Head On

by Janel Anderson

  Next the kids were given another test, an extremely difficult test. The researchers wanted to see if and how the kids who were praised for their effort would respond differently from those who were praised for their intelligence. Those who were praised for their effort worked longer, demonstrated more effort and reported enjoying the activity more than those who were praised for their intelligence. In fact, the group who was praised for their intelligence became frustrated easily and had a tendency to give up. In the final round of testing in the experiment, the children were given a test that was the same level of difficulty as the first test. Those who were initially praised for their intelligence did worse on this test. Their average score dropped by an astounding 20%. Meanwhile, the group who was praised for their effort initially, did better. A lot better. Their scores rose by nearly 30%. This is a 50% difference in average score resulting from how they were praised.

  This study shows that not all praise is created equal. If you want to develop an organization that is oriented toward continuous feedback that makes a difference, not only do you need to include positive feedback, you need to be acutely aware of how that feedback is delivered so that it cultivates a growth mindset.

  CONCLUSION

  The secret to becoming an organization that embraces continuous feedback is for every member of the organization to adopt an attitude of responsiveness, directness, openness to feedback from multiple directions, a willingness to provide both positive and negative feedback, and a growth mindset. And finally, when feedback comes your way, filter for coaching. Think of the feedback as having your best interests and the best interests of the organization in mind. If everyone in the organization can do that, at least most of the time, your organization will thrive.

  EXERCISES

  #21: Review Preparation Checklist, Employees

  Use this checklist to prepare for your performance review meeting with your manager.

  ☐ The day before your evaluation, review your Self Evaluation, your last review, and any other relevant documentation that may be referenced during the performance evaluation meeting.

  ☐ Consider areas of your performance in which your manager may have constructive feedback. Be ready to discuss them in a non-defensive manner.

  ☐ Get a good night’s sleep.

  ☐ Take a brisk walk or participate in another form of exercise if you regularly do so.

  ☐ Keep your schedule relatively light in the one or two hours immediately prior to your review.

  ☐ Visualize the conversation being a productive, constructive session that leaves you challenged and invigorated.

  ☐ Arrive on time.

  ☐ Immediately before your review, take a few deep breaths.

  ☐ Manage defensiveness as it comes up during the review through breathing and anchoring.

  ☐ Take a break if you find yourself overly defensive.

  ☐ Take notes throughout the review, especially on areas where constructive feedback is shared.

  ☐ Ask for specific examples for anything you don’t understand or aren’t sure of (remember to ask from an objective, curious stance rather than a defensive one).

  ☐ Make a follow up plan for addressing shortcomings and opportunities or put a meeting on the calendar to discuss them in the short term.

  ☐ Thank your manager for their candor and the spirit in which they shared the feedback.

  #22: Review Preparation Checklist, Managers

  Use this checklist to prepare for your performance review meeting with each employee.

  ☐ Do not use the “sandwich” method (see Chapter 5 for details).

  ☐ Be direct.

  ☐ Balance authenticity with diplomacy.

  ☐ Be specific.

  ☐ Be transparent.

  ☐ Make it collaborative; a conversation.

  ☐ Check in frequently to gauge how the feedback is landing.

  ☐ Make a practice of reading the body language of your employee and adjust or ask questions accordingly.

  ☐ Balance feedback between evaluative feedback (i.e., “Your score is ‘Meets Expectations.’” or “Your score is a 4.”) and coaching feedback (“Here are some techniques you might try as you work toward managing your time better when wrapping up projects.”)

  ☐ Get feedback on your feedback.

  ☐ Thank your employee for their receptiveness to your feedback.

  Use this space to jot down specific strengths or weaknesses you plan to discuss.

  CHAPTER 1 2

  COMMUNICATIONG EFFECTIVELY WITH SENIOR LEADERS

  Yolanda, a part-time accountant wasn’t long in her new job with a non-profit when something didn’t add up. Literally. She couldn’t reconcile the payroll account. A natural problem solver, Yolanda investigated. She looked at her predecessor’s records and they didn’t add up either. Money was missing each month. It wasn’t a lot, but it was money.

  Yolanda’s job was to account for the money. She continued her search, looking in other accounts and finding more and more situations that simply didn’t add up.

  Until they did.

  Yolanda discovered, through her detailed research, that Alex, the payroll clerk, was skimming money from the accounts. Alex seemed very close with Ian, Yolanda’s manager. Yolanda knew she needed to tell someone, and quickly. Given the close relationship between Ian and Alex, Yolanda decided to involve Ian’s manager, the Controller, as well. She scheduled a meeting with the two of them.

  ◆◆◆

  When you need to have a difficult conversation with your boss or a senior leader in your organization, the stakes are high and in most cases, there is a real cost to a failure to connect, be that a cost in your perceived value to the organization, your reputation, or in some cases, your advancement opportunities and your career itself. Whether your manager is making a bad decision, you messed up (badly!) or something personal like a major health or relationship issue is standing between you and your best work performance, you will need to have a conversation about a difficult topic with your manager or a senior leader in your organization at some point. One of the most important career skills you can develop is knowing how to effectively bring a problem to the attention of your manager. Frequently, people handle such situations poorly and end up looking inept, insecure, or hostile. In this chapter, we aim to rectify that. The first half of the chapter looks at particularly high stakes situations in which someone has messed up, or is about to, including a leader. In the second half of the chapter, we look at how to communicate effectively with senior leaders in less stressful but still important situations.

