Tag first team concept

We’ve all been there.

Once a year, our manager would call us into their office and review what we had done well throughout the year – or, more likely, what we had done wrong eleven months ago. Then we would leave the manager’s office and return to work exactly like before.

Nothing changed! This is why it’s time to replace the performance review process.

Read more about the difference between High Potential and High Performance.

Need more reasons?

Performance Reviews Aren’t Effective – Performance reviews rarely lead to a change in behaviour by the manager or the employee. Year after year, most managers give employees the same feedback. And most employees don’t do anything in response. One reported that as little as one-third of employees showed improvement after their annual review. That’s likely because performance reviews rarely offer actionable steps for employees to take when struggling.

Performance Reviews Aren’t Reliable – Seventy-seven percent of HR executives believe performance reviews don’t accurately reflect employee contributions, according to CEB research. And CEB’s HR practice leader Rose Mueller-Hanson agrees with those executives. She states, “Our research shows that individual performance ratings have zero correlation with actual business results.”

Performance Reviews Are Time-Consuming – A recent CEB survey found that managers spend an average of 210 hours yearly in performance management activities. Managers said their employees, in turn, each spend 40 hours a year. Deloitte reported that its approximately 244,000 employees spent more than 2 million hours a year on performance reviews. That’s much time spent on something that is proven to be unreliable and ineffective.

Performance Reviews Are Costly – Besides the time it takes to perform annual reviews, there’s the actual cost. According to information from the CEB, a company spends about $3,500 per employee on yearly reviews.

Given the time and cost of performance reviews, it’s surprising that more companies haven’t given them up yet. But if those aren’t enough reasons for you, the new research on how ineffective and misleading they are!

It’s time to stop evaluating performance and invest in potential.

High potentials can be challenging to identify for two reasons:

First, high performance is easy to observe and drowns out the less obvious attributes and behaviours that characterize high potentials—such as change management or learning capabilities.

Second, few organizations codify the attributes and competencies they value in their ideal employees—which means that managers don’t know precisely what to look for to assess potential.

As a result, most managers focus exclusively on performance, which can be a problem.

When performance is the only criterion employees are evaluated on, high performers will be the only ones moving up—and high potentials will move out.

You should value and reward performance, but it can’t be the only entry point.

Learn more about the Better Leader Inner Circle

What are the key characteristics of high-potential employees?

The characteristics of high-potential employees include Ability, Aspiration, Behaviour, Social Skills, Adaptability and Leadership. These traits are critical to identifying employee abilities that can contribute to the business and enable employers to put development programmes in place to maximize the skills of these individuals.

Ability relates to performance, an individual’s expertise, innate skills, and capacity to work autonomously and consistently deliver results. 

Aspiration is the desire to grow, taking accountability for decision-making. They share a drive to achieve, individually and as a team, and support and encourage growth.

Behaviour is one of the easiest traits to identify. High Potential Employees Show an increased capability to learn, cooperate with others and manage their behaviours and emotions and how they behave under pressure.

Social skills and High Emotional Intelligence allow High Potential Employees to adapt their personalities to different responsibilities and changing circumstances.

Adaptability. Under pressure, High Potential Employees usually remain calm, continue to perform, and can pivot easily.

Leadership is imperative for High Potential Employees to understand and respect quality leadership and aspire to fulfil such roles successfully.

Leadership is not for a select few people at the top of the organization; a healthy Organization has leaders at every level.

I hear it all the time, supervisors griping that their employees lack ownership in their work and projects. But the very same supervisors do not realize that they take actions that take ownership away from their people every day.

Hoping people take ownership is not a plan; leaders of healthy organizations implement systems and mechanisms that give ownership and eliminate mechanisms that inhibit a sense of ownership.

Read more about accountability.

Top-down systems rob people of their sense of ownership, so the more you can do to eliminate them, the better. I am not talking about monitoring data and results, as these should make the invisible visible.

The systems I am speaking about are where senior management determines what their subordinates should be doing and then holds them accountable.

