In my experience, performance reviews have fallen into something that it’s more of a tick-box exercise for the organisation and more often than not, they are too corporate-oriented. Even the phrase “performance review”  has for me, and I’m sure for other people, a negative connotation, which can create a cultural hangover within organisations and teams around the use of them. 

Is there a better way for performance reviews?

That said, I think there is a better way to carry out performance reviews and as Simon Sinek would say, it starts with WHY. Why do we do performance reviews and what are we trying to achieve? 

For me, performance reviews should be aligned with Individual Development Plans within organisations. They should be colleague-oriented. 

A great example would be sports where the performance reviews focus on individual development and the daily, weekly, and monthly, “process” of getting better, rather than the outcome of competition (winning/losing a game) and there is a lot that corporate organisations could learn from it. 

How can we make performance reviews more effective?

Start with company culture

Many of the challenges of performance reviews could be solved with a positive company culture. A culture that puts people at the centre of the organisation. 

Do we really understand what the person on the receiving end of the performance review wants or needs out of it? Do we know what the best way would be for them to do it? Even more important, are we falling into the trap of creating a process that only serves certain people? 

As a senior leader, I have experienced first-hand how ineffective processes are when they aren’t designed with you in mind. So, for me, it’s critical to reinvent performance reviews in a more inclusive and diverse way. Create processes with diversity in mind and for that, you need to include everyone in the creation process. 

Keep your company values in mind

When we talk about culture, we can’t forget about company values. What are the values that we want to live by and how are we living them day in and day out? 

I’ve seen many performance reviews where values were nowhere to be found. Keeping your company values in mind would ensure that the demonstration of these values is assessed in performance reviews, considering we’re looking at them as part of IDPs. 

Making them the norm, not the exception

Assuming that we can cover a person’s performance for the last 12 months in an hour session is unrealistic and it creates more problems than it solves. 

However, they can be a time for reflection and celebration (what has gone well, where can we keep growing).

The fundamental part in my opinion is to make performance reviews an ongoing organic process across the year. Create an environment where people feel safe to speak up, receive and give feedback and have challenging conversations more often, instead of holding up until the end of the year, where more often than not, it’s already too late. 

This is also linked to values, if you see someone whose behaviours don’t align with the company values, waiting till the end of the year is not doing that person or the organisation any favours. Creating an environment where you can give feedback on these things when they happen, allows the person to reflect and think back and hopefully, act differently in the future. 

Develop leadership skills

There are probably only a small number of people who were born great leaders. But this doesn’t mean we cannot learn to become one. Providing training that helps people develop their leadership skills is a crucial aspect of more effective performance reviews. 

Using a coaching leadership style for example can be a great way to make the most of performance reviews. Knowing what the right questions to ask are, being more empathetic, and improving your listening skills, are just some of the few things that great leaders should continuously work on. 

Use a holistic approach

Gathering authentic and objective feedback is always a challenge for executives and larger organisations. However, as leaders, we should always strive for the most real overview possible. 

To gain this understanding, I think it’s necessary to make performance reviews a 360 process where not only managers get to review their teams, but the teams get to review their managers too. 

Fortunately, there are many possibilities to do this, I have seen few options in the past that seem to work well. 

• The goldfish ball activity: where the whole team takes turns to sit in a chair in the centre of a circle and receive feedback (both positive and constructive) from every person in the team. 
• Gathering feedback from different avenues: as part of someone’s review, that person is tasked with gathering 5-10 feedbacks or reviews from different people they work with. This can even include clients or people in different teams that they have worked closely with. 

Using methods like these, allows leaders to gain a more realistic view of someone’s performance, and helps to avoid someone’s biases or opinions of the person being reviewed.

Create accountability for everyone

Performance reviews have a focus on accountability for the employee, but what about the organisation? 

Going back to my previous point about making them part of the individual development plan, we could use these reviews as an opportunity for every member of the team to communicate what they need from the organisation to continue their growth. 

For example, let’s say someone needs to improve their sales skills, how can the organisation contribute to it? Is it more training, or is it more help or support from a manager or a colleague? Whatever that is, the review process should be a two-way conversation where both the employee and the organisation are held accountable for the employee growth and therefore, the outcomes. 

