack of desire to move or to grow might be a reflection of previous management. I've seen that time and time again. So again, one on ones asking people about the future frequently will help guard against that.

B (13:40)

Exactly.

C (13:41)

So what's our asking capture here.

B (13:43)

Yeah, exactly. So how is your career doing and what are we doing to help or not? Let's talk about it now. You'll this is one of those questions where people may not want to talk about the career in front of others and so you can ask it more generally and then say look for those of you who want to have continued conversations, bring those to our next one on one, assuming you're doing one on ones and let's talk about what we should be doing and how can I help.

C (14:04)

Good.

B (14:05)

Right.

C (14:05)

Next question. The performance review process helps me focus my work efforts to help the company.

B (14:12)

In my opinion, this is a very tough one. Very, very few companies have such a good performance review systems that managers are able to deliver reviews to get that kind of response. Right.

C (14:23)

That's not where that's getting that kind of response. It's not actually in the role of the performance review.

B (14:28)

Yeah. Now to be fair, the performance review process is much more than just performance reviews, but it up shrinking down to that for most people, which is bottom line, what rating did I get and how much of a raise am I going to get? The company doesn't see it that way, but that doesn't mean your people need to see it the way the company, the company sees it. We recommend you review our hall of fame guidance on preparing, writing and delivering performance reviews, which we put out, I think we put it out in early 2006, Mike. And it's a four. I think it's four parts. It's two, two and a half hours long. And it's one of my favorites. It's very, very detail.

C (15:05)

We released it a few times.

B (15:06)

A couple times. Oh yes, we do. We do every, I think Thanksgiving or Christmas to help managers in that time of year. Yeah. We recommend in this case that you ask and capture what's good or not good about a performance review process. How can we make it better?

C (15:20)

Next question. I have opportunities to develop skills to achieve my career goals.

B (15:24)

Yeah. You'll feel a lot better about a low score on this question. If you've been in the habit of regularly talking with your directs about skill development opportunities, we recommend again that you tie that into quarterly career performance discussion. Further, I mentioned earlier about how you prepare people for presenting and meeting other people. You also need to talk to your network about when another manager says they're looking for somebody for a role. You have to immediately compare that role to your people and see whether or not it would be a step up for them and whether or not that would Be a good move. Now this highlights, highlights something else which is really dangerous is managers who say, well, I don't want any of my people to leave, right, because my team's running well. I don't want to lose them. But got to realize something. There's a downside to that. You're protecting your team's existing performance. Now good people will realize you don't let people leave your team. You're not a manager who's going to let them grow working for you and then let them grow moving somewhere else. And that's why we've talked many times before about frictionless talent markets. And the idea that managers can preclude people from interviewing is just a terrible situation. It creates sclerosis in the organization. But even if your company says that, there are still managers who privately will poo poo the idea of their people, well, you probably don't want to go there because of this reason and that reason, when in fact what they're saying is, I don't want to lose you. If you don't want to lose your good people, if you won't let them go, other good people will learn that you're somebody who won't let people go and they won't want to come to work for you and you'll be stuck. And then your people will become so important. And this is not normal. It's still pretty rare. But your people will come so important that nobody will be ready to take your job. And then you'll be, quote, indispensable. And everybody thinks that. Good. Except you're not moving up either. So in this case, ask and capture, what skills do you want to develop and how can I help?

C (17:24)

There are enough opportunities here for me to advance to more responsibility.

B (17:29)

Yeah, questions like this one are mostly about your company. There are more in good times, more opportunities in good times, less in down times. Actually, technically that's not true. The roles are there, they're just not being filled and they're not being interviewed for because that keeps costs down during a downturn. But managers have a responsibility here too. More senior people, if you're a director or above, you know this. But a more junior manager may not know that we have our own responsibilities. Great managers can find their best direct a great role or opportunity during any market going back to by having a wide network of colleagues who trust them to have developed their direct. Well, don't assume that you're supposed to wait around for roles to be brought to you or announced or put up on the internal talent website. Go Find them, talk to people before they're going to post it and see if you can't get one of your people to get in before it gets posted. That happens. It happens all the time. Particularly among managers who are well regarded politically by the people above them.

C (18:33)

Yeah, I can't imagine many managers who wouldn't know for their peer managers what kind of people they're looking for. Right. If you have any kind of relationship whatsoever, you'd.

B (18:42)

Oh I can't.

C (18:43)

I think.

B (18:43)

Oh I can. No, no, no, no. Yeah. You're so cynical.

C (18:46)

Yeah, I'm a. More, I'm a.

B (18:48)

Look, people are myopic. Oh yeah, that is, that is funny. But yeah, I just think a lot of managers are thinking about their own stuff and they're not thinking about that above and out kind of concept that you've got to have relationships above you and outside you, to the left and the right, across the organization to find to you can make opportunities happen. So ask and capture what opportunities are you aware of and what are you doing to find them and how can I help?

