simplerich

Employee reviews. Are there any other two words that bring such dread to a manager’s face? You can see the blood drain out of their face and their brows pinch together. The dread and tension is palpable in the air. Fight or flight pheromones dance through the air until, with a resigned sigh, they extend a hand to accept the dreaded forms with slumped shoulders and downcast looks.

 You think I’m making this stuff up, but I’m not. I’ve talked about how customer service is something we’ve been working on in my area recently. Starting with defining it, going into what our expectations should be where I’m making LOTS of phone calls to direct reports (managers), skips (sales associates), and anybody else who will take my calls (other area managers, the HR department, janitors, anybody!). We’re all talking about what they like to see in a store for customer service, and what I hope to see and what the managers hope to see. We’ve been trying to create a vision a goal we’ll all strive for. Part of that was, after talking to all these people I put together an evaluation of how the employees did on the things they’d said individually and collectively were important for good customer service. Then I had managers rate their perceptions of their employees and then employees rate themselves BEFORE they went over the manager’s numbers. After both have been faxed to me the manager and I would discuss the numbers, and then the manager and employees.

It sounds more complicated than it really was. The hardest part was I asked the managers to evaluate their employees for the store. I defined 5 as average for their store. Obviously they couldn’t judge for the whole company, they didn’t KNOW the whole company, but I wanted them to rate their employees within the dataset that was their store. With 5 being average. I pointed out that average meant some would be higher and some would be lower. That’s what average meant. It was only possible for nobody to be below average if nobody was above average.

Then the scores started coming in. One store the average for the employees was 7.6. Now, I’m no dummy. I can norm the scores out and readjust them so they are really averaged, just graph them and move that axis up until it’s at 7.6 and there’s your normed numbers. (Norm might not be the right word here.) But what it told me about the manager was more than what it told me about his employees. He honestly thought all his employees were above average.

I see this a lot in employee evaluations. I will get employee evaluations where the employee has every score above average and there is no area in which there is room for improvement. There is no area in which they are weak. I’ll turn the page and the essay portion of the quiz, sorry, employee evaluation, where it asks the manager “Performance Concerns” and “Performance Goals” and I’ll see an answer along the lines of “none.” Those always get sent back and there’s a coaching session. What that says to me is that the manager cares so little that they don’t care if the employee improves or not. That’s crushing.

When a manager gives evaluations that are way too high I get to decide then if they don’t know any better, if they’re friends with the employee, or if they’re scared the employee will quit if they’re honest with them so they just blow smoke up their… evaluation to appease the employee. Those are all options, and they’re all signs of an unhealthy situation. It’s almost always fixable though.

No employee wants to hear that they’re stinkerific and good managers don’t want to tell their employees that. It’s a sign of a failure on their part to an extent, but it doesn’t help things improve if we can’t recognize an area where improvement is needed. If your kid can’t swim you don’t tell him that he can and chuck him in the deep end out of fear you’ll hurt his feelings! Why do we do that with employees? It’s exactly what we’re doing when we give evaluations of their abilities that are artificially inflated. We’re killing them.

So, have I drawn any great conclusions about employee evaluations? Not really, but I DO think it’s interesting to have managers do this once in a while, evaluate their entire crew as I’ve suggested, then move the numbers until average really is and show them that while they gave Mongo a 6 (above average) on Widget Polishing, everybody else had a 7 or 9 so obviously that’s an area where Mongo can improve if he’s the lowest rated person in the place. The numbers skewing is more obvious when they do many evaluations at once than it is when it’s just one at a time.

While I’ve mostly talked about the people who overly inflate evaluations here there are also managers who think that by putting their employees down they can show how necessary they are. Those managers will tend to trend lower than average on their evaluations and that’s also no good. I’m fortunate in that I haven’t got that going on right now. It’s bad too, but is also fixable.

I was reading "Say Alaka’i" over at the Honolulu Advertiser site today where Rosa Say ( author of my favorite management book, Managing with Aloha ) writes a weekly column.

The title of the article was "What If Your Business Got Sick?" and she told two mini stories within the article. The first, (brutally summarized, go read her article) was about her being challenged to think of her business as a person and not an inanimate thing. That mental switch being flipped changes the way we relate to our business. Now. I don’t own my own business, but I’ve worked for the same company (Can it be the same company if it’s changed names and owners several times and my position has changed many times? I think that’s akin to Theseus’ Paradox.)

