4 Feedback Pitfalls Every Manager Should Avoid

by Mike Allen

Giving feedback to employees is critical for improvement to occur, but effective feedback involves avoiding these four pitfalls.

1.   Avoiding feedback all together or waiting too long to give it
  

Research has demonstrated that feedback that follows immediately after the action will have the biggest impact on the behavior. Immediate negative feedback will weaken unwanted behavior and immediate positive feedback will strengthen behavior. But don't let not being able to give immediate feedback keep you from giving it at all. Later is still better than not-at-all! 

2.   Over-or under-boarding  

Have you ever seen a manager call someone up in front of a group for some success and go on-and-on about the success, totally embarrassing the recipient of the praise? That is what we call "over-boarding" and it should be avoided because the praise actually becomes punishing and has an effect opposite of that which is desired. On the other hand, failing to provide enough feedback for significant success can lead to reduced motivation in the future. For example, you just saved the company $2 million and the boss, in private says, "Hey, thanks". Make it appropriate to the level of success.

3.   Blaming the employee for a failure  

Blame rarely fixes anything; it usually only de-motivates. Focus on finding the real reason for a failure and fix that. Blame may be quick and satisfying, but it is not effective.

4.   Punishing in public

  

No one likes being "made an example of" or humiliated in front of their peers. Such humiliation leads to "getting even" and employees can be very creative when getting even ... like work slow-downs, fake injuries, bad-mouthing the boss behind his back, or talking bad about the company to potential customers. Negative feedback should always be given in private. There are instances when a witness will be present, but the witness should not be a coworker of the person receiving feedback.

All They Care About Is Money!

by Ron Ragain, Ph.D.

So is money a requirement for motivating employees?  For years we have been asking students in our Performance Management classes to tell us why people leave their jobs, and for years they have told us that most people leave for more money.  

Actually, research has consistently shown that while salary increase is important, it is usually far down the list of reasons why employees decide to leave for another job.  Significantly more people leave because they want more or new challenges, they are not happy with how they are treated by their current supervisor or they believe their contributions are not valued.  Money is obviously important because it allows us to meet our basic needs and achieve some of our life goals, but it may not be as important as other factors that are in the direct control of supervisors.  

Using Extrinsic Motivators Effectively

The best supervisors understand that money is just one of the extrinsic motivators that they have at their disposal and that the way they use these motivators is more important than the motivators themselves.  Because of this, they follow what we call “The Contingency Rule” in the application of all extrinsic motivators.  So what is this rule?

The Contingency Rule:  Tie the extrinsic motivator to performance.  Extrinsic motivators that supervisors have at their disposal include such things as money, praise, job assignments, training opportunities, etc.  Making the receipt of any of these contingent on successful performance is critical to their motivational impact.  For example, it has been well documented that cost of living increases act as a satisfier and not as a motivator because they are not tied to performance.  It could be argued that not receiving an expected cost of living increase could act as a motivator to look for another job, but in this case it would be a de-motivator for improved performance in the current job.  

"Best Bosses" are clear about what they expect from employees, and they are also clear about the relationship between accomplishment of those expectations and extrinsic motivators.  When people know that successful performance leads to increase in pay, praise, desired job assignments, etc, they are much more likely to put out the effort required to receive those things.  Failure to understand these contingencies will only lead to employee confusion, dissatisfaction and lowered motivation.  It might also lead the person to look for another job.

Conflicting goals make room for performance failures

by Ron Ragain, Ph.D.

Most people do not set out to fail.  On the contrary, most of us regularly attempt to succeed; but at times we do fail none-the-less.  The role of a supervisor is to get results through the efforts of other people, so an important question for supervisors is, “Why does a specific performance failure occur?”  There are a lot of reasons - knowledge, skill, motivation, etc. - and key among them is something called “goal conflict”.  

We live in a complex work-world with multiple competing demands.  We must be safe, fast, cheap and valuable all at the same time.  It is humanly impossible to make all of these goals #1 at the same time, so we make cost-benefit tradeoffs and “choose” which objective is the most important at the time given the pressures of the environment/culture that we are in.  I may choose to “hurry” because of time pressure, but in so doing sacrifice safety and quality.  

     
As a supervisor I need to understand the drivers behind employees’ performance failure before I can adequately help them become successful.  What “tradeoffs” did the employee make that produced the failure?  Did his desire to “please” the supervisor outweigh his calculation of his own skill-level?  Did her perceived pressure to produce outweigh the thought to evaluate hazards associated with the task and take precautionary action?  

    
Unless we as supervisors take the time to evaluate the conflicting goals that drive employees’ performance, we will be less effective in reducing the opportunity for failure.

You Might Not Always Get What You Want

By Michael Allen

What does it mean to have a "Formal Culture" and an "Informal Culture"?

