Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

5 Boxes to Check for Your First-Time Manager Experience

The first time I was promoted into a managerial position, I closed the door of my fancy new office and held back tears born of fear and Impostor Syndrome. But here’s the thing. I could leave said office, walk down the hall, and get a pep talk from my boss.

In a distributed workforce where you rarely or never see your own manager or direct reports and are often doing the jobs of three people, you may be experiencing the toughest time in recent history for managers.

According to a Gallup survey, depression increased for managers in 2021 despite being unchanged for leaders and ICs, and one in three managers often or always feel burned out.

In my recent column for the Wall Street Journal’s Workplace Report, I spoke with Alyssa Lahar, chief human resources officer for ZoomInfo, a subscription-based database service. Lahar shared that managers often find themselves not at the bottom rung and but also not in positions of influence, which leads to a feeling of powerlessness. “Middle managers tend to be stretched the thinnest, and their work tends to be unseen,” she said.

Especially vulnerable are first-time middle managers, who too often are thrust into new roles without proper guidance, mentorship, or training. Without the in-person management experience to draw from, it’s even  more important that organizations use technology to fill the gaps.

Specifically, they should identify a solution that immerses new managers in the organization’s approach to leadership, performance, engagement and productivity.

Not only should the technology be customizable for the unique needs of the individual manager, but it should also have the capability to flex with evolving business requirements. If you are smartly rethinking your first-time manager offering, here are five elements to consider including.

• Retention: Providing detailed information on new role expectations and team contributions, reducing the uncertainty, frustration, and burnout that leads to attrition.
• Knowledge Transfer: Communicating with key stakeholders to ensure continuous project management and workflow.
• Recruitment: Making the hiring process as seamless as possible so that managers can quickly select and onboard new talent for vacant roles.
• Talent Management: Facilitating consistent and timely performance evaluations for and engagement with direct reports.
• Internal Mobility: Clarifying manager career paths and opportunities for internal movement and transition.

Agile Feedback is the New Performance Review

Many of us remember the days when we only talked about professional development during a once-a-year performance review conversation with our managers. We may have made development plans and set goals, but these were usually lost in the crush of immediate business priorities. And, by the time we got around to discussing them again, they were outdated and irrelevant.

Fortunately, many organizations have, in recent years, moved from the annual performance management model to bi-annual or even monthly models. This increase in frequently certainly benefits the process, but can we take it even further? Can we make learning and performance dialogue even more fluid and agile and therefore more useful considering the pace of change in our organizations and industries?

The Rise of Open and Continuous Dialogue

Today’s most comprehensive HRMS offer the ability for managers and employees to deliver real-time guidance and feedback as soon as an issue presents itself. This type of exchange is far more helpful for growth and engagement because it’s directly relevant to a current project or challenge. Typically, any employee can submit feedback to another regardless of level or reporting structure, so it’s an equal-opportunity endeavor that’s less biased and less restrictive.

Agile feedback systems provide an important mechanism for coaching and collaboration, and in boosting manager awareness of problems sooner rather than later, they aid in retention as well. They also alert leaders when there may be a new skills gap that needs to be addressed. For instance, if a manager sees results that indicate that a group of employees isn’t using a new technology as intended, they can get involved right away, collect more information about the disconnect, and ultimately determine if additional background or training is necessary.

For more where this came from, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

The New and Improved Performance Review

What good is performance feedback if it occurs in isolation? It's just like the saying: "If a tree falls in the woods..."

“This is where it’s important to have a system that enables a company to join up performance feedback simply and in one place, where they can get a quick view of everything,” says Cheryl Johnson, chief human resources offer at payroll company Paylocity.

Paylocity uses a proprietary tool that stores multiple data points related to the performance review cycle. Employees and managers journal regularly to keep quick notes and recap conversations or meetings, and feedback is consolidated in periodic reviews so employees always know where they stand. “We also maintain performance goals and recognition awards within this same system, so when we sit down to look at the holistic perspective of someone’s performance, we have all data points in the employee’s profile,” explains Johnson.

Johnson is quick to point out that certain data points carry more weight than others, so both leaders and employees need to understand how points are weighted in the overall context of performance.

