Archive for the ‘Hiring Staff and Appraising Performance’ Category

In these challenging economic times it can seem like the organisation has all the trump cards when it comes to hiring and recruiting: simply advertise a job, wait for a flood of applicants, interview and appoint.

While it might be tempting to think this way as a manager, the reality is that a recruitment decision is a two way decision. The organisation decides who it wants and the candidate decides if they want to work for the organisation.

So what are 5 mistakes to which you need to be alert when recruiting staff?

Mistake 1: Expecting Candidates To Tick Every Box

When candidates are making a decision about a job opportunity, particularly at a more senior level, they want to know that there is some personal growth and challenge in the role for them. Think about it: if someone comes into a job and can do 98% of it perfectly on day 1, how long are they going to stick around? Be willing to accept that in only very rare circumstances will you find a candidate who perfectly matches your specification.

Mistake 2: Not Selling The Organisation

You will quite happily ask candidates what they know about the organisation and why they want to work there. By the same token good candidates will want to do their own due diligence on the job, the people and the organisation. Expect them to ask you about the good points of working in the organisation and be ready to sell the benefits to them.

Mistake 3: Talking About Failings Of Others

Yes, it is good to be honest and not paint a picture of it all being perfect. At the same time you don’t want to give the impression that every employee is a problem employee. Everyone has areas of strength and areas in need of developing. As a manager you need to accept this.

Mistake 4: Not Having Clarity

In any job there are things that are so key to the job that if the candidate does not have them it is a show stopper. You need to have 100% clarity on any show stoppers in terms of candidate fit.

Mistake 5: Wasting People’s Time

Every single person who turns up for a job interview will more than likely have put in a huge amount of time and effort to prepare. If you are just inviting someone along to get your quota of applicants you are wasting their time and not giving a great impression of yourself or your organisation.

The Bottom Line: Recruiting staff is a major investment decision so treat it as such and avoid these common mistakes.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people to become highly effective managers. He invites you to sign up for his free e-course, Management Mastery, at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk.

If you are a manager or leader, an important part of your role will be to appraise performance.

At the same time, I have noticed that this is an area where managers and leaders often struggle.

So what can you do to get better at appraising performance?

1. Make sure that people have clear objectives at the start against which you can assess performance.
2. Set the meeting in context and make it clear what the meeting is and is not about.
3. Encourage the person being appraised to first give their views on how they have performed.
4. When providing your insights, highlight both positives and opportunities for improvement.
5. Give specific examples. These bring alive the feedback that you are providing.
6. Spend time talking about future aspirations.
7. Keep the focus on helping others to achieve their optimal performance.

The reality is that some simple adjustments can revolutionize your skills in appraising performance.

So what’s your best tip to getting better at appraising performance?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Employees are continually looking for feedback and managers and leaders often struggle to give good feedback.

What changes can you make?  Watch this short video to find out more.

What are your top tips in giving feedback? Why not leave a comment.

Research shows that ‘appreciation for a job well done’ consistently ranks highly as a motivator in employee surveys. Yet research also shows that most people don’t feel they get enough praise. So what’s going on? Putting aside the fact that it’s likely that some of our survey participants feel they should be praised for turning up every morning, my view is that managers are sometimes reluctant to give praise because they’ve had experiences of being praised themselves in ways that, frankly, haven’t motivated them at all.  And, of course, they’re not over keen on having the same effect on their staff. It’s actually quite easy to deliver praise badly – praise that is seen as patronising or manipulative by the recipient. But done well, its dynamite. Here are five ways to do it well          

1. Prepare the praise

It’s interesting that many of the managers I know will spend literally hours preparing to give criticism, but only a matter of minutes (if at all) preparing to give praise. The result? A passing comment (literally) on the lines of ‘nice job Doug, keep it up’ Say what? Which job? The whole job? Keep what up? Not only is this type of praise confusing but, by and large, it’s not wildly motivating. Top tip – spend as much time preparing to give praise as you would to give criticism      

2. Be Specific

Describe exactly what you are praising and why. Try the following method:

• When you….
• What happened was…
• And the result is….

E.g. When I showed the client the research you had done on their business she said she was really impressed by the insights you had provided. The result is she wants us to make a proposal for a further piece of business. That’s a really good outcome for us so thank you and well done

3. Show genuine interest

Ask questions to better understand what the staff member did, for example, what preparation they did for a successful presentation, how they managed to design such effective visual aids. Describe how you feel about what they’ve done e.g. pleased, impressed, excited (the hug and kiss might be slightly over doing it)

4. Let the praise stand alone

Don’t be tempted to mix the praise with criticism e.g. That was a great presentation. If only your written work was as good. Deal with the written work issue at a different time –unless, of course, you’re a fan of the ‘tall poppy syndrome’.         

5. Do it quickly and time it well

Give your praise as soon after the event as possible – it has far more impact. Be careful not to give the praise at a time when it will appear conditional or a ‘softening up’ process e.g. just before you delegate a task or ask for the person to work late

Public or Private?

