Stepping stones: a metaphor for approaching daily life

My husband and I went tramping last weekend. It was the first time we had been in over a year. We used to go every other weekend, but wedding planning, working and thesis writing kind of got in the way for a while. So we started out with a 2 ½ hour tramp in the Waitakere ranges, west of Auckland. 2 ½ hours doesn’t seem very long but my legs were quite sore the next day, there was a lot of uphill and downhill. One of the tracks that we walked along ran down the side of a stepped waterfall called ‘fairy falls’. It certainly was enchanting. However, the track also zig zagged across the river about 5 times (or it just felt like 5 times).

Now one of the things that I don’t look forward to when tramping is river crossing. Firstly, I don’t like getting my feet wet, not when I could be tramping for another couple of hours – eww soggy socks; and secondly, my tramping shoes are really good at gripping in mud but hopeless at gripping slippery rocks so at some point I usually smack my ass on a rock (if I’m lucky – sometimes it’s in the water).  When I do get over the river it is such a sense of accomplishment. I go from ‘oh bugger, how am I going to do that’ to ‘yay, I did it, that wasn’t so hard’.

I’d been reflecting on this this week. As it was my last week of work (looking for the next opportunity), I’ve been pondering how on earth I managed to accomplish some of the things I did. A lot of the projects I completed I started out having no idea how I was going to accomplish them, there were plenty of ‘oh bugger’ moments. But I kept the end goal in mind; I wanted to get to the other side. I planned my route; which stones offered the best traction? And I adapted my plan if my foot slipped.

It’s a metaphor for the challenges we face in daily life really. Now, looking forward, I’m just taking it one stepping stone at a time.

Leadership diaries: an idea for leadership development

I had an awesome idea today. Well I think it’s an awesome idea.  I was discussing social learning with a colleague and then, as I was driving home, I was pondering how to put social learning into practice. An idea was born. “What is it?” You ask. Well I have given it a handy little title: Leadership Diaries. “Yeah, but what IS it?” You ask again. It’s a concept whereby leaders (or managers) keep a blog each week (or couple of weeks) on what they have learnt, their perceptions, or their ideas. These people are networked to each other’s blogs so they can comment and discuss ideas. This concept has two purposes. Firstly, to get leaders to reflect on their leadership experience. What has worked for them and what hasn’t? In True North by Bill George leadership is developed by continual reflection. Writing things down helps with reflection. Secondly, It shares knowledge with other leaders. Obviously there is a lot of learning from that.

It’s a derivative of an idea I came up with over a year ago for a manager help group. Kind of like alcoholics anonymous (and I use that comparison lightly) for managers - “Hi, my name is (insert name here), and I have a problem employee/don’t know what to do/would like some advice”. Now this idea came about from a situation where I found it very difficult to take my own advice. My advice usually involves things like empowering, coaching and all those other warm fuzzy things that are supposed to encourage performance. Except that I had already tried all of those things, and the only option I saw left was to strangle this person and dump the body (I have a very dry sense of humor so please don’t take me literally on this – you get the picture though). Now I’m quite sure there are more managers who feel this way every now and then and it’s very helpful to vent with other people who understand the frustration. It’s also useful to have someone who can put things in perspective and offer suggestions. I was lucky I had an awesome manager to help me with this – and I certainly learnt a lot!

I still think a manager help group is a great idea, but I think that ‘leadership diaries’ has a much more positive spin and is more focused on day-to-day learning rather than crisis learning. You’d also have quite a few problems with airing dirty laundry in a public space with a manager help group type blog. It would be very difficult to maintain confidentiality.  Therefore you would have to have clear parameters around what could or could not be included in the blog. I have not thought of those yet, more to ponder.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this. Would your managers and/or leaders use something like this? What kind of parameters would you put around it? And hey, if you’d like to use my idea then please do let me know how it goes.

Focus it foward

I’m currently reading a book called The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor. I’ll probably do a review of it when I’ve finished it, but one of the things I have picked up from it so far is that success is gained from looking at the opportunities in the future rather than dwelling on the past. I quite like this point because it resonates with how I believe performance reviews should be conducted: focus on the future rather than the past.

Of course you need to learn from mistakes, so a reflection on the past is not completely negated. But it depends on how this is approached. Many of the performance reviews I see, or are involved in, still focus on the past. In some ways this is because of how the objectives are structured. Objectives are usually shaped around what you are meant to achieve, and you’re rated on whether you have or have not achieved them – this is very much focused on the past.

Furthermore, the discussion is usually framed around whether or not you have achieved the objective that is written right there. In an attempt to be as objective as possible it is easy to loose sight of the fact that managing people is seldom objective. Achievements are more fluid then what were written down 3 months (if you’re lucky) to a year ago (more likely).