  The overarching message of the chapter is to get into action. It is easy to sit back on one’s laurels, waiting for the perfect timing or for the situation to resolve itself, neither of which are likely to occur. Any of us has at one time hesitated to bring a difficult topic to light with a manager, especially if it involves contradicting a superior. But in fields where lives may literally be at stake-like medicine, aviation, and energy to name a few-clear and effective communication is imperative, especially when something goes wrong or a decision is questionable. Interestingly, these also seem to be the professions with the most rigid hierarchies, and those in which doubting superiors (whether in rank or direct reporting structure) is taboo. Regardless of your industry, this chapter will equip you with tools for communicating bad or difficult news upward and provide specific conversational tactics that create a safer environment for addressing such situations head on.

  WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH

  When the stakes are high and you need to initiate a difficult conversation, there’s a good chance someone’s made a big mistake or is about to. Let’s make sure it’s not you making the mistake during the conversation! Regardless of whose misstep it is, it’s important to keep your focus on the solutions rather than the problems. We will look at how to handle a difficult situation with your manager when you’re the cause of the problem, when a colleague is at fault, and when the manager is responsible for t
he mishap.

  You’ve Messed Up

  If you’ve made a blunder at work, especially one that costs the company customers, money, production time, or anything else that can be directly traced to the bottom line, you’ll need to speak up quickly, take responsibility, and focus on how you will remedy the situation. Taking the issue head-on is imperative.

  First, schedule a time to meet with your manager as soon as possible. If your manager is not in the office, plan to meet by phone or videoconference. Do not wait until he or she is back in the office. Time is of the essence and it will help that you didn’t delay in sharing the news with them. They should be the first to know; pay them that respect and they will be likely to respect you as well. In the request to meet, share that the situation has urgency. A meeting subject line might be “Important update on the garden gnome project” and you might include an acknowledgement of their busy schedule or other competing priorities so that they know you view this discussion as urgent, given their current context.

  When you meet, begin the conversation by immediately stating exactly what is wrong. Deliver the bottom line first. Managers and leaders have limited time and attention. They want you to get right to the point. When you are communicating with your manager and the senior leaders in your organization, you are not sharing a mystery story in which it all makes sense in the end. Don’t make them guess and don’t make them follow a plot with many twists and turns. They don’t have the patience for it. Rather, begin with your conclusions and then use the rest of your time to support those conclusions with data, your rationale, and other evidence you need to share for them to understand the situation.

  Additionally, make sure you are taking responsibility for what has occurred if you were at fault in the matter. This is not the time to pass the buck on a colleague or be vague or ambiguous. Demonstrating ownership of the problem will increase the respect that your manager has for you. Shirking that responsibility will do the opposite. In a difficult situation, especially one that you have caused or contributed to, dodging responsibility will damage the relationship and will not reflect well on you. Taking responsibility quickly and owning the unfavorable situation will lessen the damage to your professional reputation.

  Let’s suppose that an important deadline was missed because of your mishandling of a client account. The client will not get their shipment in time to meet their own production deadlines and now they have threatened to end their relationship with your company and become a customer of your top competitor. Start your conversation with your boss by saying something like, “The Rainbow Unicorn account is in jeopardy and they are threatening to take their business to the competition. I mishandled their latest order and they are upset.”

  You may choose to add a few more details, but only as many as your boss needs in order to quickly comprehend the situation. Being concise is important precisely because you want to spend more time discussing the solution than the problem. There may be a time to rehash what went wrong in greater detail later as part of a discussion about preventing recurrence of the problem, but for the initial conversation, the focus should be on quickly laying out the problem and then moving on to solutions.

  It is important to present a solution paired with the problem. That demonstrates leadership, accountability, and responsibility for fixing the mess you’ve created. Sometimes the solution to the problem will be straightforward and you will know exactly what to propose. In other cases, you may feel as if you don’t have a viable solution or don’t know where to begin. Do not go to the meeting empty handed. Rather, come up with several potential solutions. After you’ve succinctly shared the problem, you’ll say something along the lines of, “Given the situation, we could do A, B, C, or something that we devise together.” In adding the last possibility, “something we devise together,” you are positioning yourself as a problem- solver, even if you don’t have a good solution to the problem in the present moment. It also positions you and your boss as a team in fixing what went wrong, especially in a case where you don’t know the best solution.

  Be prepared to listen closely and manage your defensiveness. Your boss may be wildly upset or incredibly understanding or anywhere in between. Managing your defensiveness and staying present will enable you to get the most out of the conversation, both in terms of comprehension and relationship development. As for comprehension, if you can remain present, listen, and ask good questions, you are more likely to reach an outcome that suits your boss than if you weren’t fully engaged. Secondly, staying grounded and present in the discussion will demonstrate your professional maturity and will enable your manager to think of you more as a professional colleague rather than a screw up.

