Why Evaluate Performance?
By Bob Nelson

One of the goals, if not the most important goal, of the performance appraisal and review process is to motivate employees. An objective appraisal process focuses on employee job performance toward agreed upon goals, not personality traits. (read more...)

Nice Guys Can Finish First
The higher up you go - the more important your people skills become!
By Marshall Goldsmith

Imagine a world where technical skills, educational pedigrees, even professional achievements and track records no longer matter. Everyone is blessed with equal brains and talent. (read more...)

Job Satisfaction? Take Action. Who's on your gift list this year?
By Bev Kaye

We often wait for other people to do something nice for us. What about doing something nice for yourself? Here are 26 ideas to choose from. (read more...)

Why Evaluate Performance? (^ top)
By Bob Nelson

One of the goals, if not the most important goal, of the performance appraisal and review process is to motivate employees. An objective appraisal process focuses on employee job performance toward agreed upon goals, not personality traits. It recognizes the employees' contributions toward achieving organizational goals, addresses shortcomings, identifies education needs and is a meaningful part of a person's career planning process. For most organizations, this process is also the basis for employee compensation.

It is important to understand that formal performance evaluations are just one part of an organization's system of delegation, goal setting, coaching, motivating, and ongoing informal and formal feedback on employee performance. If you don't believe me, try a few of these positive elements of performance evaluations on for size:

• A chance to summarize past performance and establish new performance goals: All employees want to know whether they're doing a good job. Formal performance evaluations force managers to communicate performance results-both good and bad-to their employees and to set new goals. In many organizations, the annual performance evaluation is the only occasion when supervisors and managers speak to their employees about performance expectations and the results of employee efforts for the preceding evaluation period.
• An opportunity for clarification and communication: You need to constantly compare expectations. In fact, try this exercise with your manager. List your ten most important activities. Then ask your manager to list what he or she considers to be your ten most important activities. Surprise! Chances are, your lists are quite different. On average, business people who do this exercise find that their lists overlap only 40 percent at best. Performance evaluations help the employer and employee to compare notes and make sure that assignments and priorities are in order.
• A forum for learning goals and career development: In many organizations, career development takes place as a part of the formal performance evaluation process. Managers and employees are all busy folks and often have difficulty setting aside the time to sit down and chart out the steps that they must take to progress in an organization or career. Although career development discussions should generally take place in a forum separate from the performance evaluation process, combining the activities does afford the opportunity to kill both birds with the same stone, or something like that.
• A formal documentation to promote advancement or dismissal: Most employees get plenty of informal performance feedback-at least of the negative kind. "You did what? Are you nuts?" Most informal feedback is verbal and, as such, undocumented. If you're trying to build a case to give your employee a promotion, you can support your case much easier if you have plenty of written documentation (including formal performance evaluations) to justify your decision.
The preceding list gives very important reasons for conducting regular formal performance evaluations. However, consider one more prime reason for doing evaluations: Many companies have paid a lot of money to employees and former employees who have successfully sued them for wrongful termination or for other, biased employment decisions that could have been resolved with better communication and performance evaluations along the way.

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Nice Guys Can Finish First (^ top)
The higher up you go - the more important your people skills become!
By Marshall Goldsmith

Imagine a world where technical skills, educational pedigrees, even professional achievements and track records no longer matter. Everyone is blessed with equal brains and talent. Everyone is highly skilled, well educated at the same school, and locked in a dead heat of accomplishment, posting exactly the same "lifetime batting average."

Now, imagine that you lead an organization in this world. How would you hire people? How would you decide whom to promote and whom to cast aside? Chances are you would start paying very close attention to how people behave -- how they treat colleagues and clients, how they speak and listen in meetings, how well they extend the minor courtesies that either lubricate daily work life or create friction. Welcome to the real world at the higher levels of organizational life.

We apply these behavioral criteria to almost any successful person, whether it's our CEO or our plumbing contractor. But sometimes we forget to apply them to ourselves. And in turn, we forget that our behavior may be holding us back.

All other things being equal, your people skills (or lack thereof) become more pronounced the higher up you go. In fact, even when all other things are not equal, your people skills often make the difference in how high you go. Who would you rather have as a CFO? A moderately good accountant who is great with people outside the firm and skilled at managing very smart people? Or a brilliant accountant who's inept with outsiders and alienates all the smart people under him?