Paylocity’s Johnson has mastered the notion that different departments have different feedback needs. “Many of our departments leverage the journaling function, which makes giving and receiving continuous feedback informal, yet documented in a place where it’s easy to access when the time comes for formal conversations. Some departments have these formal conversations monthly or quarterly; others have them annually. The cadence aligns with when individual departments can collect insights that improve performance,” she says. And over time, Paylocity has adjusted its continuous feedback approach so it doesn’t require overthinking, is less cumbersome, and is more focused on input that matters – as opposed to providing feedback for its own sake.

Have you improved your performance management system recently? What did your changes entail?

Performance is a Cultural Variable

co-founder and CEO Mollie Lombardi described a culture of performance as a set of behaviors that are rewarded or discouraged by the people, processes, and systems within an organization. To create and foster a performance culture, Lombardi suggested focusing on the following conditions for success.

Alignment

According to new Aptitude research, alignment on culture is a major challenge: only 38 percent of organizations said that leaders and employees would describe their culture in the same way. On a related point, 53 percent of senior leaders said performance expectations are clearly communicated, but only 34 percent of employees said the same.  Leaders are in denial, and it doesn’t help that while 60 percent of companies have executive level oversight of client experience, only 37 percent have an executive level role focused on workplace culture and employee engagement.

Employee Experience

Eighty-one percent of top performing companies said they measure the experience of candidates, employees, managers, and leaders. When an experience doesn’t resonate, it’s often because we are using a one-size-fits-all model. Lombardi advised that we must do a much better job tailoring messages, recognizing that employees have a singular experience throughout their day. And the only experience that matters is theirs.

In addition to catering to the needs of the individual rather than the collective group, we can create a better experience by bridging the gap between employer and employee through more frequent and bidirectional communications, and creating an easier process for individuals to do their work, engage with others, and drive performance. The best employee communications are consistent in message but vary in format (depending on information consumption habits) and are supported by a strategic technology implementation.

For more of Lombardi's insights, check out the full post on the SilkRoad blog.

Alignment: A Critical Variable in Performance

ITM President and HR Bartender blogger Sharlyn Lauby recently discussed the current war for skilled talent. “It’s a candidate-driven market,” she said. “Finding the right people for the job is becoming increasingly difficult. The worst situation is when a company gets a new piece of business, but doesn’t know if it can deliver the service because it isn’t staffed appropriately.”

Many HR professionals already recognized that the current state of performance management, which often involves forced rankings, is untenable. As Lauby said: “You can sell $10 million worth of business and still be the worst salesperson in the company. Instead of talking about performance in the past, we need to shift the conversation to the future.”

Twenty-first century performance management must be about tying employees to the business strategy. According to Lauby, there are several opportunities to create alignment, and they arise well before a candidate signs on the dotted line. “Setting performance expectations before a new hire joins helps with engagement, results, and retention,” she said. “You can facilitate this by keeping your job descriptions accurate and up to date, and having an interview process that is collaborative and uses behavioral-based questions.”

Alignment should occur at onboarding as well. HR professionals and hiring managers should use the onboarding process to educate employees on how their performance will be measured, and to provide transparency about the performance management process itself.

Employee goal-setting, particularly in the form of cascading goals in which individual objectives connect directly to bottom line objectives, is a critical piece of effective modern performance management. Best practices for setting relevant goals include getting buy-in, documenting what you intend to do, phasing goals in over time, monitoring progress, modifying them as appropriate, abandoning goals that no longer make sense, and celebrating those that have been achieved. This last one should not get lost. “People who accomplish goals want to set more of them,” said Lauby.

For more of Lauby's insights, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

The Brave New World of Agile Performance

Agile performance management has been adopted by large corporations such as Microsoft, Accenture, and Cargill for over a year.  Despite these large companies adopting, an agile approach and seeing positive results, SilkRoad’s The State of Talent Management Report has found that 84% of businesses are not agile and only 15% are moving towards an agile performance system this year. According to our report changes in performance management rarely happen since performance management is only an issue once a year. However, moving toward an agile performance system is not only easy; it can remove many issues in the workplace.

