This Feedback Could Change Your Life!

My Love of Feedback

I published a piece on my love of feedback several months ago and I am back to introduce another method of delivering feedback that works exponentially well.

With all the talk about eliminating performance management processes, it’s imperative to have something else, a process, to provide feedback in place. This is so employees know how they are doing, to repeat productive behaviors or eliminate counter-productive behavior.

Imagine for a Moment

Imagine for a moment that you recently gave some feedback to a team member. You told her that her meeting agendas looked great, but she needed to significantly improve her presentation and meeting management skills.

It’s time to follow up a few weeks later to find out why she hasn’t made the changes needed to be more effective in the areas mentioned. In your follow-up, you discover that she didn’t understand what she could do to improve and that your feedback generated more questions than the benevolent help to intended. She was left thinking “What’s good about my agendas that I can leverage again?” and “What’s wrong with my presentation skills?” and “How did I mismanage the meeting?”

Developed by The Center for Creative Leadership, the Situation – Behavior – Impact (SBI) Feedback tool outlines a simple structure that you can use to deliver more effective feedback. It focuses your comments on specific situations and behaviors, and then outlines the impact that these behaviors have on others.

[Effective] Feedback is a focused dialogue between a manager and an employee, a method of sharing information and perspectives about performance. The goal of ongoing feedback is to identify where performance is effective and where performance needs improvement.

Effective feedback helps the receiver understand exactly what he or she did and what impact it had on you and others. When the information is specific, yet without interpretation, judgement, or evaluation, there is a better chance that the person hearing the feedback will be motivated to begin, continue, or stop behaviors that affect performance.

Situation – Behavior – Impact

The Situation – Behavior – Impact technique of giving feedback is simple and contains three elements:

SITUATION: Anchors feedback in time, place, and circumstances and helps receiver remember and/or understand the context.

BEHAVIOR: Observable actions that can be recorded (audio or video) and allows feedback receiver to know exactly what he or she did that had impact.

IMPACT: Feelings and thoughts the feedback giver had, and how the feedback giver or others behaved as a result of the feedback receiver’s behavior.

In an organizational and work context, the impact of the behavior can include work outcomes, client satisfaction, work team, and/or the larger organization and business. It can also include the impact on the individual who demonstrated the behavior; in essence, the consequences or result of their behavior on their reputation, perceived professionalism, capability, etc.

Most often, a description of the impact will start with, “I felt …” or, “I was” or, “It appeared to me others were … “. If you find yourself saying, “you were … “, you’re probably on the wrong track. An impact statement is not an interpretation of why the individual showed that behavior, and it is especially important not to label the behavior in a psychological way or to make a judgment about the person.

SO, before you jump on the bandwagon and eliminate your performance management process, contact us to help you and your employees give each other more effective feedback. Getting this process in place first will help you make sure you make the right decision in the long term.

Who Are We

EDGE Business Management Consulting, a Network Partner with the Center for Creative Leadership, is a Human Capital Consulting firm, focusing on three primary areas to help you achieve exponential growth. We can serve you in many ways, however our focus is in the areas of Talent Management, Organizational Development, and Leadership Development.

For immediate inquiries, contact Dan Freschi at (414) 301-3343 or email dan@edgebmc.com, and visit our website at www.edgebmc.com.

Learn to Love the Process not the Result

Over a long weekend, watching my son and his team experience the highs and lows of competitive baseball, I had a very cathartic conversation with one of his baseball coaches over a 2-hour wait until they played again. We talked about baseball, the military, and everything in between. One thing he said to me I’ve known for as long as I can remember, but this time it really struck me and has been rattling around in my head. As we were talking about baseball, he said “you have to learn to love the process and not the result”.

Some context. This particular coach on my son’s team was drafted by the Brewers in the mid 90s and unfortunately never made out of the college ranks. He received high level coaching and advice from a young age through his early twenties about how to play baseball at a highly competitive level. And now he is the head coach for his older son’s team and an assistant coach for his younger son’s teams of which my son is member, imparting his knowledge and wisdom, developing these boys into young men.

