Month: December 2017

New Year’s Resolution? Take the Hassle Out of Performance Reviews!

What Should You Do?

• Understand the purpose of reviews. They are to help your staff develop and grow. Even if you think they are just paperwork, your people take them seriously and so should you. 
• Realize that employees are not the only ones who take reviews seriously, so do judges and juries. Reviews will be the first thing that any attorney – your own or the opposition’s – will want to see to justify what you did.
• Make documentation easier by doing a mini “brain dump” at the end of every day. Just spend five minutes writing down in your manager’s file anything that occurred with regard to an employee matter.
• Learn how to know what to document. We had a manager in one of our classes who had been sued three times by employees. Of course it’s always good to learn from our mistakes so we asked him what he had learned. He said that he learned that it is not useful to ask “should I document this?” — because then the answer will frequently be no. Instead, he said that he had learned he needed to ask: “if this happens again, will I wish I had documented this? — because then the answer will usually be yes.”
• Make employees do the work for you.  After every “one-on-one” that you have with employees, ask them to email back to you what you said. Since most of us don’t listen well, you will be depressed and amazed at what comes back, but it gives you an opportunity to straighten out any misunderstandings. At the end of the year, you will have a beautiful documentation trail and your employees will have done all the work.

What Does #MeToo Mean For You as a Leader

With the plethora of complaints piling up against public men, what does the #MeToo movement mean for you as a leader? If you’ve somehow missed the national eruption over sexual harassment complaints, many of them stem from the hash tag #MeToo, that has encouraged women all over the country to step up and publicly acknowledge sexual harassment or assault that they received in the workplace – sometimes many years ago.

Generally, this hurricane requires you to understand two things:  1)  You will receive more complaints; and 2) some people may become paranoid about complaints.

While it may take some time to understand just how significant the rise in complaints may be, based on an informal survey of my clients, there’s no doubt that the tide is rising. With that increase, however, you need to understand that some people will become paranoid about false or inappropriate complaints. I’ve heard people express concern about flirting, for example, even though neither the law nor most organization’s policies get involved in such time-honored workplace frivolity, unless it rises to the level of severe or pervasive behavior.

“You will receive more complaints and some people 

may become paranoid about complaints.”

One time I was giving a workshop on sexual harassment for a group of cops and I asked the group how we could make sure that we don’t inadvertently offend someone. A captain in the back – who had spent the entire session with a scowl on his face and his arms crossed- responded that he knew how to avoid such problems, he just “didn’t talk to women.”

“You can’t do that”, I advised, “that’s discrimination.” “No it’s not”, he asserted, “I don’t talk to men either.”

What Should You Do?

• Step up your training for managers to make sure that they know how to receive complaints, without panicking or becoming defensive or angry – even if the complaint is about their behavior.
• Assure people that – according to the EEOC and my own practice – false claims are rare, less than 5%.  What’s common, of course, is misperceptions. People frequently view the same event through different lenses.
• Address paranoia and backlash upfront. Make sure that your staff understands that failing to hire, mentor, meet with one-on-one or travel with women is discrimination. Make sure that training covers both harassment and discrimination.

Can You Take a Joke? Rules for Humor in the Workplace

Especially in the current climate where new harassment claims erupt on a daily basis against titans of media, industry, and politics, people seem to be moving toward paranoia about what they can and cannot do at work.

Leaders are frequently frustrated by conflicts that keep erupting, even when they are sure they have been resolved. You spend hours working with groups who are negotiating some thorny issue and give a sigh of relief when they finally all declare that they “agree” to a solution.

What Should You Do?

What Do People Mean When They Say “I Agree”?

Leaders are frequently frustrated by conflicts that keep erupting, even when they are sure they have been resolved. You spend hours working with groups who are negotiating some thorny issue and give a sigh of relief when they finally all declare that they “agree” to a solution.

But what if their interpretation of what they mean by asserting “I agree” is different from what you think they mean? They may, for example, simply be agreeing to anything in order to just get out of the room or off a long phone call. Their statement of “I agree” could simply mean that they are sick of the discussion and will say anything to escape.

“…enthusiastic endorsement of the project may be essential, and you may have no idea whether you have that support or not.“

Likewise, saying “I agree” could mean that they enthusiastically endorse the proposal and will do anything to advance the cause, or it could mean that they don’t really like the proposal but won’t veto the result.

I once coached an executive, for example, who responded “okay” to most of my feedback. I danced along assuming that he admired my wisdom and suggestions, happy that my coaching was being appreciated. It took me some time to realize that to him, saying “okay” simply meant that he heard me, not that he was necessarily going to heed my advice.

Depending upon the issue, enthusiastic endorsement of the project may be essential, and you may have no idea whether you have that support or not.

What Should You Do?

I like to use a large version of this tool that we hang on the wall. The group then uses individual sticky notes to show where they fall in the discussion. Options range from enthusiastic endorsement to expressing a personal – rather than an organizational – objection to some plan, to outright veto. With this graphic representation, you can assess whether you have the support you need to proceed.

Some projects require a total buy-in of the group, for example, while with others, a simple majority vote is enough. Allowing participants to mark where they fall along that continuum allows more people to express what might be an unpopular opinion, even though they wouldn’t want to state their concerns out loud in front of the entire group.