- Sally Goodperson, a manager with a growing company,
is a young woman whose ability and potential are marred by one fatal flaw: she doesn't
know how to manage her time. According to the performance appraisal form filled out
annually by her boss, Sally is incapable of planning her work or sticking to schedules.
She is in serious jeopardy of missing a much sought-after promotion.
-
- Fair enough, most company executives would say. If Sally can't manage her
time and deliver on her agreed upon commitments, then that's life. Few executives would
stop to ask Sally just why she seems to have so much trouble.
-
- If they did bother to ask, they might find out that Sally's schedule
becomes scrambled day after day because her boss interrupts her half a dozen times with
requests for extraneous information; or that the boss borrows Sally's secretary just when
she needs her most, with a "you don't mind, do you?" -- which is tantamount to a
command; or that he summons Sally for consultation, then keeps her sitting in his office
while he answers telephone calls.
-
- Sally is a fictional character, but her dilemma is painfully familiar to
thousands of employees and managers. Like Sally, they have no safe, acceptable way of
telling their superiors: "You're making it impossible for me to do my job so long as
you keep interrupting me," or, "Please have your secretary hold your calls while
we're talking so I can get back to my own work."
-
- They know, or suspect, they would be courting disaster by offering such
suggestions. Much better to ignore the situation, and become part of the system -- or look
for another job.
-
- Regardless of the lip service paid in the nation's boardrooms to
communications, most organizations regard feedback, particularly negative feedback, as a
management prerogative, an exclusively downward process designed to identify the strengths
and weaknesses of subordinates. Any suggestion that the process might be reversed -- that
people on a junior or intermediate level might be asked to evaluate the performance of
their superiors -- would be interpreted as heresy, despite modern, team-oriented
management theories.
-
- Yet a handful of enlightened employers, notably 3M, London Life and the
Royal Bank, realize that one of the most important functions of management is leadership;
in the sense of opening up the lines of communication and encouraging accurate, timely
feedback. These and other companies have adopted a performance feedback approach that
emphasizes receiving information from many different sources. Managers are regularly
surveyed on their own perceptions of their leadership abilities and receive feedback from
their subordinates, their boss and their peers on the same leadership characteristics.
Disappointingly Bland
In one company, a
leadership questionnaire was developed so that subordinates
could rate their superior's performance on such items as
planning, time management, contribution to job satisfaction,
effort to train staff, and ability to give and receive feedback.
A typical question was, "Does this person provide his/her
subordinates with constructive criticism and feedback on their
performance?"
Any fears management
might have had that the project would provoke unpleasantness or
personal invective proved unfounded. If anything, survey results
during the early stages proved disappointingly bland and
complimentary.
As one manager said, "We
can't all be that wonderful." He further elaborated by adding,
"We thought we had a fairly open staff, that communications were
wide open. But we discovered that, when thinking about giving
feedback to someone a level above you, you're very careful about
what you say -- more careful than we wanted them to be."
The program was modified
to include self-ratings by the boss, peer ratings, and a rating
from the boss's boss. For the first time, managers were getting
direct feedback on their leadership and interpersonal skills
from all important sources, and they could compare those ratings
with their own perceptions.
As an example of the
feedback that emerged from the second questionnaire, one manager
rated himself very highly on his openness to risk-taking and
innovative approaches to problem solving. He was surprised to
learn that his subordinates thought quite differently, and his
peers and boss were even harder. The feedback provided him with
the opportunity to review his own behavior and plan ways to
improve.
Proceed with Caution
But, as in most human
organizations, the feedback program must be sensitively handled
to achieve the best results. Handled poorly, they could spell
disaster. The following are some guidelines:
Guarantee
the anonymity of the raters so employees, particularly
subordinates, are less fearful about the consequences of
providing both negative and positive feedback.
Avoid
linking the feedback too directly to the reward system (pay
increases, promotions, for example), unless and until the
organization is ready, willing and able to respond positively to
more open feedback.
Refrain from
a "canned" approach to feedback or an authoritarian "you will do
this because it's good for you" approach. Provide plenty of room
for volunteers to test the waters.
Managers who are not
interested in receiving feedback on their performance suffer
from a lack of curiosity that borders on apathy. Just as
marketing experts adapt their products to consumer opinion,
managers ought periodically to reassess their leadership style
and practices in the light of the reaction they generate among
their direct reports, their peers and especially their boss.
Are feedback programs
worth the time and effort invested in them? Emphatically yes,
according to those who have taken the plunge. The major
benefits, while not exactly tangible, are as follows:
Better, more
open communications between bosses, subordinates and peers.
More
effective management as the leadership behaviors of the
organization are articulated and people work to improve their
personal and interpersonal skills.
Improved work
environment which usually follows when employees and bosses
communicate more frequently about what they like and appreciate
about each other's behavior and what they'd like to see changed.
How To Get Started?
There are a number of
excellent publications on the subject of manager and leader
feedback. The Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro,
North Carolina, publishes an inexpensive review of 16 different
multi-rater feedback instruments. As well, there are a number of
organizations that provide this type of program for their
clients.
However you choose to
proceed, remember feedback programs tend to have the effect of
preventive medicine: rather than face the criticism of their
subordinates, peers and boss, managers find time to do a number
of things they should have been doing all along.
To quote the much
chagrined boss:
"We are now
spending more time training people on the job. Where employees
used to be just told what to do, our managers now take the time
to explain why it should be done and teach the employees how to
do it."