Through the course of our conversation I could not help but think about the correlation to and lessons for developing leaders, whether aspiring or seasoned, the message was the same.

The process of developing the skills to play baseball is a paradox, it’s simple yet complex. Throw the ball catch the ball, see the ball hit the ball, simple, yet it’s important to have the right arm angle and body posture all in sync to throw a 96 mph strike or hit to the opposite field, complex.

Developing the skills to play baseball is much like developing the skills to be an effective leader. Simple, from the perspective that a leader has a title now and tells others what to do and they do it, but complex from the perspective that the leader needs to understand how to emotionally connect with each one of his or her direct reports and engage them on an individual basis to motivate them to want to do something on their own accord. The first perspective represents a result. You have a title and now tell people what to do. While the latter perspective represents the process. The process of learning about self, learning about others, and learning about the context in which one is leading.

As one develops into a successful and effective baseball player, you have to practice, change, try something new, fail, practice again, fail again, try again, and practice some more until you get into a rhythm where you can deliver results consistently (yet, a career .300 batting average might be HOF worthy).

To me, this looks like the same process a mentally tough, emotionally strong, ego-in-check, leader would follow to develop their leadership skills. While it is true some are born predisposed to be great athletes, the same is true for leaders, however, the process remains the same, simple, yet complex. Add or expand to the complexity by thinking about a specific position such as a catcher or from a business perspective an overseas assignment.

A leader needs to learn to love the development process not the result. If a leader can learn to love the process they will likely get an even better result (At EDGE BMC we believe in leveraging the 70-20-10 development process).

You can read a book about baseball, watch a video, but there is nothing quite like going out to a diamond, experiencing baseball for yourself and going through the development process. Such is the same for leadership, reading the latest NYT bestseller or attending a workshop does not make you a better leader. You have to actually practice, change, try something new, fail, practice again, fail again, try again, and practice some more until you get into a rhythm where you can deliver results consistently. Can you succeed your first time out? Sure you can, but don’t get complacent, cocky, and careless.

As one develops into a successful and effective leader or baseball player, you have to practice, change, try something new, fail, practice again, fail again, try again, and practice some more until you get into a rhythm where you can deliver results consistently.

Think about all the successful people in your life, they’ve ascended to the levels they are at because they learned to love the development process. They learned that failure is okay as long as it turns into learning and a new beginning requires something else to end.

Whether you are a struggling small business owner, a highly successful athlete, you have to learn to love the process. The process is going to be hard work in the end, but the pay-off will be much greater, the result will more rewarding when you fall in love with the process.

Chase’s Head Coach on why we do this for our kids:

We do it for the excitement on our kids faces when they win a championship game. We do it because being part of a team is a valuable lesson. We do it because sometimes we lose and learning to lose gracefully is a valuable lesson. Lastly we do it because when down 7 runs, and nothing seems to be going right, perseverance, teamwork and determination made our kids successful. There are few other activities that teach kids these lessons outside of competition.

For immediate inquiries, contact Dan Freschi at (414) 301-3343 or email dan@edgebmc.com, and visit our website at www.edgebmc.com.

Why Invest in Your Employees?

So the economy is doing okay. It’s booming for some and busting for many others. Whatever your company is doing, booming, busting, or somewhere in between, investing in your employees is a must.

Employee Investment

Now, I know you’ve seen the image above before, probably many times, and it’s cliche notion resonates with many professionals. The thing is, is that it’s true.

One of our clients whose business is currently in a busting period, made the strategic decision to continue the investment in developing their leaders. This was not without significant consideration and influence. The argument that ultimately won over the stakeholders was that very few to no other company in their industry would be continuing this investment in their leaders during this economic malaise and making this investment demonstrates their benevolence towards the employees. And, the evidence revealed itself shortly after the conversation when companies laid-off and terminated contracts of tens of thousands of employees.