If my job, my career of the past 15 years were a person what would our relationship be? What would the dynamic between me and my job be? Would it be an equitable one? In a healthy relationship both partners give and take and share with each other. When one person cares more in a relationship… when one person doesn’t treat the other with respect… those aren’t healthy relationships. They’re not lasting relationships.

The funny thing is we wouldn’t put up with it in a relationship with a person we call friend. We’d say they weren’t our friend if someone treated us badly, lied to us, disrespected us. We would say something. We wouldn’t just take it or just put up with it. We’d either address it and see if it’s going to change or we’d break it off. We’d break up. Why is it that with work the rules are different? Because they pay us? Because there’s pay involved? So. Just because there’s money involved doesn’t mean we should put up with a bad relationship with our jobs. Unless we’re masochists obviously.

I’m not a masochist.

My work has changed hands a lot, different owners, different CoO’s, different cultures. And in all that time it’s been fairly equitable. I’ve had great relationships with my bosses and subsequently with my job. It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Obviously. It’s been a fifteen year relationship and there are going to be rocky times. I’ve been very lucky when things got weird or tense or I felt like it wasn’t an equitable relationship I was able to bring it up. I was able to talk about it with my boss and addresses it.

Lately the job itself, the work culture has been a lot different. I’ve wanted to go back to the way things were… We’ve heard the saying that you can never go back… you can’t cross the same river twice. And I don’t know if I’d like it for real if I got to go back… but I’ve been able to talk about it with my boss and he understands it. He understands my differences with the job as it has become. The job has changed over time just like people do. Are we growing apart? Is there a divorce in the future?

It’s a fifteen year relationship. Just like a relationship requires work and patience and communication so does this relationship. Nobody throws away fifteen years worth of relationship over a month or two of tense times or bad times. But if there’s no communication and no real attempt to fix things, no real attempt to work things out, ON BOTH SIDES then the divorce will be inevitable. If I were to sit and brood about how I don’t like things now but don’t talk about it to someone who can actually do something about it then it’ll be my fault if things don’t work out and we break up. If I talk to people able to change things and they don’t change then I will have done what I could. If I expect that just because I tell them to change they must change then I’m being selfish too. It’s not all about me. It’s a relationship and the relationship should be about us. If it gets too one-sided then it would quit being satisfying and dynamic and meaningful. It would lose value. The value in the relationship is in the give and take. It’s in both parties in the relationship caring about the relationship and treating each other in a way that both of them believe is equitable.

Any conclusions from all this? Not as such. This is still new in my head. I only read her column today and it’s still new in my head but it’s still rolling around in there and it has really made a difference in how I’m thinking about things.

A majority of human resources professionals (54%) make their final decision to hire a person based on “chemistry,” according to a poll released Tuesday by the Society for Human Resource Management.

from: Poll: A Majority Hire based on ‘Chemistry’ over at WorkExposedBlog.com

I’ve had managers ask me over and over again how to interview as if there is a silver bullet or super secret trick I’ve learned in the years I’ve been doing it and I frequently disappoint and surprise them. We’re in retail. What we do is entry level stuff. Just about anybody with good people skills can do it. Seriously. It’s not that tough to do. To do it really well needs a certain type of person and that is, for me, what the interview is for.

How well will the person fit in with the good/great members of your current crew? How will you feel after talking to them for 10 minutes during a shift change? What will they be like during an employee meeting? Are they positive? Upbeat? Do they smile easily and readily? Are they easy to talk to? They’ve just met you and they’ll deal with customers all day long that they have only just met as well… how relaxed and easy going they are during an interview is helpful to knowing how they’ll do with strangers during a normal work day.

Just talk to them. Are they profoundly qualified but after two minutes of talking to them you want to kick your dog? I wouldn’t hire them. You have to work with this person. I don’t care if they DO have 12 years experience working as a team leader at a competitor twenty miles away and they only left because the place flooded and closed. If you can’t stand to talk to them how will it be to work with them? How will it be on the co-workers and customers?