C (19:16)

Cool. The company promotes the best equipped people to help us meet the future needs of the company.

B (19:22)

Yeah. If you've got a disgruntled non promoted direct working for you, don't be surprised if you don't get a perfect score here. And consider our guidance in the podcast managing a disgruntled non promoted direct. You'll also get less than great scores here if you haven't been candid with your people regarding their performance, which is true for the vast majority of managers. Not talking to them about their performance, not talking about their strengths and weaknesses, not giving them positive feedback, not giving them negative feedback for performance, work performance, technical performance, tactical performance, operational performance, but also interpersonal behavior and communication skills. Communication is a huge stumbling block for many people in their career. People say all the time, well that's not me, I'm uncomfortable doing that. Well, let me tell you the difference between an individual contributor and how she communicates with somebody and a manager and a director and a VP is very significant. And people are going to have to learn to adapt to different ways of communicating in order to be effective. Interpersonal, face to face persuasion is a huge part of executive life. And yet there are a lot of managers who think they're learning how to be an executive by doing email, which is just a terrible, terrible thing to think and to wonder why you're not doing well. There are people who don't like people, don't want to talk to people, but expect to be promoted to manage them. And we managers of those people are the ones that are supposed to tell them that that calculus, that kind of calculus just doesn't work. So please start giving more feedback. Negative but also positive. Talk regularly about overall performance with a minimum of a mid year review. We say quarterly and we even recommend using your end of year review if your company doesn't require it to do a handwritten mid year review. And you can ask and capture here, who are we promoting? That makes sense or doesn't make sense to you?

C (21:14)

I want to develop my career within this organization.

B (21:17)

Yeah. This question is often paired by the scientists who create these surveys with one about developing their career generally. And the idea is that a general or overall career development goal that is higher than a career development effort quote within this organization as a retention flag. In other words, they think they can go to level nine, but they don't really want to do it with this organization if they score low here. So ask and capture. What do you want to do and how can I help you do it?

C (21:48)

If I perform well in my role, it will lead to opportunities to progress.

B (21:54)

Yeah. And this question appropriately ties performance to progress, making sure that those who believe they're doing well will have opportunities. Retention of better performers is more valuable than retention of lesser performers. And the simplest way that they will see this happen is they see people on your team getting other opportunities to progress. And if they've not, then they're not going to give a good score to this one. So ask and capture. How are we helping you perform and how are we doing showing you opportunities?

A (22:27)

Authenticity isn't something you often get from executive leaders, especially when they're at a speaking engagement. They're there to market themselves. We all understand that. That's part of what makes the Manager Tools Executive speaker series different. Our speakers come from our community and they're speaking because they want to give back to that community. They're not marketing. They're sharing their own experience in order to make your experience and your career better. So join us and reap the benefit of that authenticity by clicking the Executive speaker series header on the Manage youe Tools homepage.

C (23:04)

All right, on to the next category questions. I feel like a game show host. Next category, questions regarding reward four or five.

B (23:14)

Yes. Yeah. So look, as a general rule, your organization understands that frustration about compensation, salary and benefits are more about what the company is paying than what you're doing. It's not true for every question, but for most in this category. So keep that in mind.

C (23:33)

Okay, first question. My performance has a significant and direct impact on my pay.

B (23:40)

Yeah. So our experience is that very few people outside of Wall street and executives with pay packages and salespeople on commission think that their performance has a significant and direct impact on their pay. So don't be surprised if your scores are middling here. And again, try not to worry too much in this category because your org understands this is much more likely to be a company issue. You can't just change somebody's salary. So ask and capture, what could we do to tie pay and performance better together? That said, keep in mind, when they think performance, they assume that if you've not been given them negative feedback and frankly, not any positive feedback, they're doing fine. But fine is not what causes increased pay, benefits and promotions. And you might be leading to the gap between what they think they deserve and what they're actually earning. Because you've been stinting, you haven't been doing a lot when it comes to negative feedback. So ask and capture, what could we do to tie pay and performance together better?

C (24:41)

Okay, here's a great one. I am paid fairly.

B (24:46)

Yeah, we've talked about this. Fairness is a very tough nut to crack. Just ask and capture here what's fair or unfair about your pay.

C (24:55)

Yeah, I like that approach. This thing could evolve into all sorts of bad conversations.

B (25:04)

Exactly. Yeah.

C (25:05)

My pay matches my job performance.

B (25:08)

Yeah. So if your industry is suffering right now, even top performers exceeding targets may not be getting better pay, and that frustrates everybody. Right. One of the things you can do as a manager is communicate that for someone's compensation to improve, it takes two things. Individual high performance and corporate high performance. Most professionals don't think that through. And if they're doing well, they expect a raise, even in a downturn. Look, I've been doing well. Our job as managers is to communicate the factors involved and manage the responses, manage the output of that. As we like to say here, Horseman's first and second laws, it's all about people. And more communication is better. And you're the one. You are the organization to your people, and you have an obligation to be the one doing the communication. So ask and capture. How does your pay not match your performance if, in fact this was an area of concern?

