It’s that most wonderful time of the year…

Santa's Performance Review -- the Naughty or Nice list.

Christmas is the one time of the year when adults can be kids, celebrating a joy in the simple pleasures as a catching snowflakes on one’s tongue, or rooting around in the tops of closets to find hidden unwrapped presents.  It’s also the one time of year when kids get to experience the adult world — the dreaded performance review.

Performance reviews for kids appear dreadfully easy — you are either naughty, or you are nice.  If you’re naughty, you get coal.  If you’re nice, you get presents.

The challenge is, of course, that very few people have a clear definition of naughty and nice.  Sure, the law was laid down once upon a time in the form of the Ten Commandments, but the naughty and nice benchmarks seems to have separated from those guidelines long ago.  I specifically recall, throughout elementary school, Charley and his clique of cronies breaking Commandments 3 – 5 on a daily basis and showing off the most awesome presents after the break, upon such time the rest of the class, including me, immediately proceeded to break Commandment 10.  The Golden Rule is the next most likely benchmark for Santa, but I can attest to having broken that several times each year, even a few times during the week of Christmas a few years when I was pushing the envelope the week before the Big Day.

Perhaps we should take this one step further.  Its getting more and more the norm for the managers to ask their employees to submit their performance review by a certain date for the manager to review, adjust, and move on to HR.  Why should we selfishly hog that tradition?  From now on, all letters to Santa should be accompanied with a Let’s make December 23rd the deadline for all kids to hand in their Naughty or Nice self-evaluations.

Not that it’ll change their performance review on  Christmas Day all that much, but it’ll at least be a fun read.

 

“P”rofessional Organizations and Your Development

A final note on Dr. Kaye’s keynote speech on the five “P’s” of Professional Development. Her process ties closely with a personal professional development technique of mine: the Professional Organization.

I’m a member ASTD-Orange County, a local chapter of an organization that supports workplace learning and performance professionals (i.e., trainers, instructional designers, et al). Our mission: Through exceptional learning and performance, we create a world that works better. I’ve been a part of this chapter for about eight years.

For the first two years, that membership was a line item on my resume. Little more. I attended a few meetings where I took dutiful notes, and did little else. Barely even networked. And this was fine, for a bit. The problem, however, is that this is not development.

It took a company reorganization to get me to take a training class. The Chapter facilitated a 9-session program called Total Trainer, so I took that. This course required participation, and in no time I was working with other people in the Chapter who were trying to learn more about the training and development field. I haphazardly applied what I had learned. That was development, kind of.

Yet from that course came a connection that catapulted my involvement with ASTD-Orange County from passive to active.

That was a little over five years ago. Since then, I’ve actively contributed to ASTD-Orange County.

This was development in spite of itself. I had joined because I was in a place where it made sense to join, without knowing why. I began taking the training class because I knew I needed to do my job better, and actually wanted to do it better.

As I did more with the chapter, becoming a part of the Board, filling multiple roles, I found insight into the perspective of others, I identified career possibilities, and began work on planning.

The best part of my involvement with this Professional Organization was that it continually enriched that part of my career that my job wasn’t. A few examples: ASTD-OC allowed me to experiment with eLearning techniques when my department was focused on Instructor-Led training. I worked to establish environments for ASTD-OC Chapter Members in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, connecting me with Social Media experts. How many organizations are letting you do that? I continually interfaced with peers who were doing things other than what I was doing — not necessarily better, or worse, but other. And in that, I was exposed to environments outside the corporate silo that defined my job.

The Five “P’s,” wrapped up into one professional organization. Find one in your community. Give it a try.

 

Finally, the Plan

For me, the fact that the plan is the last stage of a five-step process is a bit of a revelation. We’re always told to start with a plan for everything: losing weight, hosting a major event, earning more money.

As trainers, we’re often challenged to create a storyboard for our eLearning projects, a design document for our instructor-led classes, an outline for an article. Even so, the planning stage is the least frequently used — the purview of the most disciplined designers, many plunge headlong into the project, working with their assessment data and depending upon the natural flow of the project itself to dictate the flow of the material. Planning is tedious, and we often rationalize it away by saying: we don’t know what to plan until we get into the material in the first place.

Guilty as charged.

Yet observe the process we reviewed over the past few weeks as we approached a Development Plan: We asked questions about the type of work we enjoyed, the type of work we enjoyed doing, how others viewed us, and our possibilities for the future. With those answers firmly in our head, we’re able to move forward with our development plan.

 

The Fifth Development “P”

Imagine yourself walking into a supermarket that sells every skill, ability, and competency.  What one skill would you select that would grow you the most in your current job?

This is Dr. Beverly Kaye’s final question from which you can begin your plan.

A Plan exists of two parts.  First, knowing what you need to do. Next, knowing how to develop the skill to do it.

The past few weeks have covered knowing what you need to do.  By asking questions about Place, Person, Perspective, and Possibilities, one identifies what compels oneself to achieve, to accomplish.  From there,  you need to figure out how to propel yourself further.

The ways that this can be accomplished?