Developing employees, managers, and leaders requires not just a financial investment, but an investment in time and effort. Organizations with successful employee and leadership development programs prepare their employees with lifelong skill sets. They also demonstrate organizational trust and an eagerness to build loyal employees who thrive on growth and want to remain as members of the organization.

Studies have shown that companies with employee and leadership development programs are six times more likely to increase employee engagement, and have a 2.5 times higher productivity rate than organizations that have yet to implement a career development strategy (Scales, 2012). They stay with the company because they want to, not solely because they need to. When the economic fog rises in the near future, not only will our client have a ready workforce, but they will be engaged and positioned to scoop up the talent their competitors sent packing.

Another study conducted by the World at Work association shared that only 51% of employers feel confident about retention of top talent as the economy improves. Rest assured that out client who made the investment in their leaders has a much higher level of confidence in their ability to retain their top talent and it’s directly related to the investment they’ve made while times weren’t so good.

One more thing, they made the Great Place to Work List too in their state.

If you’re in a similar position and unsure what do to next let us help you. We put employee and leadership development systems in place with extraordinary development activities, leading towards exponential results.

EDGE – Where Leadership Begins, is a Human Capital Consulting firm, focusing on three primary areas to help you achieve exponential growth. We can serve you in many ways, however our focus is in the areas of Talent Management, Organizational Development, and Leadership Development.

For immediate inquiries, contact Dan Freschi at (414) 301-3343 or email info@edgebmc.com, and visit our website at www.whereleadershipbegins.com.

10 Factors for Talent Management & Succession Planning Success

I was recently asked what key factors are important for determining whether an organization’s talent management and succession planning practices are successful? Here was my response:

Build and have an actual strategy. Include KPIs in the beginning. Stay focused on the strategy.
Design TM and Succession practices that are congruent with the organization, its business strategy and its culture; and integrated with other human resource practices.
Build in accountability at all levels of the organization for the ownership and execution of the practices. Especially with the CEO.
Collaboration with key stakeholders is critical throughout the entire process.
Right size and scale the tools and practices for the organization. Leverage them vertically and laterally.
Ensure it’s marketed and communicated to the organization as a leadership and management owned process and not just another HR initiative. Be as transparent at the organization allows.
Maintain adherence to processes, rules, and definitions put in place for consistent application (ex. performance and potential). But, remain agile to allow for variables out of your control.
Classroom training is not always the answer. Development can take place in many ways. Allow for failures and ensure learning happens from them.
Have an entry and exit strategy for the talent pools you create.
Build a talent mindset throughout the organization. Everyone is a talent manager. Everyone is responsible for their own development and direction they want to go.

What are your thoughts? What would you add?

HR’s Business Case for Talent Management

Today’s global economy is forcing a shift in the role human resources plays in organizations, moving from a transactional-administrative role to a strategic partner and facilitator of an organization’s most important asset – its people. However, projects in human resources and their functions may find it particularly difficult to obtain funding, and are typically one of the first things to be cut when budgets are tight. This unfortunate reality is principally due to human resource’s inability to align a credible business case followed by positioning it with key executives as having a quantifiable, direct impact on the bottom-line of the organization. Breitfelder and Dowling (2008) suggest human resources sits in the middle of some of the most compelling and competitive battlegrounds in business, where organizations deploy and fight over that most valuable of resources, their talent. Therefore, building a business case for talent management has become a strategic imperative for human resources professionals that will buttress an organizations ability to achieve its goals and objectives and in due course improve the performance of the bottom-line.

What is Talent Management?
The term talent management was conceived many years ago and initially referred to the programs used to manage and develop the top talent in an organization. Today, it has transformed into a key strategic and sustainable competitive advantage for organizations who are looking to recruit and retain talented employees throughout an organization. Where it was once for only the hand-picked few is now for many employees throughout an organization. Talent management today can be viewed from a holistic and strategic view and may be defined as a method to optimizing human capital through integrated organizational processes designed to attract, retain, develop, motivate and deploy employees, with the goal to create strong culture, engagement, capability, and capacity that meets current and future organizational objectives. Avedon and Scholes (2010) suggest talent are employees with strategic importance to the purpose and objectives of the organization. However, in today’s workplace it has expanded beyond the strategic few at the top to the strategic many deep and wide in the organization.