Have you ever instituted a new policy or procedure into your organization, spent countless hours and dollars trying to drive the initiative throughout the organization, only to see it fall flat?  Organizations large and small face a similar problem -- how to make their organization become what they envision it to be.  

When organizational experts refer to the overall performance of an organization, they often use the word “culture”.  While there is disagreement on the exact definition of organizational culture, most would agree that it includes the values and behaviors that the majority of participants engage in; what most of the people believe and do most of the time.  This is called the “informal culture” as compared to the “formal culture”, or what the leadership wants the culture to be.  It makes no difference if your organization is a large corporation, a small “mom and pop”, a non-profit, or an educational institution, each of you have a formal and informal culture.  One aspect of great organizations is that they close the gap between the two cultures so that “what’s going on  - out there” very much resembles the vision of leadership.  

“Informal Culture is what 

most of the people believe and do 

most of the time.”

You may wonder if these great organizations close this culture gap by hiring the “right people”, or if they do something more intentional to close this gap.  The answer quite simply is both.  Great organizations start with great people, but they also understand and affect the other aspects of their culture.  

The Best Organizations

The best organizations don’t stop with simply creating rules and policies, they do much more to impact the everyday behavior of their employees.  If you’ll refer back to our August 2012 Post on the role of contextual factors in industrial safety incident prevention, the very best bosses and organizations understand that human performance is a result of complex systems.  Organizational factors such as rules, policies, and reward systems are only a portion of the complex system that drives human performance.  The best organizations understand that it is also people, both the individual and intact teams, plus surroundings that drive their overall performance.  If the employee base has failed to implement a new directive from leadership, there could be several reasons affecting this.  It could be that employees don’t understand the new initiative, operational pressures contradict the initiative, they don’t have the equipment necessary to make it happen, or a myriad of other factors.  The very best organizations are those that are able to gather field intelligence detailing actual performance and factors driving the performance, and then institute corrective measures that enable the workforce to align their own performance with the vision of leadership.

So what does that mean for you if you are in an organization with a gap between your formal and informal cultures?  We would first encourage you to perform a cultural analysis to get a better understanding of your informal culture.   With this knowledge you will be able to  understand what contextual factors are driving the performance of your employees.  This information will allow you to initiate corrective measures to close the gap between your formal and informal cultures.  The best organizations don’t make the mistake of simply focusing on changing people, they focus on the entire context to enable those on board to perform to a higher standard.

Dreaming of Greener Pasture

by Michael Allen

How do I find personal satisfaction in an organization that doesn't seem interested in being effective?

This is a very important question for all of those who have spent time working in seemingly heartless or meaningless organizations.  In January’s newsletter we defined an effective organization as one that meets its stated goals and accomplishes its stated mission.  But of course, by this definition, low goals and unimportant missions can create effectiveness and this would miss the point, therefore we add that effective organizations are those where the mission and goals are ones that people would want to invest in and/or participate in because they bring value to not only the individual, but also customers and society in general.  

So what about the employee who is stuck in an organization that doesn’t seem to meet these criteria?  The easy answer is to simply quit and find a better organization.  While this may seem to be the prudent decision, is it the right one?  Let’s now refer back to the original question and focus on a key word in the question - “seem”.  Often times employees can only guess as to what their organization’s goals and mission may be because they have not been clearly articulated (our February Newsletter topic).  Until one clearly understands where leadership is wanting to take the organization, employees should not make bad guesses about their willingness to be effective.  This is where candid and frank conversation with leadership is critical to clearly understand the mission.

For argument’s sake, let’s make the assumption that the employee is actually working in an organization that simply has no intention of meeting our definition of an effective organization.  How do we find personal satisfaction without simply leaving for greener pastures?  At this point the employee needs to focus on what they can control and influence within the organization.  They have control over their own performance and influence over the performance of their team.  To this end, an objective setting and strategy exercise can help the person move toward higher satisfaction.  We would recommend that the employee set short, intermediate and long term objectives for themselves and, where possible, their team.  These objectives should meet five SMART criteria. 

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Attainable
4. Relevant
5. Time Bound

Once we have SMART objectives in mind, the next step would be to create a task list which would take us step-by-step to the accomplishment of each objective.  The key to reaching our objective is to stick to the plan while measuring its effectiveness.  These measurements of effectiveness are critical to determining if we are on the right track.  If the measurements are in-line, we should continue on course until the objective is met.  If the measurements show that we are somehow failing, we need to either tweak the task list, or reassess the objective.

We find that those who focus on individual and team objectives, with a sound strategy for attaining and measuring, have greater satisfaction and better performance than those who simply go to work every day, counting the days until the next paycheck.  In the end, organizational effectiveness is impacted by both organizational mission and employee performance.  Not all of us have control or even influence over mission, but we all have considerable impact on our own performance and the objectives that we set can help improve that performance and ultimately our satisfaction.