• Through observation
• By completing an assignment
• By taking a course
• With a mentor, or a coach
• By joining a peer group

The resource that you choose, of course, is integral to your plan.

The typical resource that people choose is, it seems, taking a course.  It’s important to recognize that this isn’t the only resource.  Frankly, taking a course to develop a skill is akin to throwing money at a problem.  It may produce results, just not necessarily the results that we want.  One of the most valuable courses that I took, a Human Performance Improvement certificate program offered through Chapman University in partnership with ASTD National, held its value through its assignments.  In addition to the considerable reading (which I did not complete in its entirety — I’ve no doubt my instructor recognized that straight off), we were given assignments that directly related to our work.  If your classes follow the same model, you’re likely to learn a lot.  If not, then I fear you’ll be challenged to apply whatever you learn in the very job you’re trying to develop yourself at.

Let’s take, for example, writing a proposal. How can one develop their ability to write proposals?

A key skill necessary for proposal-creation is writing, a business skill that many leaders feel is underdeveloped in today’s growing workforce. So perhaps one could find a business writing class, which will help one master the rules of grammar.  But does that  help the corporate leader seeking someone who can draft a proposal on the fly?  Even were the business writing class be directly focused on proposal writing, it’s doubtful.  The proposals in class might not necessarily apply to one’s work — how often have we been in a class fraught with generic exercises that are the equivalent of “if Joe S. takes a train leaving Butte, and Jill S. takes a train leaving Biloxi, when will they meet?”

So we need to find other resources.  We could observe our leaders write their own proposal.  We could then write a proposal of our own, one that isn’t to be viewed by corporate leadership, one that just gives us practice.  We can then start writing proposals for our job, using our leader as a sounding board, or coach, before submitting the proposal elsewhere.  We could work with other proposal-writing members of our team to find out what they do that works, or what they’ve been told doesn’t.

At least, that’s the plan.

 

Know Your Professional Options

So: about that last category:

What part of your current work could you see yourself doing more of if only you had the capacity to do it?

Pretty good question, no?

In a September 2009 HBR Case Study, an employee was just getting abused by his boss.  Boss would call him at the last minute to go over minutae in some report that was the employee’s responsibility.  He recognized non-employees for significant contributions to the team. Meanwhile, aVice President in the organization had noticed the employee’s hard work and frustration with his current boss, and offered him a job in his department, at the same pay grade.

The question was:  should the employee take the position?

I figured that the answer was an obvious “yes.”  The employee had a decent relationship with the Vice President, and had considered him a mentor, although even as a mentor, this VP didn’t have much time for the employee.  But there was a hitch in the case study — the employee would retain his pay grade.  This wasn’t a promotion, but a lateral position.  And for that reason alone, some experts indicated that the employee would find himself labelled were he to make that lateral move, and stuck at that pay grade.

There are six professional options, shares Dr. Beverly Kaye.

• Lateral
• Enrichment
• Vertical
• Exploratory
• Realignment
• Relocation

Dr. Kaye believes that the second in that list, Enrichment, will by the most important aspect of a job in the coming years.  Which is one of the reasons why the employee in the case study found himself considering employment elsewhere.  His current job was not enriching.  By the end of the case study, he wondered if the promised job would feel nicer, but be more of the same.

Read the case study: it’s a good one.  Put yourself in the employee’s shoes.  And ask:  What part of my current work could I see myself doing more of if only I had the capacity to do it?  Would I get it if I accept the VP’s job offer?

 

Possibilities

Now that we’ve asked a bunch of stuff about ourselves (Place, Person), and a few questions about how others view us (Perspective), Dr. Kaye challenges us to consider the Possibilities.

When doing this, categorize your possibilities into three sections:

Personal Goals:  Think about a person in your life that you should spend more time with.
Energy Goals: What is one thing you need to do to take better care of yourself?
Professional Goals:  If you could cast a spell, have a wish granted, etc., and could remove at least 20% of the work that you least liked, what would you do instead?

I believe that we’d do ourselves a favour if we asked that last question for all three categories.

Consider the first question.  A few people answer: “I’d spend more time with my parents. They gave so much to me, and I recognize that I still have so much to learn from them.”  That would probably require an investment of time on your part — time you probably profess not to have.
Consider the Energy Goals question.  We’re approaching the New Year, a time for resolving to work out.  Gyms are gearing up for the increase in membership, either from existing members who remember why they’d purchased that membership years ago (I admit to being part of that group), or from new people with new resolve to take better care of themselves.  Yet by March, member participation in the gyms declines.  Why?

That’s why the Professional Goals question is a powerful one.  I know what I’d like to get rid of — the administrivia associated with our learning management system.  Any trainer who’s had to work with one would side with me.

The question, however, is not about the administrivia.  It’s about what you would do were that administrivia to disappear.

 

Reputation — A Reality Play?

How would others label you? What might they write on your name tag?

Every now and then I “hear about” some unscripted TV that must be a satirical treatment of popular reality TV dating shows (fine: I’ve watched a few on a lazy weekend afternoon).  In many of these shows, the suitors approach the object of their pretend affection, say a few words, and are assigned a nickname.  ”New York,” because she’s from New York.  ”Tipsy,” because she was inebriated at the time.  We laugh at these guilty pleasures, these people so willing to play the fool for us on national TV.  Do we realize that this scenario is acted out daily?