C (26:04)

I feel I am adequately paid compared to colleagues at similar organizations.

B (26:09)

Yeah. Okay, so this is interesting. Keep in mind with this question, your org probably hopes to find out what your employees know about what other firms are offering your people. Capture details here. If you scored low and your people are saying they're Getting rich offers from other firms. Keep in mind that a company trying to hire somebody away is going to offer more. And keep in mind that most people lie about salary. So when somebody says to you, let's say you're making $100,000, and somebody says, hey, they offered me $150,000. What they actually got offered was probably $115,000, but they got a benefits package that was $35,000 more, according to the acquiring company. And maybe they got a little bit of stock that was worth something and they threw that in there, too. So when we talk about pay, it's emotional. People tend not to be accurate, partly because it's private. It's supposed to be private. And so you may get answers kind of all over the place here. So ask and capture, what are you hearing about salaries at other firms? Any specific examples and that you would definitely want to share in your response that your bosses are inevitably going to be asking for. And the whole point of this exercise.

C (27:23)

The way this company rewards people, helps us produce the results we want.

B (27:27)

We're going to be simplistic here. Ask and capture, what could we do with rewards that would help with your results? And by the way, there are people who think that rewards should come first.

C (27:37)

Yeah, if you reward me enough, I'll do well.

B (27:40)

Oh, yeah, you're right.

C (27:42)

My salary and benefits package meet my needs.

B (27:45)

Well, yeah, there's a lot to dislike about this question because people's needs are wildly different. There are some people who spend all the money they have and then some every month even though they're well paid or poorly paid, and other people who are poorly paid or well paid and live well within their means. And so to me, to us, this is much more a question about their spending habits rather than their earning habits. But you can ask, how is your compensation not meeting your needs? Now, there may be the a lot of people. I've had a couple of conversations with people about, you know, why isn't my raise going up at the rate of inflation? And of course, that's problematic because typically, if there's a lot of inflation, it doesn't work through to workers as fast as it does in prices. But in addition, no worker expects their pay to go down during a downturn. So companies are sort of caught in a vice there.

C (28:42)

My pay is fair for my responsibilities.

B (28:45)

Again with the fairness thing. You got to be careful here, guys. Ask, how is your pay fair or not fair for your responsibilities? Remember now for these. I should have said it more clearly at the beginning of this section. We're talking about pay and so on. You may end up getting some crickets when you ask these questions because people will be perceived as talking about their pay and they generally don't want to do that. They might talk about other people bragging about paying bonuses and raises they got, but just keep it simple. How is your pay fair or not fair for your responsibilities?

C (29:15)

I am satisfied with our overall benefits package.

B (29:19)

Yeah, if your score is low here, you probably got plenty of suggestions to the ask and capture question early. What could we do to improve our overall benefits package? And I would just leave it at that.

C (29:30)

Okay. I feel I am fairly paid in comparison to other employees in similar roles and in this company.

B (29:38)

Yeah, this is what is known as an internal equity question. I don't mean equity in the way that word has been hijacked by politics lately, but rather internal pay equity organizations try to do that as much as they can. And typically when you see pay systems and banding and adjustments happening, they're trying to address equity issues where the company believes that two people are doing roughly equivalent, equivalently valued jobs for the company but are paid wildly differently. They didn't used to ask this until companies began realizing there were places also where bias was creeping into salary tables. This situation is considered likely to be more frustrating than the next question, which is about outside pay equity. So in this case, ask and capture. What examples do you have of lack of fairness in compensation here, here internally at our company?

C (30:36)

All right, next one. The other side of this question. The other question. I feel I am fairly paid in comparison to other employees in similar roles outside this company.

B (30:45)

Yeah, you can see where this question and the previous one pair up to provide relief to the data regarding compensation. If everybody thinks it's pretty fair internally, but it's not fair externally, and your company probably knows what its competitors are paying, then they might be okay. But they want to dipstick this. They want to check and make sure. And the company might think they have data to show that it's fair. And certain managers might not have done a good job of carrying that water for the company. Though, to be honest, most managers at lower levels don't get a great deal of information about pay and how they work on making sure it's equitable across the organization and so on. Ask and capture. What examples does anyone have of pay differentials outside the firm? And again, remember, take assertions regarding pay and offers with a grain of salt. I will repeat what I said earlier. There's an old saying about pay. Everybody lies about it.

C (31:41)

That's my experience.

B (31:43)

Yeah.

C (31:44)

Just ask five of your friends and.

B (31:46)

See what you get.

C (31:48)

All right. Well, I think that's a great place to start. Stop next week. We'll pick up with questions regarding recognition.

B (31:56)

Yeah.

C (31:57)

All right. Thank you, my friend.

B (31:58)

You bet, partner. Anytime.

C (32:00)

See you next time. So long, folks.