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May 21

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Feedback: When things are going well

Giving feedback when things are going well is just as important as when they’re not so well. According to neuroscientists, brain circuits that wire together, fire together. So, if leaders want to reinforce behavior, it is logical to give positive feedback when things are going well.

I’ve found that it can be just as uncomfortable to give positive feedback as negative feedback. People will say, “Oh, thanks, but it’s just my job.” Or, “It was nothing … really.” The first key to positive feedback is to reflect on some questions for yourself, before you begin talking:

  • What do I want to communicate or what behavior do I want to reinforce?
  • What specifically was well done?
  • What challenges had to be overcome?
  • What was the impact on the organization? On the team?
  • What made a difference?
  • What words will best communicate this to the person?

In order to reduce the tendency of people to dismiss feedback, begin by setting the stage with a short statement, “I know you often brush off appreciation, but I’d like to share some feedback.” Or, if it’s a bit longer, “I have some feedback for you regarding the project. It’s all good. Is this a convenient time to talk for a few minutes?” Then give the feedback that you’ve planned. After you’ve shared your positive feedback, consider asking for reflection that reinforces critical thinking, learning, and builds self-awareness:

  • Tell me 2 or 3 things that you observed which worked well.
  • Tell me something you learned about yourself when you worked on this project.
  • What did you experience as the biggest obstacles or challenges to making this project as success?
  • What internal and/or external resources were used in this project?
  • What new skills or knowledge did you need to complete this project?

Finally, ask how you can support further development in this way of working or behavior.

All of this put together will not only reinforce what was learned, but can promote reflection, insight, and growth.

I encourage my readers to try planning, delivering, and engaging in learning as you deliver positive feedback with your team members or family members or whatever organization you find yourself in. Reflect on how it makes a difference for you and for the people around you.

May 20

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Are performance reviews dead?

In the past two weeks, I’ve noticed that the performance review is back in the news. Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times, Samuel Culbert in the Wall Street Journal, and Bob Sutton of Stanford have all asked whether it’s time for organizations to eliminate performance reviews. Each has interesting opinions on the topic; and, I will add my own reflections here.

I have been on both the receiving and delivering end of performance reviews. Neither is easy. As an employee, I worked hard to meet organization goals and was worried that I might not be aware of all of the unspoken expectations of my superiors. As a team leader, I tried to be fair as well as given meaningful feedback and encouragement. Feedback conversations are difficult. I will use the next posts to discuss ways to give helpful feedback for performance that is excellent, below expectations, and poor.

Good leaders give feedback that is designed to influence others in the direction of a shared vision and common goals. Good feedback is purposeful and intentional. At its best, it engages people not only creating better performance, but in learning and growth. And, feedback that creates learning and growth doesn’t happen in the dreaded annual performance review, but consistently as events unfold.

<June 7, 2010>
I am updating this with links to my other posts about providing effective performance feedback:

Feedback: When things are going well
Feedback: When things are less than 100%
Feedback: When performance is poor

May 19

Five rights

In our work on the Kansas EMS transition curriculum project, we’ve been creating media and activities. As an outsider to EMS, I was struck late yesterday with a decision tree that is used to think critically about medication delivery. It has “five rights” or things that must be true in order for the medication to be given:

  1. Right patient?
  2. Right medication?
  3. Right dose?
  4. Right route?
  5. Right time?

I am considering how these critical thinking questions can be translated into an organization’s or individual’s decision making process:

  1. Is this the right person? Team? Client?
  2. Is this the right action? Process? Intervention?
  3. Is this action in proportion to the situation?
  4. Is this the right course? Means? Direction?
  5. Is this the right time?

The other reflection is how often I assume information doesn’t apply to me. I can quickly jump to the conclusion that a process used everyday by EMS providers doesn’t impact me. Yet every moment is an opportunity to actively engage in learning. All that’s required is that I reflect on my encounters with information, people, and organizations – seeking to learn and integrate my experiences.

What are the opportunities you have to reflect and integrate?

May 18

Time to play

I was not surprised when I heard a nearby 12-year-old complain, “I’m bored.” But I was taken aback when a recent college graduate told me, “I’m bored with my work.” She was working in her field of choice, about a year into an entry-level job. She said that she didn’t mind doing the routine work, but she wanted to be challenged, to have opportunities to try new things, meet new people, and grow. I connected her comments with the frustrations that multiple Millennials have expressed about their workplaces. And, the frustration extends beyond the Millennials as seen in a 2010 survey that shows only 45% of the workforce is satisfied with their job.

While I understand that every workplace has certain tasks that must be routinely completed, I am thinking about what it means to create a playful workplace. This would be a workplace that moves beyond employee engagement to serious play. What do kids do when they’re the opposite of bored? They’re playing, which results in having fun! In my neighborhood, they go outdoors and ride bikes on the trail, build forts in the woods, get together to eat pizza and play video games, or just hang out eating cookies and drinking soda pop on the back porch. A more defined view of play sees these activities as exploring, creating, relating, generating, and reflecting. When these activities are happening, I never hear, “I’m bored.”

The challenge for our organizations is to embrace those who say, “I’m bored.” It is time to stop saying, “I don’t have time to deal with this – just get on with it.” It is time to expand our thinking – to engage in serious play.  I don’t know that there is a road map for serious play in organizations, but I do know that the beginning is taking time to relate to everyone and set an intention to listen and hear new ideas, create space to imagine new things, and find ways to adventure into new territory. I believe it’s time to stop changing incrementally and be willing to experiment with new ideas and fail and try again.