How to build a DIY Agile performance management system

Step one: Set goals and check in with managers

The hardest part of implementing an agile performance system is that you need manager buy-in.  Work with your test team to discuss how frequently agile goals and updates will be given, and set goals on what productivity increases your manager would like to see.  You can have your manager give you microfeedback on if the agile performance system is working and if goals are being met.

Step two: Start Small

Changing your performance management system is not an overnight task.  Which is why improving it is often pushed to backburner.  When implementing an agile system start small pick one team and work with one manager in the beginning so it’s easy to monitor and make changes along the way. At first educate the manager and the team aboutagile goal setting and microfeedback.  At first it’s okay for your manager and team to use inter-office communication such as email, skype for business, or an instant messaging service.

For the rest of this post, check out the SilkRoad blog.

Is The Performance Deck Stacked Against Women?

I recently conducted some research on gender differences in the workplace and learned that the same behaviors that were praised in men were often criticized in women. In particular, women who were more assertive, or confident in expressing their views, were often perceived negatively. Assertive men, on the other hand, were viewed as strong and competent.

A colleague pointed me in the direction of this Fortune piece by Kieran Snyder, who had a linguist do some number-crunching to determine if gender plays a role in the type of feedback an employee receives at review time.

Snyder asked men and women in the technology field if they would be willing to share their performance reviews for a study. Assuming that only strong performers would be willing to share, Snyder was most interested in looking at the critical feedback that these strong performers had received and whether the review tone or content differed based on employee gender.

Snyder collected 248 reviews from 180 people, 105 men and 75 women at 28 large, mid-size, and small companies.  About 71 percent of the reviews contained critical feedback. However, critical feedback was not distributed evenly by gender.

When breaking the reviews down by gender of the person evaluated, 59 percent of the reviews received by men contained critical feedback, but 88 percent of the reviews received by women did. The men were given constructive suggestions. The women were also given constructive suggestions – and told to pipe down.

The critical feedback men received was heavily geared towards suggestions for additional skills to develop. A few examples:

“Constructive feedback on your performance as a feature crew tester can be summed up by saying that you still have some skills to continue to develop.”

“Hone your strategies for guiding your team and developing their skills. It is important to set proper guidance around priorities and to help as needed in designs and product decisions.”

Women receive this kind of constructive feedback too. But, according to Snyder, the women’s reviews included a sharper element that was absent from the men’s:

“You can come across as abrasive sometimes. I know you don’t mean to, but you need to pay attention to your tone.”

“Your peers feel that you don’t leave them enough room. Sometimes you need to step back to let others shine.”

For the rest of the piece, check out the SilkRoad blog.

Should We Get Rid of Performance Reviews?

In the Washington Post, Lillian Cunningham reported that management consulting giant Accenture will disband rankings and the once-a-year evaluation process starting in September. The company will implement a more fluid system, in which employees receive timely feedback from their managers on an ongoing basis following assignments.

Accenture is certainly not the first to move in this direction. Per research by CEB, 12 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies have gotten rid of rankings.

Earlier this year, Accenture’s competitor Deloitte abolished rankings and rolled out a new evaluation program that is more incremental in nature. Microsoft, Adobe, Gap and Medtronic have also overhauled their programs.

“It’s gone from an interesting, quirky thing that some companies do to a viable strategy that a good chunk of companies are pursuing,” says Brian Kropp, executive director of CEB’s HR practice, in a 2015 article for the Society for Human Resource Management.

CEB found that the average manager spends more than 200 hours a year on activities related to performance reviews (including training sessions, form completion, and in-person meetings). Adding these hours plus the cost of the performance-management technology itself, CEB estimates that a company of 10,000 employees spends roughly $35 million a year on reviews. Yet, nearly 90 percent of HR leaders say the process doesn’t yield accurate information or drive better performance.

The Slippery Slope

If current ranking and performance review systems made this little sense, you’d think every company would be doing away with them. But old habits die hard, and frankly, some organizations are afraid of going too far in the opposite direction. I don’t blame them.

While I’ve never been a fan of forced rankings – it doesn’t do much good to compare an employee in Memphis to one in Melbourne, and the sight of 50 anxious junior-level colleagues backstabbing one another to get into the top 20 percent is really quite unseemly – I believe performance reviews do have merit.

For the rest of my POV, head on over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How Do You Get Past No?