Deal with Employee Failure -- the SAFE Way

by Ron Ragain, Ph.D.

Have you ever worked for someone who seems to notice every small error you make (and points it out), but almost never says anything when you are successful?  We call this leadership style “The Persecutor” and we see it a lot in both industry and parenting.  We have learned by talking with Persecutors that they are trying to motivate people to improve by holding them accountable for their results, but the exact opposite actually occurs because of the way they do it.  

Employees become demotivated because there is no balance between positive and negative feedback, and because they feel disrespected in the process.  People need both correction (what we call “Redirection") for failure and positive feedback for success.  So how can you avoid persecution and create the results that you need?  We suggest that you use the following redirection guidelines when correcting performance.

• Remain calm.  Emotions such as frustration and anger only make us less effective in thinking and communicating.  Most of the time those emotions are the result of a “guess” about why the person failed.  Avoid guesses and you will have much more control over your emotions.

• Conduct the session in private.  One of your primary objectives is to reduce defensiveness so that you can get the employee to help you examine the reason(s) behind the failure and develop a “fix” for the future.  Calling someone out in public almost always leads to defensiveness, so make every effort to find a private location for this discussion.

• Eliminate interruptions and distractions.  Gaining the full attention of the employee is critical for an effective conversation.  Make sure that you control as many distractions as possible and you will get much better attention from your employee.

• Point out positive aspects of performance first, followed by identification of the inadequate performance.  Typically the employee will have had some success that you want to continue in the future.  Positive feedback helps to strengthen those behaviors, so take this opportunity to create repeated success with positive feedback.  Then point out the specific result, action, lack of action, etc. that you have identified as failure.  Avoid ambiguous terms such as bad attitude, unmotivated, etc.

• Follow the SAFE* approach to giving feedback.
• Step Up:  When you see failure, say something, but say it with respect.  If you don’t step up, then the things that have led to this failure will continue to create failure in the future and if you say it the wrong way (disrespectfully) you will create defensiveness and less desire for improvement going forward.
• Ask:  Learn the real reason for the failure.  Was it motivation, ability, pressure, lack of support, etc?  Evaluate the total context that led to the failure before you come up with a plan for improvement.
• Find a Fix:  Find a fix for the real reason for the failure.  Work with the employee to determine a way to create success in the future.  Don’t create the plan yourself, but rather create it in concert with the employee when possible.  This brings more ownership and more motivation for improvement.
• Ensure the Fix:  Keep an eye on improvement and give feedback accordingly.  If the “fix” works and you observe success, then give positive feedback to strengthen performance.  If you observe failure, then work your way through the SAFE approach again until you find the real reason for failure and the right fix going forward.

*SAFE Skills are a component of The RAD Group’s PerformanceCOMPASS^TM training.

Incentives as a Motivational Tool

by Ron Ragain, Ph.D.

Many organizations use both monetary and non-monetary incentives to increase performance.  What do good incentive programs look like and are they really useful?  First of all, when we talk about incentives, we are talking about the application of something desired by the employee that increases the likelihood that they will perform at a higher level.  The objective is to motivate the employee to perform a task/skill for which they are already competent at a faster, more frequent or more reliable level than they have been doing.  Incentives, as defined here are not used to teach, but rather to motivate behavior.  Good incentive programs have three primary characteristics that lead to success.

1.  The behavior required for success is clearly understood.  People can only be expected to achieve a result in a particular manner if they understand the standard against which they are being measured.  I remember once I told my then 10-year old son to “clean up his mess” after a group of his friends had been at our house for a party.  When I came back to evaluate his work, I couldn’t see anything different than before.  When I questioned him about his “failure”, he said he did “clean up his mess”; all that other mess was made by his friends.  I obviously had not defined the standard against which I was measuring his performance.

2.  The measure of success is quantifiable and achievable.  
The result must be quantitative so that it can be precisely measured.  Qualitative measures (e.g. high quality) are too ambiguous and leave room for differences of opinion.  Leaving no soda cans or chip bags in the family room after you have cleaned up your mess would have allowed me to have a defendable measure of my sons success in the cleaning task.

3.  The incentive is something that is desired by the employees and is clearly tied to success.
The incentive that is applied should be something that is seen as worth the effort by employees (or children, as the case may be).  If it is not, then it will not serve as a motivator and cannot be expected to improve results.  Money is not always required as an incentive.  In the example with my son, I told him that as soon as he met our agreed upon standard he could go outside and play basketball with his friends.  That non-monetary incentive increased the quantity of items that he picked up and the speed at which he did it.  Make sure that you have accurately determined the desirousness of your incentives.