So is it a good idea to hire based on chemistry? I doubt it. I think that it gets in the way when we hire people who are just like the people we’ve always hired. I think sometimes we wind up losing something when we lose variety.

I once had a manager who staffed her store for over a year entirely with young African-American lesbians. (I swear I’m not making that up either.) Eventually I had to point out, gently, and carefully, that perhaps someone named Susan or Steve wouldn’t be completely out of line. Two weeks later she called me, so proud she’d “hired a Susan” which turned out to be a white lady that I don’t believe was a lesbian, but I never asked. This was a really good manager, she just had gotten in the habit of hiring people she clicked with. (I am in no way implying she was dating her employees. She wasn’t. I knew her family and that wasn’t something that was going on. She just kept doing it over and over again. She said, “that’s all that applies!” Well, we found that wasn’t entirely true and wound up diversifying a bit over time, slowly… and it didn’t kill her!)

So, while I firmly believe that we should hire people who will work well with others and who I can work well with… I also believe that just like I should do something different and unexpected once in a while, I should also hire outside my comfort zone just to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.

I talked interview tips in a previous post but it wasn’t the same type as this one so I’m OK doing it again. This one was from the interviewer’s point of view too, and the previous post was tips for the person being interviewed. Also, if you’re not subscribed to the Work Exposed Blog yet I recommend it really highly. It has one of my highest click through rates on my feed reader.

Continuing my month long on-again, off-again fire themed posting in honor of October being National Fire Prevention month is a post about fire as a gathering place for chatting, socializing, and seeking comfort.

One of my favorite management tools is the Daily 5 as talked about by Rosa Say over at Say Leadership Coaching.  The daily five minutes is, short-version, go read the long version, time for you, the manager, to take five minutes to talk with AND LISTEN TO your employee. This isn’t five minutes to tell them what to do or five minutes where you top down all over them. This isn’t five minutes of your critiquing their performance on some recent project and then ending with a “So, what’ve you got to say for yourself?” It’s five minutes of conversation with them. Yes, I said conversation which means there will be a point when we, as managers, need to shut up and listen… actively listen to our employees. Ask leading questions, repeat back to them what they’ve just said in your own words so they know you understand them. Make use of that information later to blackmail them into covering extra shifts so their HA! Didn’t think you were paying attention, that was a test. Obviously I don’t mean the last part. That was a joke.

But engaging our employees to actively talk to us about what’s important to them can only help us be better managers. It’s a great time to find out what the rumors are out there that are keeping people up nights and address them. Those little things, rumors, can be tremendously destructive. But they’re hard to bring up to a manager who an employee is nervous about talking to or with. If we build a good relationship with our employees and make sure they know it’s important to us that we communicate with each other about things that are important to each other we’ll both win.

It doesn’t just help by opening lines of communication open either. It helps all day long when you’re NOT engaged in conversation and see them. If they know they’ll have your ear at a future date they interrupt less frequently because they know they’ll get a chance to bring things to your attention, or ask questions later. If your employees think they’ll be able to talk to you once in a blue moon they’ll grab you whenever they see you or call or interrupt what you’re doing because they’re never sure when they’ll have a chance again. Once they get in the habit of talking to you, and know they’ll be able to again very soon they’ll dial back the pestering… most of the time. Some people are so needy they won’t stop pestering… those you can tell, “You know what. I’m buried right now, how ‘bout we catch up on that during our talk later OK? Thanks. Take care. Bye. Don’t let the door hit you in your codependent… See… I did it again there. Glad you’re still with me. But seriously, you can defer them if they’re not playing by the rules. Some people don’t have a filter. Some people think of something and call you on the phone immediately, afraid they’ll lose it if they don’t. Those people are in need of organization more than they’re in need of my advice or answers… typically I think they just need to read and implement a version of Getting Things Done, but that’s another topic for another time.

Fire Safety around outside fires is a big matter of being ready if it spreads. Fire’s a hungry beast and it’ll eat anything it can get to. If you’re burning brush or yard waste good on you for living somewhere that you can! Nothing says fall like the smell of burning leaves! That being said, you’ll want a fire break of some sort between your pile of leaves and your Porsche. You’ll also want something nearby in case the wind picks up and moves some embers from your fire to your front porch. Remember the fire extinguisher I suggested for the kitchen? That would work. A bucket of water would work. A garden hose turned on would work. Heck, a bucket of sand would work if you had one of those nearby but why would you? What wouldn’t work? A bucket or pan of cheap kitty litter. Some of that stuff is dusty and might explode on you if you threw it on an open flame and if you really want exploded used kitty litter on your front porch please… don’t invite me to any of YOUR fireside chats.