There’s an old saying ‘praise in public, criticise in private’. Though I wholeheartedly agree with the latter I’m not totally convinced by the former. Of course the principle is sound. We want other staff to hear the praise and understand what we are praising because we hope that they will want to emulate those behaviours or achievements. But not everyone is comfortable being singled out in this way and some people find accepting praise in front of their colleagues embarrassing. My advice would be to deliver the praise in private. You can then ask the staff member if they are happy for you to share the praise with their colleagues – say in the next team meeting – and take it from there

 And a few final tips

If the performance you are praising is exceptional, you will probably want to bring this to the attention of your boss and possibly higher. If you have a reward system which is credible you may want to utilise this. In any event, it’s a good idea to follow up your conversation with the staff member in writing (a note will do) and to copy that note to your performance files

Joan Henshaw is the author and presenter of the video management training series ‘The 10 Minute Management Toolkit’ – the flexible, cost effective and time effective way to help managers, team leaders and supervisors learn how to motivate their staff to high performance. You can watch free videos at http://www.10mmt.com/watch-videos/

1. Make it specific rather than general and vague.
2. Focus on giving balanced feedback which highlights both the positives and opportunities for improvement.
3. Don’t make it personal.
4. Make it useable by giving some specific things the person can do to improve.

I wonder what else you would add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

It is often said that people are an organisation’s greatest asset and in many organisations this is certainly true.  One thing that is certain is that recruiting someone is a major investment decision.  If you are a manager, are you viewing it this way?  Think about it, imagine you hire someone on a modest salary of £20,000 and the average time in post is 3 years.   You are in effect making a £60,000 investment decision.  Given the scale of the investment, how can you start making great recruitment decisions?

Tip 1: Know what you have 

Chances are you already have people in post.  What skills, experience, knowledge and attributes do they have?  Truth is few organisations take the time to even consider this.  Instead they jump straight into what they need.  Take the time to review what you currently have as the first step of the process.

Tip 2: Know what you need

In determining what you need, think about what you already have.  You also need to consider what the organisation or team is going to need over the coming years.  You should also be thinking about the overall business strategy and think about recruiting people who will contribute to achieving the strategy.

Tip 3: Provide good candidate briefings

Too often organisations dust down an old job description and send candidate’s one sheet of A4 with company information.  While this is better than nothing ask yourself what would you want to know if you were a potential applicant for the job?

Tip 4: Plan the selection process

Interviews are still by far the most common way of selecting people.  However, it might be worth adding extra activities especially if you are looking for particular skills.  This might be for example a presentation, writing a report, creating a spreadsheet or even a group role play.  Consider the role and the things that the successful candidate will need and use this to inform the best selection process.

Tip 5: If in doubt don’t recruit

This is what I would say is the golden rule of recruitment.  If your intuition is telling you that for some reason a candidate is just not right, then don’t recruit.  It is better to take a little longer to find the right person than appoint someone who only stays a few months.

Bottom Line – Recruiting a member of staff is a major recruitment decision. So what changes do you need to make to achieve more success as a manager when it comes to recruiting?

As a manager or leader you will no doubt have responsibility for undertaking staff appraisals.  If you have been appraised in the past by your manager it can appear easy and it should be.  So how can you make appraisals effective and powerful sources of staff motivation?

Planning

Planning is the key to effective appraisal.  Make sure that:

1. You schedule appraisal meetings at least two weeks before the appraisal date

2. You book a room for the appraisal

3. All of the pre-appraisal documentation goes out to the employee at least two weeks before the appraisal with clear instructions on how to complete it.  Within this documentation include a draft agenda

4. You set time in your diary to carry out the pre-meeting work

5. You block out sufficient time for the appraisal in your diary.  Ideally, I suggest that you block out a minimum of 2 hours for the meeting and have a gap of at least 30 minutes before the start time and your previous meeting

6. Re-familiarise with any company guidelines and training materials that might exist

Appraisal Meeting

The key to an effective appraisal meeting is to put the appraisee at ease.  One of the easiest ways of doing this is to spend a few minutes at the start chatting more generally about how things are going in life.  As the appraiser is important that:

1. You set the scene including being clear what the meeting is about and what it is not about

2. At least 70% of the talking should be done by the appraisee not you

3. You give the appraisee the opportunity to give their own self assessment of their performance before you

4. You don’t interrupt them even if you don’t agree with something they are saying

5. When you are giving your feedback, you are as specific as possible and ideally include examples to illustrate.  For example, I notice that you are always really well prepared with all the key information for your meetings with the divisional managers

6. You ensure that the appraisee is fully committed to and in agreement with objectives for the next period

7. You spend time looking at the development needs and career plans

8. Make sure the appraissee is clear on the next steps and timescales
After The Appraisal Meeting

1. Produce a meeting note or completed summary

2. Provide two copies of the meeting note or completed summary and ask the appraisee to sign and return one copy to you if they are in agreement that it accurately reflects what was discussed and agreed

3. Make yourself available to discuss concerns that the appraisee might have about the meeting note.  It could be that you have misinterpreted something or incorrectly recorded it

4. Set up a time to review progress on objectives

At the end of the day, a well planned and run appraisal meeting can have a powerful motivational impact on your staff, so don’t miss out on this opportunity.