4 Meaningful Ways to Give Positive Feedback

by Ron Ragain, Ph.D.

Positive feedback strengthens performance and increases the likelihood of repeated success.  Really effective supervisors use more positive feedback than they do negative feedback.  Here are four ways to use positive feedback successfully.

1.  Give positive feedback in front of peers, but make sure that it is done in a manner that is not embarrassing to the person.

2.  Explain “why” you are pleased with their performance.  Make sure the person understands the relationship between their performance and the success of the team when possible.

3.  Place a “letter of commendation” in the person’s personnel file and make sure that the individual has a copy of the letter.

4.  Note their successes as part of their performance review so that the person can see the connection between specific successes and your evaluation of overall performance. 

Help!! I'm tired of doing everything myself!

3 Steps to Make Delegating Less Risky

by Michael Allen

Many of us find that we just can’t seem to get done in a day everything that needs to get done.  If we work alone, then this may be primarily a personal time management issue, but if we supervise a team, then it may well be a delegation and training issue.

Sometimes we fail to delegate tasks to our team members because we simply don’t trust them.  We have delegated to someone in the past and they have failed us, so now we are afraid to try it again.  The fact is that, as supervisors, our job is to get results through the efforts of our team members and if we aren’t delegating, we are not doing what we are getting paid to do.  

So how do you develop enough trust so that you are willing to take the “risk” of delegating?  

1.  Do an Ability Inventory -- The first step is to accurately understand the ability level of each team member with respect to each task for which they have responsibility.  An honest evaluation of ability will give you a starting point.  

2.  Delegate with Support -- Once you have this information, then you can determine what and to whom you can give more responsibility.  Make sure that you provide enough support to ensure success without “looking over their shoulder” all the time.  

3.  Develop “The Bench” -- Additionally, you need to determine an on-the-job training process to develop the skills needed by each team member so that they can be successful when delegated specific tasks.  This gives you more “bench strength” so that you have more options for delegation.  

Balancing delegation and training will really help you manage your time and also help manage the time of your team members.

3 Keys to Building Confident Employees

by Phillip Ragain

Most supervisors want employees who are willing to show appropriate initiative in their work - employees who do things without having to be told to do them.  How many of you would like for your children to clean their room without being told?  OK, maybe that is a little far fetched, but you get the idea.  We know from a lot of research over the past 50-years that people with confidence are much more willing to take initiative.  With this in mind, really good supervisors do everything they can to instill confidence in their employees.  So how do they do it?  

There are three essentials to building confident employees (and children): 

1.  Evaluate strengths and weaknesses

2.  “Engineer Opportunities for Success” based on those strengths and weaknesses  

3.  Acknowledge success to increase confidence

First, you have to honestly evaluate what each employee is really good at and where they could use some improvement.  Second, “engineer opportunities for success” primarily for the areas needing improvement, but also for the areas that are already strengths.  Remember, while we can learn from failure, confidence is built primarily on successes.  Finally, “acknowledge the success”.  People need positive feedback from important people in their lives, and as a supervisor or parent, you are significant.  Be a confidence builder and you will find that things get done faster and with less of your effort.

What is Accountability Anyway?

by Phillip Ragain

One of the primary roles of a manager, supervisor or parent for that matter is to hold people accountable for their performance and the results that they either achieve or fail to achieve.  We hear over and over again that people must be held accountable if you want improvement.  We agree, but what is accountability anyway?  

Here are some real life examples of what accountability is NOT:  

• Blaming a peer when they fail to meet an important deadline

• Making an example of an employee to discourage others from making the same mistake

• Threatening the team during a meeting to demonstrate that you won’t tolerate “poor performance”

• Sending out a memo to let everyone know that team members must have thick skins to keep standards from slipping

• Writing a “strongly worded” performance evaluation to reflect your sincere disappointment with an employee’s contribution over the last few quarters

• Giving your significant other the cold shoulder or withholding affection until they start paying attention to your needs, too  

• Sending a child to his room when he doesn’t do what he is told

Here are the common themes with all of these accountability failures:

1. The disappointed party assumed that motivation was the cause and blamed the poor-performer for the results they observed, and 
2. The disappointed party chose to punish the poor-performer into new behavior.

This simply isn’t what effective accountability is all about.  For us, accountability is a process and it includes two basic components:

1. Examination of the facts/reasons underlying a specific event/result -- We take the “accounting” in accountability seriously.  Without knowing exactly “why” the person didn’t meet expectations, it is virtually impossible to know how to do the next step.
2. Applying appropriate consequences for the actions and results -- These consequences must be logically tied to the real reason behind the result if you want improvement.

In our March newsletter we will be discussing how to effectively use these two basic components to effectively hold others accountable when they fail to meet expectations.