Ask yourself:  How do people generally respond to me?  When I enter?  After a while?

Beverly Kaye shares the following equation in her discussion on Perspective:

Observation + Judgement + Label = Reputation

As you consider Perspective, consider this:

• What do people observe about me?
• What conclusions can they/do they come to as a result of that observation?
• Could those conclusions give me a label?

Here’s a common saying:  ”It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
That’s been changed around a bit to: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know that knows what you know.”

In reality, the saying should be: “It’s how who you know that knows what you know that counts.”

 

Days of Wine and Roses

Johnny Mercer — singer, songwriter — would have been 100 today.

This meant that there were a bunch of shows discussing this accomplished musician and lyricist. I was struck with the different perspectives that were shared from different shows.

In the afternoon, the NPR show “All Things Considered” provided an overview of Johnny Mercer’s music, and discussed how he struggled in his career to survive the growing popularity of rock and roll. As Elvis’ star rose, so Johnny Mercer’s fell. Yet Johnny regained his fame when Henry Mancini asked him to write a song for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Johnny Mercer did, and won an Oscar for it. He won an Oscar the next year for the song: “The Days of Wine and Roses.” His collaboration with Henry Mancini helped rise Johnny Mercer to the top again.

Turner Classic Movies aired four movies in which Johnny Mercer’s music was featured, including “Breakfast At Tiffany’s.” In between movies, a Mercer historian commented that things were still rough for Johnny. He was only getting one song out per year. And in some cases, only one or two lines of the song would be heard in the movie. For all the fame of being an Oscar-winning musician, Johnny Mercer still wasn’t where he wanted to be.

Two different perspectives. One great musician.

 

Friend Your Foe?

Ask yourself:  ”When was the last time I asked someone I trust about their perception of me?”  When have I talked to someone I trust about my plans? What I’m doing? Learning?

This came up in a presentation on Setting Goals:  Goals are to be written.  They are to be specific, and time-sensitive.  And in order for you to achieve that goal, you must share it with at least one friend, and at least one foe.

The presenter, one Michael Watts, asked us if we had one of those go-to friends, the kind you see in the movies, the person you’d call first if you got in trouble, if it were the rare occassion that that person hadn’t already been with you when you had gotten into trouble.  They’re rare, he shared, and they’re to be treasured.  Because they know you, in and out, and often are the most able to objectively identify your strengths and weaknesses, and can talk to you about them openly.

But then Michael suggested that we share that goal with at least one foe.

Why would we want to do that?  Because your foe’s perspective can highlight that One Grand Truth about you, one that might be worth exposing, one that, unexposed, could keep you from succeeding.

 

November 16, 2009

Still on my Dr. Beverly Kaye kick from the ASTD Leader’s Conference Keynote at the end of October.  She’d discussed the “5 P’s of Development,” and asked us to ask a few questions about ourselves for each of these Development Categories.  Because, truthfully, we have to look to ourselves for development, no?  Even the best teachers cannot teach one who is not ready to learn.The first two P’s were Place, and Person.

 

The third P is: Perspective.  Rather than discuss that everyone has a different perspective or talk about walking a mile in another’s shoes, Dr. Kaye asks us to ask ourselves this:
“What one bum rap was laid on you in the last eighteen months?”

THAT is a loaded question!  How often has the following phrase come out of our mouths:  ”Can you BELIEVE this happened to me?”

Havi Brooks calls this “having a shoe thrown at you.”  She believes that not addressing the reasons for others “throwing shoes” is something that can cause “stuckness.”  In other words, that you can enter into an inimical cycle with that person that produces no results. Projects stall.  You don’t move further.

Havi suggests that there are five ways one could react to the situation, the most base way being to internalize your anger and frustration at being stuck with the critique, the most enlightened way to not identify an intent behind the criticism, but to acknowledge the situation occurred and move on.  And right in the middle is to acknowledge the emotions that well up from the criticism, to remind oneself that the person giving the criticism has a perspective that causes them to criticize.

Once you’re at that point is where Dr. Beverly Kaye suggests that you consider that person’s perspective. Is there a Grand Truth behind that criticism? she asks.

When I first heard the “What one bum rap..” question, my immediate response was to think of a singular person critiquing me.  But here’s the thing behind a “bum rap.” It may be one person’s criticism, but it traveled, and it stuck.

Yes, somehow, somewhere, something has caused a person to see you in a certain light. Not an epic enemies sort of light, no “You killed my father, prepare to die!”  Rather, a light filtered by a value or a vision.  Perhaps a temperament.   That person may be a “green,” an “ESFP,” while you’re a “red,” an “INTJ.”

But one person’s perspective does not a bum rap make.  It’s that perspective reaching others, forming in the minds of your co-workers, your boss, and sticking.

Thus:  ”What one bum rap was laid on you in the last eighteen months?”   Within that question, and a few others we’ll consider this week, could lie the One Grand Truth that exposes an area of yourself worth developing.

 

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