In the end it’s not about creating the next best piece of technology or the nifty new software app or the perfect organization chart. In the end it’s being willing to get down on the rug and build a new Lego truck that can fly to the moon today, then take it apart and use the Lego blocks to build a whale that walks on land tomorrow. In the end, it’s about the journey and the people with whom we choose to ride the trail. Just maybe, we’ll all be less bored as we discover and create the way to the future together.

May 16

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Idea for reflection – 8

Climber in Spring

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything…

The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.

– Thomas Merton

Idea for reflection – 7

May 15

creative confidence

It’s a cool, rainy Saturday on the Great Plains, which provides time for reflection. I’ve been considering a question asked in an encounter this week, “How do I know which method or process to use with an organization that is having a hard time finding its way?” My first response was that there isn’t a tidy checklist or rule book for people who work with organizations. Organizations are made up of people, and those relationships rarely go by a checklist or rule book.

How then should an organization development practitioner proceed? There are many different processes that I’ve used successfully from Appreciative Inquiry to World Cafe to Strategic Visioning. I’ve facilitated with organizations that were willing to begin with a central question and allow the process to emerge, evolve, and engage the group through our time together. Ultimately the practitioner has to have what David Kelley calls “creative confidence“. I have to be willing to step out into uncertainty, ambiguity, and fog and enter into the organization’s journey.

This isn’t magical. A good practitioner brings along their toolbox. A couple of months ago I discovered a new toolbox from the d.school at Stanford: Bootcamp Bootleg. In it the students and faculty from the Stanford d.school share their mindset along with modes and methods that they use to engage organizations and people when the solutions, and sometimes even the questions, aren’t obvious. They set an example of resilience, of not being willing to give up with the way ahead is uncertain, ambiguous, or wrapped in fog.

To respond to the original question: my personal goals as an organization development practitioner are to sharpen my tools while continually adding to my toolbox – to be willing to start a conversation for change, be willing to fail, be willing to try again – to welcome the unknown along with the known – to practice with creative confidence.

May 8

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Work is a team sport

Gone are the days when the most valued words in an organization were, “It’s ATCO” (all taken care of). Generation Xer’s and even Boomers were focused on taking work from those above them and just getting it done — independently. But a new generation is entering the workforce, shaking things up with their arrival. 

While everyone in the workplace has the ability to work on teams, the Millennial Generation (also known as Generation Y or Generation Next) have been raised with “team.” It began when they were taking their first steps and were cheered aloud by their families. It continued as families with two working parents or a single parent interacted like teams with each person fulfilling their role. The Millennials have done group projects in school, participated in team sports at an unprecedented level, and embraced on-line social networks. 

In a recent survey by Select Minds Research, 77% of Millennials stated that collaboration was the most important driver of work satisfaction; and, 28% reported leaving a job because they felt isolated or disconnected from the larger organization. Yet the older generations have often said, “We need to figure out how to get them to conform to the workplace. Welcome to how “real life” works.” I will argue that it is more productive to take the approach of discovery.

Organizations can discover ways to jumpstart the desire of Millennials to reinvent work as a team sport by creating ways for new Millennial hires to connect with all generations in the workplace. Two ideas that I’ve encountered are to create multi-generation special interest groups and young leader groups.

Both of these ideas have been used to good effect with unexpected outcomes that exceeded everyone’s expectations. The special interest group has created an external team that interfaces regularly with the community, supporting a wide variety of community events and presenting a professional face for the organization that has not been seen in the past. One of the new leader groups that I’m familiar with is now presenting their ideas about engaging the next generation around the U.S. — with full support from upper management. 

Millennials are inventing teams in ways that Generation Y and Boomers have not been able to imagine. Engaging the new generation and any new workforce entrant brings opportunities to change processes and challenge the status quo. The resulting innovations, ideas, and skills have the potential to benefit organizations and communities who are willing to embrace their desire to collaborate.

May 6

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Idea for reflection – 7: Conducting

View from the Conductor's Circle

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
 – James Crooks

And a TED talk by a conductor: “Itay Talgam demonstrates the unique styles of six great 20th-century conductors, illustrating crucial lessons for all leaders.”

Idea for reflection – 6

Apr 27

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Turning off the autopilot

I was recently working with an organization to identify their values. Some would say that values are yesterday’s news, a 1990’s activity for an organization to do. Others would argue that listing values becomes another exercise that gets posted on the break room wall and ignored.  I would argue that remembering values is something that should be done daily: we, as individuals and organizations, must intentionally choose to act from our values.

When we interact with each other, with those who purchase our services, with our friends and families, when we make decisions, when we innovate and create new opportunities, the question is: Does that fit with one or more of our values? Or not …?

I challenge all of us not to confuse values with priorities or with our core business philosophy. Values don’t change easily. My values include trust, honesty, integrity, kindness, and positive action. I seek to act based on those values. Values provide an underlying framework, supporting the systems that make up our more visible maps of the world or mental models.

To spend time identifying and make values visible, is to choose to act consciously. It is to choose to turn off the autopilot and check our systems, decisions, and actions to make certain we are acting in concert on our journey.

Here’s a short exercise to try: After your next meeting, spend five minutes considering which of your values you saw on display? Which values of your organization did you see represented? Try the exercise after your next decision or your next conversation. Are the values the ones you expected to see?

Apr 27

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Idea for reflection – 6: An ordinary life

View from the Bloch Building

I’ve been pondering a short opinion piece that I read today in the New York Times and a couple of quotes:

… I believe there’s no such thing as false hope: all hope is valid, even for people like us, even when hope would no longer appear to be sensible.

All I wanted was ordinary life back, for ordinary life, it became utterly clear, is more valuable than anything else.

And so, I stop to reflect on hope and gratitude for ordinary life.

Idea for reflection – 5

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