In their famous book, Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Ury provided a negotiation strategy that has become standard for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in personal and professional conflicts.  The model is based on five propositions, including:

• “Separate the people from the problem.”
• “Focus on interests, not positions.”
• “Invent options for mutual gain.”
• “Insist on using objective criteria.”
• “Know your BATNA (Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement)”

I learned about the BATNA in particular years ago and have used it on several occasions.  BATNA is the course of action that will be taken by a party if the current negotiations fail and an agreement cannot be reached.  A party should generally not accept a worse resolution than its BATNA.  According to Fisher and Ury, however, care should be taken to ensure that deals are accurately valued, taking into account relationship value, time value of money, and likelihood that the other party will live up to their side of the bargain.

While Fisher and Ury’s strategy was generally accepted as being revolutionary, there were critics who responded to it with challenges such as “What if the other party refuses to work with you?” and “What if they try to trick you into an agreement?”  Ury addressed these questions in a sequel called Getting Past No.  This second book takes the original model to a new level, detailing the process of negotiating through obstacles and obtaining win-win agreements with people who are initially resistant to such approaches.  Ury’s five steps to an effective breakthrough negotiation are:

Go to the balcony

Don’t react to provocations and let your emotions get the best of you.  Step away from the scene, calm down, and carefully plan your response.  Do not respond automatically, because most automatic responses are negative and further escalate the situation.

Step to their side

Listening carefully, acknowledging and even agreeing whenever you can, helps the other person feel heard and tends to disarm hostility.

Don’t reject, reframe

To change the game, change the frame.  If you take whatever is said and cast it as an attempt to deal with the issues, you’ll get further than if you simply reject it out of hand.  Ask questions like: “Why is this add-on important to you?” or “What if another member of our team could participate?”

For the rest of Fisher and Ury's steps, check out my full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Handle Stepping Down from a Promotion

A reader recently asked this question:

I’ve been at my current job for two years and really enjoyed working here until the last six months. In a nutshell, I was given an account management position when the old acct manager quit, and was left doing a two-person job by myself until I finally announced I was not prepared for this and wanted to step down. It was decided I would still be doing most of the account manager duties, but that my supervisor would be the “face” of the company when dealing with clients. It’s still a lot more work than I was used to, but I find it manageable and even enjoyable most of the time. 

At the time I stepped down, my boss was very sympathetic and supportive. Now, however, she seems to be going out of her way to make me feel like an idiot. Whenever I ask a question in a meeting or make some sort of comment, her reply is always impatient and often sarcastic. This is something I have much difficulty dealing with; I can take it once in a while, but not multiple times every single day, and I’m at the point where I just can’t keep my mouth shut. Whenever she makes some rude or sarcastic remark, I find myself firing right back at her, even in front of others (including my direct supervisor). I’m just not sure what I did to inspire her attitude toward me, or what I can do to make it better. I’m not sure what she expects of me. Any insight would be much appreciated.

And here is my advice:

Turning down or stepping down from a promotion isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself, and it sounds like you acted in your own best interest as well as the best interest of the organization. However, without more detail, it’s hard to know exactly what transpired when you announced your resignation. If you weren’t as diplomatic or positive about the situation as you could have been, it could have sullied your reputation with this particular manager, who may now think you’re not as dedicated and/or competent as before. She may also resent your decision because it means more work and/or agita for her. And finally, every time you and the boss get into an argument in public, it escalates the problem and it sounds like you are now near the point of all-out war.

I understand how upsetting this must be for you, and feel that it’s time to nip it in the bud. Invite her to lunch or coffee. Sit down with her, swallow your pride, and acknowledge that your relationship has suffered since you stepped down from your prior role. Ask her what you can do to ensure that the two of you can work more effectively together. Even if you feel that the unpleasantness is mostly her fault, taking ownership and responsibility for getting things back on the right track will endear you to her. After all, it’s hard to be too critical of someone who earnestly wants to improve things. Hopefully, the conversation will also be a wake up call in the event that she is truly clueless about how her remarks are being perceived. Even though it’s hard to address conflict directly, a response like this is the mature one, and both of you will be happier and more productive in the long run.

For guidance from three other amazing career experts, check out the post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.