Take action

I previously mentioned that performance reviews have been in my experience a tick-box exercise, and following up from the accountability point above, I think action is a must if we want to make performance reviews more effective within our organisations. 

Continuing with the previous example, what is the organisation doing after hearing what the employee needs? Taking action proves that you are a people-centred organisation and will impact your employees’ engagement and satisfaction, with in turn, will help retention. 

On the contrary, not taking action, will communicate to everyone in your organisation that what they say doesn’t matter, and disempower them to speak up in the future. And this is a really dangerous place to be. 

Be agile and adapt

Creating new processes is not easy, which is why being able to adapt is crucial to success. I believe there is a better way but I’m also aware of the challenges when creating something new. 

So, when thinking about how to change and make performance reviews more effective, we need to plan for reviewing the process and making changes until we get it right. And even then, times changes and we need to continuously adapt to new realities, so making sure we have an internal review process of the process is an important element towards success. 

File for divorce

It’s not uncommon to link performance reviews to promotions and pay rises, which first, re-directs the objective of the process and secondly, it creates a great deal of stress both for the team members and the leaders. 

But we can divorce the two. Having conversations about promotions and pay rises is essential, but we can find a more appropriate time for them. This will allow us to keep our reviews focused on individual development and growth. 

Be aware of feelings

Any situation or experience will generate an emotional response and it will be different for each of us. While it is impossible to prevent these emotional reactions, we can make sure we do our best to ensure they are positive ones. 

All my points above will hopefully make people see their performance reviews as something that is good for them, a way to grow and learn. In addition, another thing to consider is thinking beforehand about how are people feeling after the review. You want them to feel enthusiastic and engaged instead of drained and disengaged.

Download our guide to prepare for challenging conversations here. 

There is no one-size-fits-all to do this, but starting with the end in mind (what is it we want to achieve? How do we want people to feel?) is a good starting point. 

The Optimist View…

I think optimising performance reviews is possible, there is a better way, and there are many companies already trying to do better. For me, the fundamental part is to see a cultural shift in organisations where we put people at the centre and reinvent the wheel to create working environments that are inclusive of the real diversity of the world. 

This is a passion for me and one of the reasons I am passionate about my job at Optimist Performance. Our leadership programmes work with teams to develop their leadership skills to help them thrive in their organisations. Get in touch with us to learn more. 

The post 10 Ways to optimise performance reviews – By Charlotte Wathan appeared first on Optimist Performance.

Having formal organisational structures in place helps outline how activities are directed in accordance with defined roles and responsibilities. These structures often determine how information flows between management levels and across different departments.

Organisational structures vary depending on factors such as the company’s stage of development, geography and the verticals they work across. They can range from hierarchical pyramids to virtually horizontal ones. Businesses can be organised across countries, sectors or divisions. They can be matrix-based with team members working across different projects or a networked structure which juggles subcontractors, freelancers and different locations.

Organisational structures according to Frederic Laloux

As well as expressing organisations in terms of their shape, Frederic Laloux takes a colourful look at how groups are structured in his book  “Reinventing Organizations”.

Within the book, he uses colours to illustrate how organisations operate across different kinds of settings, from the Mafia to fast-moving consumer goods brands. Laloux says each of these structures is suited to the context within which it operates, with no one structure being better than the other. And there are advantages and disadvantages to each of the colours:

Red – structured around a strong leader (usually an alpha male) with subordinates jockeying for power. A red structure can be seen in wolf packs, street gangs and the Mafia.

Amber – organisations have both a pyramid structure and a clear chain of command with job titles defining people’s place within the hierarchy. Decisions are made by the upper levels with the lower levels following orders. Armies, governmental departments and the Catholic church are all amber organisations.

Orange  – these still incorporate a pyramid structure but incorporate a greater degree of freedom which helps the organisation pursue greater innovation. Orange is the dominating organisational structure for market-leading brands including BMW, Nike and Coca-Cola. Despite its brightness, orange has a darker side  – corporate greed, short-termism and reckless exploitation of planetary resources are side effects which are fast becoming difficult to ignore.