I have experienced that people do their best work when they are accountable to themselves and their teammates.

When it comes to processes, adherence to the process frequently becomes the objective, as opposed to achieving the goal that the process was put in place to achieve.

It drives people crazy when the process becomes the outcome.

Edward Deming, who explored the principle of Total Quality Leadership, said that systems to monitor efficiency improved efficiency.

But processes that monitored the process caused the organization to become inefficient.

Monitoring processes, or how employees do their job, sends the message that we do not trust you.

And in the end, it drives employees away from taking ‘ownership.’

If you are clear about your intent and what employees are not allowed to do in carrying out your intent, you will drive ownership.

Read more about leading with intent.

Consider these questions:

How are you underutilizing the ideas, creativity, and passions of your mid-level managers responsible for their departments’ results?

Which monitoring systems can you hand over to mid-level managers and department heads?

What are the top-down monitoring systems in your organization? And how can you eliminate them?

What are the Four levels of Accountability Systems?

Level 1 – Chaos: People are not told what they are accountable for and therefore don’t do their jobs

Level 2 – Inefficient: People are told what they are accountable for but don’t do their jobs because of overwork or focus on the wrong things. This is most inefficient because resources are invested in monitoring, but work isn’t getting done.

Level 3 – Compliance: People understand what they are responsible for and do their work because there are systems to hold people accountable. People often feel forced into doing their jobs. This is where most organizations are and work towards, but this is top-down leadership.

Level 4 – Healthy: People are not told what to do because they have figured it out independently. And they hold themselves and their peers accountable for results with a minimum of monitoring systems. This is a highly engaged, energized, and healthy organization where people have engaged and ownership of their work.

In top-down organizations, accountability processes are designed with the idea that you, the employee, cannot hold yourself accountable for your work; therefore, your boss needs to do it for you.

In a Healthy Organization, people hold themselves and their peers to account for their performance.

Leaders in a Healthy organization are not to hold employees accountable but to help them keep themselves accountable.

Read more about organizational health.

How wonderful would it be if people did not have to attend dreaded accountability meetings? How powerful would it be if people felt safe enough to ask others, ‘Can you help me stay on track.’

This would inspire accountability and efficiency, creativity and energy.

This article is based on my research and an HBR article   

What makes an effective leader?

This question focuses on my research and my experience as a leader, executive coach, and organizational health & development consultant.

I recently conducted research to consider the most critical leadership competencies for leaders and leadership development programs.

This quite aligns with a previous article titled Moral Courage: The Most Important Leadership Characteristic.

Demonstrates strong ethics and provides a sense of safety.

This theme combines two of the three most highly rated attributes: “high ethical and moral standards” (67% selected it as one of the most important) and “communicating clear expectations” (56%).

These attributes are all about creating a safe and trusting environment.

A leader with high ethical standards conveys a commitment to fairness, instilling confidence that they and their employees will honour the game’s rules.

Similarly, when leaders communicate their expectations, they avoid blindsiding people and ensure everyone is on the same page. In a safe environment, an employee can relax, invoking the brain’s higher capacity for social engagement, innovation, creativity, and ambition.

Neuroscience confirms this point.

When the amygdala registers a threat to our safety, arteries harden and thicken to handle an increased blood flow to our limbs in preparation for a fight-or-flight response. In this state, we lose access to the limbic brain’s social engagement system and the prefrontal cortex’s executive function, inhibiting creativity and the drive for excellence. From a neuroscience perspective, making sure that people feel safe on a deep level should be job #1 for leaders.

Do you think fear is driving your leadership actions?

Here are 7 questions to prevent fear of leadership failure. 

But how?

This competency is all about behaving in a way that is consistent with your values.

To increase feelings of safety, work on communicating with the specific intent of making people feel safe.

One way to accomplish this is to acknowledge and neutralize feared results or consequences from the outset.

For example, you might approach a conversation about a project gone wrong by saying, “I’m not trying to blame you. I want to understand what happened.”