Not a tough choice, really. The candidate with superb people skills will win out every time, in large part because he will be able to hire people smarter than he is about money and he will be able to lead them. There's no guarantee that the brilliant number cruncher can do that now or any time in the foreseeable future.

We all have certain attributes that helped us land our first job. These achievements go on our resumes. But as we become more successful, those attributes recede into the background and more subtle traits emerge. It's not enough to be smart. You have to be smart -- and something else. At some point, you get the benefit of the doubt on skill issues. For example, we assume our doctors know medicine, so we judge them on their bedside manner. And not many people remember that Jack Welch has a PhD in chemical engineering. That's because none of the problems he encountered in his last 30 years at GE were in any way related to his skill at chemical titration or formulating plastics. When he was vying for the CEO job, the attributes holding him back were strictly behavioral: his brashness, his blunt language, his unwillingness to suffer fools. The soft behavioral skills came to the fore only after he delivered profits and ascended the GE ladder. That's when the GE board wanted to know if he could behave as a CEO.

What if you had to prepare a resume where you couldn't highlight the elite college you graduated from, or your five years at McKinsey, or even your title at your current job? You can't boast about the profits you posted, the sagging division you turned around, or the product you launched and turned into a stand-alone brand. The only data you can put on your resume are your interpersonal skills (which, for the purposes of this exercise, must be documented and authentic). What would they be?

To be able to listen?
To give proper recognition?
To share -- whether it's information or credit for a success?

To stay calm when others panic?
To make midcourse corrections?
To accept responsibility - and admit mistakes?

To defer to others, even (especially) those of lesser rank?
To let someone else be right some of the time?
To resist playing favorites?

You see where I'm going? This quick list of attributes, while attractive in a junior employee, is not the sort of thing that junior employees get lauded for. But further along in your career curve, when it's time to step up into a leadership position, you're going to need these qualities in spades. Stripped of your technical mastery and your hall-of-fame-quality lifetime batting average, what are the interpersonal skills that will make you rise above the leadership pack? Pick one, any skill that you feel you're lacking. And start developing it . . . now.

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Job Satisfaction? Take Action. Who's on your gift list this year? (^ top)
By Bev Kaye

We often wait for other people to do something nice for us. What about doing something nice for yourself? Here are 26 ideas to choose from. These 26 ideas come from a study of workplace satisfaction issues as described in Love It, Don't Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. Taking responsibility for any of these can help you get more of what you want at work. Choose one or more - and commit! You deserve it.

Ask - And you may receive. Most people eventually realize that, no matter where or with whom they work, at times they want a bit more of something. The best way to get that something is to ask. Don't expect others to take the first step. Be clear, be prepared, and be collaborative - then ask for what you want.

Buck - Don't pass it. Some people are tempted to hold others accountable for their work satisfaction. Ultimately you choose your career, your boss, your team, your organization. You decide how long to stay, and you have the power to improve your work. Accept that responsibility, complete with its challenges, and you'll get more of what you want from your work and your workplace.

Career - Chart your course. Your career is your creation. When was the last time you really gave serious thought and time to planning it? Too many people delay or even paralyze their actions. They wait for their bosses to provide career maps. The truth is that only you can make the time and the decisions that put your career on the right course. The payoff is greater work satisfaction.

Dignity - Give it to get it. If you don't feel respected, don't just wait and hope for your boss, colleagues, or employees to give it to you. Clarify what respect means to you. Find ways to get more respect, right where you are. We all deserve respect. Get your share by performing well, by asking for it, by continually improving, and by being willing to change YOU in small but significant ways.

Enrich - Energize your work. In today's work environment there is almost always something new to learn, another approach to try, or a way to rekindle enthusiasm. Don't wait for someone to hand you an exciting project or something new to learn. Find a way to enrich your own work, negotiate for it, and then do it.

Family - Seen yours lately? You might believe there is no way to excel at work and have quality time with your family. But many people effectively integrate career and family. Try something innovative, non-traditional or creative. You shouldn't have to choose between work and family.

Goals - Up is not the only way. If you're waiting for your boss (or someone else) to define and then deliver your career path, you might wait a long time. Expanding your career options means considering moves you may not have taken seriously before. See what you could gain by moves other than up.

Hire - Are you on board? Bringing yourself onboard and truly "finding the fit" can be challenging. Do your homework and learn as much as you can about the organization you've joined. Don't leave your own job fit to happenstance.