Green – while green organisations still operate with a pyramid and define staff functions, there is more of a focus on empowering front-line employees. The pyramid becomes inverted with managers at the top and middle encouraged to share power and control to become servant leaders. A green structure is used by ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s

Teal – these organisations are complex with distributed authority and adaptive systems. Teams are self-managing or are organised as decentralised networks. The static pyramid is replaced by a fluid hierarchy with power flowing towards those with the most expertise, passion or interest. Outdoor clothing company Patagonia is an example of a teal organisation.

The top five common roadblocks to performance

While there are differences in terms of the shape – or colour – of these organisations, there are also some commonalities. To achieve the best performance, your organisational structure needs to provide clear and open channels of communication, as well as opportunities for staff across different departments to collaborate to solve business issues.

Similarly, information needs to flow freely between layers, enabling managers to make informed decisions which are beneficial for the entire business.

Removing and redressing the barriers which impede information flow and communication within an organisation are therefore vital for its performance. The top five most common roadblocks to performance that Optimist Performance has identified are:

1. Communication issues (both internal and external) which include ‘silo working’ where a company’s structure impedes the sharing of information between departments 
2. Company culture, including a lack of clarity about the organisation’s mission, values and purposes – all essential to creating a positive culture
3. Issues surrounding change within companies (e.g. growth and mergers, restructure)
4. Collaboration (between management layers, departments and team members)
5. Internal business processes

Just as every company has an organisational structure which works best for them, it can also have its own complex and unique barriers which can impede communication and information sharing. We often see some of these top five roadblocks in companies which are experiencing and adapting to rapid or significant growth. This can be either in terms of onboarding a large intake of new hires or where companies merge with other companies with different cultures or ways of working.

The Optimist View…

Creating change as a driver for performance improvement requires both management and staff buy-in. It’s crucial to make sure that everyone is committed and involved in building structures and processes which will help embed longer-term plans for longer-term success. 

At Optimist Performance, we create bespoke programmes designed to tackle each of the key roadblocks, prioritising the most pressing issue or issues that each individual business needs to solve. We work collaboratively to help a company establish new processes and ways of working to build positive behavioural change in the longer term, factoring in how a company will continue to hold itself accountable. 

If you want to know more about how we can help you and your team, get in touch with us today. 

The post Optimising your organisational structure – by Optimist Performance appeared first on Optimist Performance.

But while companies use team building to bring people together and help build productive relationships, there seems to be one huge catch… A YouGov poll released earlier this year found that businesses’ ambitions to build more cohesive teams don’t always resonate with their staff. 

In the survey, they found that people find the activities embarrassing or cringeworthy, with many finding the prospect of it dreading, and only 44 per cent of people feeling that they and their team could work together more effectively as a result of the exercise.

This brings us to the question of why companies are still doing team-building exercises. Whilst it’s fair to question and important to scrutinise all business activity, it’s definitely not the time to push team-building to the side. 

Studies show that relationships are hugely beneficial for mental health; 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as “very important”. In addition, teams and groups tend to innovate faster and find better solutions to problems and working in a team positively affects job satisfaction. 

Additionally, stats data also tell us that team building improves communication and productivity and it helps to create a feeling of belonging between team members.

We have learned from experience how beneficial it is to get the team together outside of their regular activities. However, the activity itself is not the focus of team-building exercises. The exercise should be used as a tool to examine both team and individual behaviours.

How to create a successful team-building activity?

Nobody wants to invest time and money in something that won’t help their team and can possibly make them feel uncomfortable. So, how can we ensure that our resources are well used, that the team has a great time, and most importantly, that it will benefit the team in the long run?

To help you build the experience you want for your team, we’ve gathered some tips that we use with every one of our clients:

1. It’s not the exercise; it’s the purpose behind it that matters

A team-building activity is not really about the exercise itself; the relevant part is what you are trying to accomplish with it. 