Read How One Word Can Damage Workplace Culture

This competency challenge leader due to the natural responses that are hardwired into us.

But with deep self-reflection and a shift in perspective (perhaps aided by a coach), there are also enormous opportunities for improving everyone’s performance by focusing on our own.

Do you have a “brilliant jerk” (or two) in your workplace? 

I teach a leadership class at my local University, and in a recent class, one student shared the story about a high-performing employee who was a jerk. That jerk created a toxic environment but was consistently the number one salesperson. She asked what she should do about the person when senior management focused on that person’s results but not the impact of her actions.

I advised the student to focus on the costs that jerk had on the organization; how many employees or customers did they lose because of this person’s actions? For example, if a new employee quits due to this person being a jerk, how much revenue was lost, and how much did it cost to replace that person?

If the jerk costs more than they earned, the decision becomes economical, not emotional.

Read what happened when I hired a jerk.

A High-performing Jerk is typically in a position of power and has awful toxic behaviours that negatively impact colleagues. Their harmful bullying behaviour “evades consequences” because they’re generally high performing in another metric.

Enough is enough; it’s time for workplace leaders to step up and stamp out these awful behaviours.

Pay Attention to the Brilliant Jerk

High-performing Jerks are bullies but do not have their behaviour dealt with because they may be high performing in another area.

Leaders need to take a more active role in stamping out toxic behaviours in the workplace by:

1. 1. not shrug off, laugh off or walk past anything that constitutes harassment in your workplace;
   2. speak up against harassment that occurs on your watch, and
   3. Investigate and, if substantiated, discipline and exit perpetrators of harassment regardless of their clients, relationships, public profile, revenue, technical skills, perceived brilliance or commercial value.

Ignore the Brilliant Jerk at Your Peril

When organizational leaders ignore or tolerate High-performing Jerks, they signal to employees and other stakeholders that they value profits over people. I shouldn’t have to point out the consequences; however, recent studies show that toxic workplace culture is ten times more likely to drive employee attrition than dissatisfaction with compensation.

“Enough is enough. It’s time companies considered the consequences of their actions. Toxic rock stars are the cancer of company culture. Leaving them in a position of power reveals what the company truly values: profits over people.” HBR

Failure to effectively deal with the High-performing Jerks has significant implications for medium to long-term company profitability (if you want to think about dollars rather than doing the right thing!) The cost of talent management (attrition replacement, talent sourcing costs, employee compensation) will skyrocket.

Do you have an unhealthy culture?

Leaders Must Take A Proactive Stance

Dealing with the High-performing Jerk after they have polluted your culture with their toxicity is a must. But how about we prevent it from getting to that stage in the first place?

Here is some food for thought. Ask yourself:

• • • Am I protecting an employee with toxic behaviours in my workplace?
    • Am I prioritizing some results over long-term positive, sustainable outcomes?
    • Do I reward harmful behaviour through my inaction or other ways?
    • Have I, in any way, contributed to a toxic workplace culture through my behaviours? (Particularly towards women)
    • Am I the reason that people don’t want to come to work anymore?
    • Am I the reason that our employee turnover rate is higher than ideal?

Here is what to do immediately.

• • • Publicly commit to creating and sustaining a workplace culture where everyone, irrespective of their identity, is respected, valued and can reach their potential.
    • Publicly commit to a Zero Tolerance policy (Brilliant Jerks are Not Welcome Here!)
    • Ensure there are robust procedures and practices for confidential reporting of brilliant jerk behaviours (workplace bullying, harassment and disrespect)
    • Ask people from all levels and all backgrounds, ‘Does your boss conform to what you believe are the values of this organization?’
    • Hold the leaders in your workplace accountable for [better] managing the brilliant jerks in your organization. And themselves!

And finally, do not underestimate the damage the High-performing Jerks have on your organization. Do not imagine that your organization is not affected.

Do not neglect your role as a workplace leader to protect your employees, including those who are already marginalized, predominantly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Women, Women of Colour, from the awful impact a brilliant jerk can have.