Information - Plug yourself in. For many reasons, you may not be getting the information you need to be satisfied and successful. If that's the case, don't wait for someone else to fill you in. Take charge, plug in, and get more information.

Jerk - Work with one? Whether jerks come into your life in the form of bosses, teammates, or clients, their very exis-tence can cause you to want to do something drastic, such as jumping ship. There are things you can do to improve your situation if you work with a jerk. You may not be able to rid your work place of jerks, but you can dramatically reduce their impact on you!

Kicks - Are we having fun yet? If fun at work is high on your priority list and you see your department, team, or organization as a "fun-free zone," don't wait for your boss to cheer up your workplace. Take charge, get creative, and inject more fun into your work. If having kicks at work matters to you, add "creating fun" to your unwritten job description.

Link - Build the connection. Linking with others brings us joy and adds immensely to our capability and success - in life and at work. Do the people you work with add to your satisfaction? Don't wait for your boss or others to include you or build the connections for you. Step forward and strengthen the bonds between you and others in and outside of your organization.

Mentor - Make your own match. Don't wait for someone to offer to mentor you. Identify what you want and then seek those with the wisdom you need. You will find them, right where you work. Don't wait for your organization to assign you a mentor and don't fret if no one seeks you out. Mentors are everywhere. You just may need to seek them yourself.

Numbers - Assess your worth. Sometimes what we think is all about money has very little to do with money. Have you thought about the other things you want? Managers know that talent keeps them competitive. You might help them by asking for currencies other than money. As you ask, be patient with their predicament. Your professionalism will pay off in the long run.

Opportunities - They're still knocking. Don't wait for your boss or anyone else to hand you the next opportunity. Make sure that when opportunity knocks, you not only hear it, but you're also prepared to open the door.

Passion - It's not just a fruit. Get clear about your passion and then go after it! Notice what's missing and then ask for it. Having passion for your work is not only possible, it's crucial. Launch a passionate search for ways to bring together your passion and your work.

Question - Go outside the box. If you're feeling blocked - by the rules, the culture, or the boss - don't despair. There are things you can do to get out of the box you're in and get more of what you want at work. When the rules, traditions or policies have you boxed in, question them. See which are rigid and which might be bent or even broken.

Reward - Reap your own. Reward experts agree that most of us want more than money from our work. If you're not feeling rewarded enough at work, get clear about what's missing. Think about who could provide what you really want. Then go after it!

Space - Want some? If you're feeling fenced in, over-controlled, or frustrated by your lack of freedom, don't wait for the rules to change. Take charge and do something to get more space, right where you are. Chances are, no one's going to come along to offer you more space. You have to ask for it.

Truth - It hurts - or does it? You need regular, honest feedback from your boss, co-workers, customers, and friends. Many people complain about not getting enough feedback. Don't wait for your boss, or others, to tell you the truth. Go after it. You need the truth to know where you stand and how you can succeed.

Understand - Are you listening enough? When you tune out, you miss out on information. More important, you miss out on having a respectful relationship. Key characteristics of emotionally intelligent people are their abilities to listen, empathize, and truly understand others. So listen more.

Values - What matters most? When your values match your work and your workplace, you feel "in sync." When your values are not met in your work and workplace, the opposite is true. Don't wait for your boss to notice that you seem unhappy. Get clear about what's unacceptable. Find a way to better align your values with the people, the workplace, or the work itself.

Wellness - Time for a checkup? You are ultimately in charge of your own state of health and well-being. Ask your boss and others for help in accomplishing your wellness goals. But take control and do something now to increase your own level of mental, emotional, and physical fitness.

X-ers and Other Generations - Bridge the gap. If you're experiencing generation gaps with colleagues, bosses, or employees, don't pull away and don't jump ship - at least not until after you've tried to bridge the gap. Explain yourself and seek to understand another point of view.

Yield - Get out of your own way. Sometimes what serves you best is to get out of your own way and yield the right-of-way to someone else. Give yielding a try. It may seem counter-intuitive but it's true. Yielding (a form of giving) will help you get more of what you want in the workplace.

Zenith - Are we there yet? Our work lives sometimes feel like a constant climb, and we wonder how long it will take to "get there."

Satisfaction often comes not just from reaching the peak, but also in traveling to it. There are actions your manager can take and, yes, there are actions your organizational leaders can take, but in the end it's all up to you. You're in charge of finding and working towards the zenith. Happy Holidays!

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