One of the areas where managers and leaders are criticised is for not giving employees regular and useful feedback.  There might be a whole host of reasons why feedback does not happen on a regular basis, including:

• The manager or leader is focused too much on task

• The manager or leader has never had much feedback themselves so does not recognise the value

• The manager or leader quite simply does not set aside enough time for managing

Given the value of feedback, what are the top tips for giving feedback?

Tip 1: Do it as a matter of routine

One of the easiest ways of ensuring that you give effective feedback is to make it something you do routinely.  Build it into your schedule and make a point of looking out for things on which to provide feedback.

Tip 2:  Be specific

Whenever you give feedback, aim to be as specific as possible with your feedback.  Often, people say things like something was good.  While this might be nice to hear it is not very useful.  On the other hand if you can point to the specific action or behaviour that was good, the recipient of the feedback can use this strength in the future.

Tip 3:  Know the preferences of the feedback recipient

People in the team have different preferences and part of your job as a manager is to know them and respond to them appropriately.  For example, some will appreciate an e-mail; others will appreciate being praised verbally in front of the whole team, while others will want to get praise one to one.

Tip 4: Be yourself

It is important to be yourself rather than putting on an act.  People will see through the latter and will value the feedback less.

Tip 5: Deal with all aspects of feedback

The chances are that you will be providing positive feedback to most people, most of the time.  There will on the other hand situations where you will have to deal with feedback that is negative.  It is important that you are as ready and willing to deal with the difficult stuff as you are the good stuff.

Bottom Line- Giving feedback can be a huge source of motivation and personal development for team members.  So what do you need to be doing differently to give more effective feedback?

As a manager or leader, part of your role is to give feedback to your team.  Feedback is incredibly important to individuals and teams.  They want to know what they are doing well and where they need to develop.  Sadly, managers and leaders are often poor at giving feedback or worse still, don’t give it at all.  So what are my 10 top tips for giving feedback?

Tip 1: Catch people doing things right

It is so easy to fall into the trap of only giving feedback when things have gone wrong.  In reality people get more right than they do wrong in the work place.  Make a point of noticing when people do things right like hitting sales targets, dealing with an angry customer or hitting deadlines.

Tip 2: Look for the signals that the employee wants feedback

People are sometimes a little hesitant to ask directly for feedback.  They may ask in a much more subtle way by asking:

• How they are doing in the job

• Whether they are living up to expectations

Be alert to these signals.

Tip 3:  Feedback as early as possible

You don’t have to wait for an appraisal or meeting to feedback.  Whether the feedback is positive or negative, give it at the earliest opportunity.

Tip 4: Focus on behaviours

It is important to focus on the behaviours that are helping or getting in the way of achievement when giving feedback.  For example:

• I notice you were behaving aggressively in your dealing with x

• I saw you take decisive action when it was clear we might slip on the timetable

In the first scenario you are referring to aggression as the behaviour in your feedback.  In the second scenario the behaviour you are drawing attention to is decisiveness.

Tip 5: Avoid feedback that cannot be acted upon

The purpose of giving the feedback is to facilitate action.  Make sure is can be acted upon.  For example, there is no point is telling someone who has a stammer or stutter to get their message across quicker.

Tip 6: Check the feedback is understood

The quickest and often most effective way of doing this is to ask the other person to tell you to play back to them what they understand they heard.  This lets you deal with ambiguity there and then.

Tip 7: Give the opportunity to the other party to discuss how the feedback might be improved

If you ask people how you could improve the way you give feedback and allow them to respond authentically, truthfully and openly, you will learn and improve.

Tip 8: Use non threatening language

When giving negative feedback, choose your words carefully.  While you have to make clear the consequences if improvement is not achieved you don’t need to do it in a threatening way.

Tip 9:  Be a role model

One of the most effective ways of demonstrating that you are open to feedback is to actively seek it.  Many organisations have formal 360 degree feedback processes.  One organisation I worked for did not have a formal 360 degree process so I simply sent out an e-mail to a mixture of subordinates, peers and superiors asking them:

• What I did well

• What I did not do so well

• Where I needed to develop

If you are worried that people will be reluctant to respond, ask them to send their responses to your boss and ask your boss to feedback key themes anonymously.

Tip 10: Set up a date for follow up

The final thing to do after giving feedback is to set up a follow up appointment.  This lets the other party know that you are committed to supporting them and to making the necessary change.

Giving feedback will always be a challenge but you can greatly enhance your performance by following these simple but effective tips.