It’s National Fire Prevention Week and that means lots of Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) about fires, how to prevent them, and what to do in the case of one. There’s more to fire than destruction.

"Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit."
– Mary Lou Retton

We, as managers who have a calling for management have that fire in our hearts and it’s our job to spread the fire to our employees. To do that, according to the fire triangle we’re going to need three things to get a fire going and keep it going. We’ll need heat, fuel, and air.

Heat: The heat we’ll need to kindle the fire in our employees is from our own heartfire*. It’s the heat of our passion for what we do and how we do it. Our employees need to see us doing what we care about and what we say we care about. If we say we care about customer service but we ignore the customer while we talk about a newest memo there’s no heat transfer there. The employee sees that we care about the customer until something else comes along. We need to pay attention to our attention. Our attention, our focus, that’s where our heat is going. If we want our employees to think something is important and get excited about it we need to do more than just say it. They need to see us live it. They need to see our excitement. They need to see our involvement. They need to catch the fever from our heartfire so they can burn with it as well.

Fuel: Fuel is what they’re going to burn with the heat we give them from our heartfire. We have to give them work to do. Yes. You heard it. Delegate, involve your crew in the work you want them excited about. Get out of their way and let them be great. Micromanaging is smothering their fire’s. It’s using your fire to burn up their fuel so they can’t catch fire themselves. Give them work, help them do it if they need it, coach them, kindle the fire in them and then, like they do on the TV show Survivor, tend the fire as it catches in the tinder and help it to grow. Don’t pile more fuel on the new flame and bury it. You’ll burn them out if you do that. Keep the fuel coming, and keep sharing the heat of your excitement and your heartfire to keep theirs going as they burn through the work you ask for their help on.

Oxygen: You’ve shared your excitement, and you’ve given them work to do and they’ve done it and if you want to keep them doing it, and keep that fire going you’ve got to fan the flames. You’ve got to reward good behavior with genuine, specific praise. Let them know that what they’re doing is good, appreciated, and important. Let them know that you noticed. Coach them if there’s need for improvement, but do so in the spirit of encouraging a fire to grow inside them. Rewarding good behavior is as important as any other leg in the fire triangle. When an employee knows that what they’re doing is important work, and it’s noticed by other people it helps keep the fire going. If you give an employee a job and never notice if it was done or how well it was done, it wouldn’t surprise me to come back a month or so later and find it being done worse than the first time they did it. Feed the fire with your praise.

There has to be a balance with these three things, and that’s where management becomes an art. The balance is different for different employees. Some think that praise is too much sooner than other people. Some people need it daily, and some think that sounds phony. Some need it weekly and any less is that management is ignoring them. Some will ask for more work and some will wait for you to notice if they’re capable of more or not. They’re testing you to see if you notice. So many employees and so many management styles, it’s the part that keeps every day fresh and different.

It IS National Fire Prevention week and I said I’d talk about fire safety. When I was 20 years old an on leave in the Navy I was driving home and saw a van on the side of the road with the hood up. I was in traffic and didn’t stop, but what struck me was that the engine was on fire. They were on the side of the road, the engine was on fire, and there was nothing they could do about it. Since then I’ve carried a small fire extinguisher in my car and kept one in my house. It may be that an engine fire does a lot of damage really fast, but letting it burn itself out isn’t going to make it any cheaper to fix. Same at the house. If you haven’t looked at getting a small fire extinguisher for your car or kitchen think about it. You may never use it, but if you need it and don’t have it well… I’m not one to say I told you so, but drop me an e-mail. I may start being the kind.

*Heartfire is a word I got from Orson Scott Card’s book, Seventh Son. It’s the first in a series called the Tales of Alvin Maker. It’s an alternate history series about colonial America and that doesn’t do it justice at all. It’s a great series of YA fiction I recommend whole-heartedly.