Podcast Awards
For the last 3 years, Manager Tools has won the Podcast Award for the Business category, and last year, we also won the People’s Choice Award, thanks to your votes. The nominations phase for the 2009 Awards has begun. The rules of the awards say that the winner of the People’s Choice may not be nominated in ANY category the following year.
So this year, we are asking you to vote for Career Tools in both the Business and People’s Choice categories. These awards allow more people like you to access the information we want them to have, and fulfill our mission of changing workplaces. We know your vote is valuable, and we’re incredibly grateful for your faith in us.
Some of the other rules have changed this year. You can only nominate once. The voting process will begin a couple of weeks later and you’ll be able to vote everyday for 15 days. For now though, please nominate Career Tools for Business and People’s Choice here: Podcast Awards Website
Can I give negative feedback early?
We get asked this question all the time at conferences: about giving negative feedback early during the rollout of the Manager Tools trinity. (If you haven’t listened to the podcasts on this, you can find them here).
There are two different questions which are being asked, but both essentially get the same answer. The first question we are asked is about a top performer who is burning to get ahead and asking for negative feedback. Should he get it? The second is a poor performer who deserves negative feedback, and managers are afraid to give the positive first because they don’t think this will give the right message.
The right answer is we recommend waiting. (You CAN give feedback early, but we don’t recommend it). The Manager Tools Trinity are intended to work together. While each part can stand alone, they work best as part of a larger plan.
For your top performer, who wants feedback earlier: you can, but again, we recommend waiting. Look, your learning the model along with your directs. Top performers are easier “to learn with” AND that’s why we recommend starting with them. But they are also relatively quick to defend and notice if we are not crisp or efficient (if we stumble over the model). When they say they want feedback, they mean it. And, for most of us we’ve been going a long time without giving feedback, so a few more weeks won’t hurt. We can’t do anything about yesterday, and we never recommend giving lots of negative feedback about lots of historical performance.
If we give feedback early, before we are truly comfortable with the model, we are more likely to mess up. They’ll notice and part of their perception of the feedback will be colored by our delivery, not their opportunity to improve.
Another three, four, five or even six weeks will not matter. We recommend waiting.
What about wanting to give negative feedback for poor performers? We get this in two forms: long term poor performers whom the manager doesn’t want to encourage, and an emergent situation that seems to beg for feedback, some egregious behavior for which we now have a model.
We recommend you wait to give feedback. The fact that you haven’t fired him yet means he is doing something well (if not he clearly would have been fired already).
Let’s spend a few weeks praising him and see what effect this has. In our experience, poor performers do not take poorly to feedback and assume that they are doing everything right. Poor performers know they are performing poorly. If they ask, with a tinge of surprise, why you are praising them, we can say: “There are some things you do do well”. If they ask if you’re going to give them negative feedback say: “Sure, I’m learning the model. Going forward you can expect lots of feedback, both positive and negative. I know I can do better at that”.
Regarding under performers with poor attitudes: the complainer, the whiner, the winger. We hear a lot of managers say “what about the guy who complains about every change, undermining my efforts whether positive or not?” Those who would whine about a raise, the color of the sky, the company getting a big new contract meaning more work, or even increased profit because they don’t see it.
If this person is going to complain whether the feedback is positive or negative, and tell others not to listen or believe in the improvement, then let’s not be motivated about whether or not they complain. Follow our plan: a gradual rollout of positive feedback, and a gradual rollout of negative feedback. If we decide to give early feedback, we’re giving into their complaints. Let’s not do that.
What about the emergent situation? Since there have been emergent situations before which have gone unaddressed, the question becomes, how serious is the situation?
If quite serious: for example, a raised voice towards a coworker which amounts to verbal harassment, pull the person aside, and say: “This is not feedback. Stop it. If you do this again, we will sit down and have a formal conversation about it.” If it is serious, you don’t need feedback (if someone is heading for the ditch, we grab the wheel and pull them onto the road).
If it is not serious, then wait – feedback is not serious. If they have been doing it before, then we’ve been observing it and not giving feedback. When the rollout begins, we forget all previous instances. If it happens again, we give feedback. If not, they’ve changed their behavior and it doesn’t matter.
Distribution
Those of you who have premium content know that use of that content is only for that particular member. This newsletter is not premium content, and we’d love for you to forward it to anyone who would find it interesting and useful.
If someone forwarded it to you, and you’d like your own copy in future, become a Manager Tools member here. It’s free!
|
