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One Thing
The prior year's results are known, and now it's time to do those dreaded employee evaluations. If you and your business are on top of your respective games, then your team has received formal and informal feedback over the course of the year. Ideally, there's no reason to wait until the end of the year to provide feedback. Who wants to be told, "you did a kick-butt job on that analysis 8 months ago," or "hey, that run-in you had with the marketing head last February was not cool." Talk about timing, right?
Let's assume you have an employee review format that is pretty solid. You and your employee agreed on the objectives and how they will be measured, you've provided regular feedback, and you tweaked objectives as business conditions changed. Your employee has provided you with input on how he or she has done, and now the two of you are in your office ready to compare notes.
You go down the list of objectives, and you discuss results. This is the easy part of the review, as you are comparing results to expectations. At the end of that part of the review, you give this person an overall grade on "what" they accomplished. In your business, that grade might be an A, B, C or F.
Now, you get to the juicy part. This is where it's less black and white, and more intuitive. Here you grade the person on "how" they accomplished those results. The same grading scale is used, but you note the method or style this person used to be successful. For example, did he or she leave bodies in their wake, or did they use a more collegial approach?
Within the "how" piece of the review is the "one thing you must do" to be successful this year and every year to come. Identify the key behaviors and values your stars exhibit. What separates them from their peers? Yes, there are people on your team who might knock it out of the park, but leave body bags behind them. You want those results, but do you really want to clean up the mess that comes with it?
When you identify the behaviors and values your stars seem to have mastered, it provides a blueprint for building successful teams. You can use the blueprint to construct improvement plans for those who need help, and use the insight to hire the right candidates. How much do bad hires cost? About 2x the person's salary.
You have to admit that for most people, the easy part of building a job description is identifying the technical skills to do the job. When it comes to listing behaviors, I used to struggle until I started noting stars' behaviors in formal and informal reviews.
Here's a tip to make it easier for you. Start your formal or informal reviews with an employee who you and others regard highly. Focus on his or her behaviors, beliefs and values, or what some people call the "soft skills" and take note of them. Create a list that you can commit to memory, or access easily.
Use the acronym VBB - values, behaviors & beliefs to help you remember what's important. Here are a few examples of each:
a. Values - autonomy, creativity, achievement, leadership
b. Behaviors - can-do attitude, takes ownership, collegial, collaborative
c. Beliefs - diversity drives success, everyone has value
There are times when we make things harder than they need be. When you want to know what drives success in your business, look to the stars. You see them every day. Identify and note their VBBs. It's right there in front of you. |