Before you start planning any activity, take some time to reflect on what it is that you want to achieve. These are some of the questions we always ask ourselves and our clients:

• What are the main challenges you and your team are facing? 
• What would great look like? 
• What do you need/want to take out from the experience?

Asking the right questions will give you the foundation to create a well-thought-out programme for your team-building activities. Without this programme or plan, it will be challenging to take out anything from the activity more than a fun time which for some people won’t even feel fun at all. 

2. Focus! You can’t tackle everything at once

Trying to get the most out of a team-building day, activity, or programme makes sense. Unfortunately, many companies make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew. 

To really maximise the benefits of any activity or programme, you need to start with the foundation. Then you can move on to other challenges along the way. 

Furthermore, long-lasting change takes time. If you really want to make a real impact on your team and business, you need to dig deep and give people enough space and time to reflect, react, test and adapt. 

3. You need to know your audience

Not every exercise works for everyone; before you ask people to jump off a cliff, hold their hands together or build anything, you need to think about who you are working with. 

One of the main questions we ask every client is what their employees are like. The more you know about the group, the easier it will be to create an activity that works for them. 

In addition, you need to make it relevant to them. Every team and company is different, so you need to make sure that whatever you do is truly aligned with them and their challenges. This will also keep people engaged in the activity. 

4. The relevant part is found after the exercise

Even if you create the most amazing activity, you won’t create change unless you reflect on it. This is why for us, the most important part of any team-building activity is the reflection time before and after the exercise. 

Before you ask people to do something they may not want to do, you need to clarify why they are doing it. 

In the same way, after the exercise, you need time to reflect on how people acted during the exercise, how these behaviours impact the individual and the team, and what you can do better in the future. 

As an illustration, we’d like to share some comments we received from one of our away days:

Fantastic stuff! The exercises are pretty simple in nature and even though we solved all of them without a hitch, we still failed over and over again. It’s all about perspective, and this session really highlighted this beautifully.

5. React & Adapt! You need to be able to adapt and change quickly

Sometimes, you can prepare a great programme just to find out after the first session that it didn’t resonate with your audience. But don’t worry, that’s fine, as long as you can reflect on what happened and change the route. 

This is why it is crucial to ask for people’s reflections on the day. Whether you are organising the activity for your team or outsourcing the task, no one can read minds or be right all the time. We all make mistakes, but most people are willing to give a second chance if they feel like they have been heard and taken into consideration. 

6. Create a safe space

Taking people out of their comfort zones is never easy, and working with a team where everyone is different makes it even harder. This is why to create a successful team-building activity; you first need to create a safe space for the team. 

Communicate to people why they are there, what they can and can’t do, and most of all, instil confidence in everyone that this is for their own benefit. 

We know how difficult it is to make a group of people feel comfortable; this is why we love working with teams in the long term. This enables us to build trust among the group and allows them to open up and be vulnerable, which is crucial to real change.

Another part of making people feel safe and comfortable during a team-building activity is to ensure they have the time for it. We all are extremely busy, so taking a half or full day to do anything that is not making your to-do list smaller may seem like a waste of time.  Therefore, be mindful of how much time people have and avoid giving them more than they can handle. Otherwise, they’ll wish they could spend the entire time at their desks working on deadlines.

7. Measure your impact & ask for accountability

We mentioned above that you need information to adapt, but you also need the information to measure your impact. What’s the point of doing anything if you don’t know if it is working? 

Additionally, you need to prepare for accountability. What are the takeaways, and what are people committing to? Two or three hours a month won’t change anyone’s life; the real impact comes from having actionable tools to put in place in their everyday lives. Also, because we all know how much of a challenge is to create or break a habit, you need to have a plan for keeping people accountable. 

The Optimist view…

The above may seem a bit daunting. However, it’s the only way you can benefit from team-building activities instead of being one more of the people who end up dreading a day out with their team. 

At Optimist Performance, we specialise in creating behavioural change programmes for teams and companies. So, if you are wondering what to do for your next team-building event, get in touch and learn more about how we can help make your team-building day a success. 

The post How to make your team-building event a success – By Optimist Performance appeared first on Optimist Performance.