Not to mention the fact that pay rises are usually linked to what happened in the past and how you performed (see past tense here). Which seems contradictory really – you get paid more for your future work based on what you did in the past. But is past performance an indicator of future performance? See my blog on the sigmoid curve on performance.

So, is there another way to focus it forward? This morning I attended a webinar by Sonar6 on objectives and competency models. What I found interesting was that one of the proposed models for objective frameworks was based around ‘business as usual’ objectives, ‘top challenge’ and ‘growth’. I liked that. You acknowledge what you should have done, under business as usual and then the rest is very much focused on the future. Thank you Simon and Angela for getting me thinking!

Stagnates or stars?

As I’m currently job hunting I’m quite reflective about the challenge of getting a role that is a step up. A step up implies work that I have not done before, and is outside my proven capabilities. In a similar vein, I am also a volunteer on the HRINZ Auckland branch committee looking after the student liaison portfolio. I’m conscious of the volume of students coming out of the Universities with an interest in HR or L&D who have no, or little, experience in the field. It’s difficult to get that job when you don’t have the proven track record. I remember when I was starting out in my career (about 10 years ago now) and it was the old catch 22. I didn’t have the experience so I wasn’t offered the roles where I could get that experience.

I got there eventually, seizing opportunities as I went and proving that I was capable. However, the catch 22 repeats itself, albeit to a lesser degree, when looking for that next challenge. But it raises an interesting thought. Why should we hire people based on their experience? Why not hire people based on their potential? Yes, I know, experience is often an indicator of potential performance, but it’s not always.

For 3 years now I have been involved in the development of front-line and senior managers. Before that I worked closely with managers on HR processes. Some of the best managers (or leaders if you want to use that term) are those who tell me that they don’t know how to manage/lead people. They are usually engaged in some sort of learning and development activity to fill this gap. What makes them different is that they are SOOOO enthusiastic to learn, develop and apply what they have learnt with their team. They’re like happy little sponges. They’re also the ones that will tell me that when they don’t know how to do something (like a performance management process) they simply talk to their staff member about it. That seems to work really well. Is that authentic leadership or what?

The difference is that these people don’t claim to know anything and they want to learn everything. At the other end of the spectrum are those who tell me that they are a great manager and don’t really see the point in learning. They’re already awesome the way the see it. These are more likely the ones who really need the development because they are doing a passable or terrible job of leading and empowering their people. They’re closed off to that sort of feedback so there is not much chance that attitude is going to change.

So it comes back to the age-old recruitment question. Do you hire for experience or potential? If you’re hiring for experience you may get someone who can ‘do the job’ (I use that term loosely) but is unwilling or unable to change. If you’re hiring for potential then you’re getting someone who may not be able to do the job at the outset but could be a fantastic employee longer term. Which risk do you take? Stagnates or stars?

A perception of redundancies

Last year I attended a presentation on current research by Masters and PhD students organized by the academic branch of HRINZ (Human Resources Institute of New Zealand). One of the presentations related to research being conducted on the psychological torment HR professionals suffer as a result of managing redundancies (I don’t think that was the exact title but it was along those lines). Now I don’t remember the name of the person who was conducting the research otherwise I might dig it up and have a closer look but I do remember thinking that this research really made sense.

Redundancies are not something I think I could ever be involved in managing, at least I don’t think so anyway. I’ve never had to manage one, and I am thankful for that. However, I have seen them happen and been on the receiving end of one as well. Why would I not be comfortable managing a redundancy? It’s not because I have a problem with terminating people per se. I have no problems doing this with issues of misconduct or serious misconduct. However, for these issues, it has always been quite clear cut, and usually based on a well-designed and defined procedure. All the terminations I have dealt with of this nature are for very transparent reasons. But redundancies are more opaque and foggy than grey, and certainly not black and white. It is a much harder decision to make. There is a significant impact on the life of the person being made redundant; it affects their self-efficacy and their financial stability. Redundancies are different from terminating someone for misconduct or serious misconduct issues; their employment is terminated for issues that are not that person’s fault, theoretically anyway.

I asked a friend the other day, if they were encountered with a situation where they had a poor performer and an average performer (hypothetically speaking), and they had to get rid of someone from their team, who would they be more inclined to make redundant? The answer was, the poor performer. When I asked why, it was because they didn’t want to put that person through the torment of a performance management process. They’d rather give them a golden handshake and send them on to a, potentially, more suitable role.

This kind of makes sense but doesn’t necessarily give that person the feedback they need to improve or the opportunity to do so. At what point do you decide that a person is simply not suitable for a role? At what point do you decide that a redundancy is more beneficial than going through a performance management process? What is best for the person concerned and is that a decision that the business could or should be making? Is there anything wrong with a redundancy in lieu of performance management? There are so many ethical considerations around this issue that it is no wonder some HR professionals are tormented by it. Redundancies are supposed to follow a clear and transparent process, but do they really?