  Create a plan of action once you have agreed up on the best solution. Summarize that plan of action before closing the conversation. Then, take action immediately. Your ability to respond quickly and accurately in the face of a crisis, especially one that you caused, is critical in building or rebuilding trust after a mishap.

  A Colleague Messed Up

  When a colleague makes a mistake, you’d like them to take personal responsibility and share their errors and proposed solution with their manager, but that doesn’t always happen. Avoiding responsibility is not uncommon and if it happens, you might easily see the risk of your colleague’s inaction and want to take action yourself. How can you diplomatically step up if your colleague shirks from taking action?

  If your colleague knows that you are aware of the situation, encourage them to bring the issue forward with leadership on their own. Take a moment to connect with your colleague and encourage them to take ownership. You might share how you’ve had similar conversations with leaders in the past and that it has worked out well, or encourage them that it is in the best interest of their career to take responsibility for the situation. Do your best to be persuasive and have your colleague go forward with the issue before meeting with a manager or senior leader yourself. The exception would be a case where laws have been broken or there has been intentional malfeasance, like the situation that Yolanda found herself in at the beginning of the chapter. Then it does make sense to go straight to a manager or senior leader and bypass your colleague. These are rather rare circumstances.

  If you do need to meet with your manager or senior leader to bring the issue to their awareness, either because your colleague has declined your invitation to take the issue forward themselves or because you believe there has been malicious intent or foul play, be succinct and direct as you would if it were your own mistake. There is no need to belabor the point. In addition, refrain from using blaming language as you recount the facts of the situation. The more clearly you can focus on the facts, the more highly you will likely be regarded by your manager for bringing the issue to their attention. When you keep shared goals and the best interests of organization clearly in focus rather than indicting your colleague, you will be more likely to be perceived as part of the solution rather than someone who ratted out their colleague.

  During these conversations, refrain from using absolute language when referring to your colleague, such as “She always makes mistakes like these” or “He never takes responsibility for his actions.” Using absolute language tends to lock you into a position where your natural tendency will be to fall into an “us against them” mentality. You may be prompted to defend your position, which makes you, well, defensive. Additionally, in locking into a position, you will set yourself up for a potential conflict that may transcend the current business problem and begin to feel personal. Absolute language tends to focus on the individual rather than the work or the business problems. With the Fact AND model and other strategies we’ve discussed, we are taking care to keep the focus on the issue at hand rather than the person. Keeping absolutes out of the conversation will help you remain professional.

  As with situations where you caused the problem, when your colleague is at fault, focusing on and being part of the solution will fare better for you than dwelling on the pro
blem. Keep the solution or potential solutions in the forefront as you discuss the situation with your manager and any other parties. In many cases, your colleague will eventually be brought into the discussion. You will help keep your colleague’s defenses lower if you can keep the focus of the conversation on the solution. Again, there may be time later for a deeper dive into how the situation originated, but for now, keep the focus on the solution and the future.

  As solutions are identified and implemented, you might then bring a more systemic approach to the issue by looking to see if there is a set of contributing variables that enabled the situation to unfold as it did. Yolanda, from the beginning of the chapter, could propose a series of checks and balances be put in place so that the payroll clerk, regardless of whether it was Alex or someone else, would not be able to skim a few cents from the accounts.

  Your Leaders Messed Up

  Managers and leaders are human. From micromanaging to being unable to make a decision to moving forward with an ill-informed strategy, they show their humanity. When you are approaching your manager in a situation where they are at fault, it is important to keep that humanity in mind and to assume positive intent. Managers do not wake up and think to themselves, “How can I go into the office and impede the progress of my best employees today?” They just don’t. Remembering that they most likely had a positive intent when they did what they did (or didn’t do) will help you approach them tactfully and with humility.

  To hold the discussion, set up the meeting as you would to discuss any other issue. When the meeting begins, use the Fact AND model, starting by stating shared goals and the good work of your team or division. Then, respectfully and graciously share the problem and how it is affecting you (i.e., your performance, your ability to be on board and in agreement, the direction of the team). If you felt your manager was micromanaging you, for example, you might start with something like this: “Talia, thanks for making time to meet with me today. You know how important the current market research project is, both to the success of the new product and to me professionally. I’d like to reduce the number of check-in meetings you and I have in order to give me more time to work on the substance of the project. I know it is important for you to be informed on a high-profile project like this. Could we talk about a balance that will meet your needs and be a bit easier on my schedule?” Note that the word “micromanaging” was not used in the opening of this conversation. As you will recall from Chapter 5 when we discussed how to open a conversation without making the other person defensive, we emphasized that the specific words you select make a significant difference in how the other person reacts to what you say and whether or not they get defensive. By naming the specific behavior that the manager is doing (requiring frequent check-ins), we keep the focus on the behavior we wish to see changed. No one likes to be thought of as a micromanager, and so keeping that pejorative term out of the conversation serves both the conversation and the relationship.