Building the Business Case
When building the business case, human resource leaders must structure it in a way that business leaders can understand the need. Building the business case for talent management begins by defining a strategy in the context of the business strategy. In other words, the strategy should help the organization to achieve its business goals through focusing on its talent. Business leaders understand the need to make money and talent management, when done well, makes money (Bersin, 2012). Therefore talent management needs to move away from just being a human resources project or program and forward towards being a true sustainable business strategy.

Strategy is about change and should not stand alone as a management process (Kaplan and Nadler, 2001). A talent management strategy needs to describe what the changes will be and how the changes will happen. Strategy maps can help by describing the changes an organization would like to bring about and, just as importantly, the systems and processes that ensure those changes happen. Kaplan and Nadler (2001) see strategy maps explaining what will be different and how organizations change in a cohesive, integrated and systematic way. In that same vein, human resource leaders will face a nearly impossible challenge to persuade executives to fund a business case for a talent management strategy if it fails to reflect a genuine understanding of the business. Consequently, strategy is also about a series of choices to do things differently than competitors so to provide a unique and attractive value proposition to attract, manage, develop, motivate and retain key people. (Kaplan and Nadler, 2001). Mapping a talent management strategy will be integral in demonstrating how an investment in talent management processes and programs can deliver value to the organizations customers and the bottom-line.

Organizational Benefits
Organizational benefits of a talent management strategy will vary depending on the industry and mission, vision, and goals of the organization. Bersin (2011) adds that talent management is not something to copy from a book and that the strategy will be unique to the organization as well as the benefits. However, a structured talent management strategy will systematically close the gap between the current human resources in an organization and the talent it will ultimately need in order to respond to business challenges in the future (Smith, Wellins, and Paese, 2011). Closing this gap will mean the organization will be able to remain competitive and retain key talent, attract new talent, and assemble plans for key roles and people in the organization in order to allow for proper development experiences. According to a study by The Hackett Group, Inc. (2010), they found that organizations with strong talent management strategies were like to see an increase in their bottom-line earnings by 18 percent. Additionally a Bersin study from 2010-2011 showed that organizations deployed strategic talent management saw twice the revenue of other organizations, 40% less employee turnover, along with 38% higher levels of engagement (Bersin, 2011). So, the evidence is clear, organizations that spend money and time on strategic talent management efforts will see their investment essentially pay for itself.

Conclusion
Organizations that deploy effective strategic talent management practices truly understand that talent is a key competitive advantage. Building the business case will be the hardest part for human resources professionals, however, they can help themselves by genuinely understanding the business and seek and give guidance to the executives who generally do not want to invest their time in these processes. Building the business case and coupling it with a strategy map will provide for a simple and powerful way for the human resources professional to demonstrate value and communicate visually how the strategy can be executed. Additionally, it will be critical for the human resources professional to decouple the strategy from being just a human resources initiative but instead a whole organization or business initiative. Doing this will allow for human resources to be viewed as a true strategic business partner. When organizations leverage strategic talent management practices they can project confidence to their market and remain nimble and flexible regardless of the market conditions.

References
Avedon, M. J., & Scholes, G. (2010). Building Competitive Advantage through Integrated Talent Management. In Silzer, R. F., & Dowell, B. E. (Eds.), Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative (73-116). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bersin, J. (2012, January 22). The Business Case for Talent Management: Steve Ballmer Agrees. Retrieved from http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/2012/01/The-Business-Case-for-Talent-Management--Steve-Ballmer-Agrees.aspx
Breitfelder, M.D., & Dowling, D.W. (2008, July-August). Why Did We Ever Go Into HR? Harvard Business Review, 86, 39-43.
Kaplan, R.S. & Nadler, D.P. (2001). Building Strategy Maps. In Kaplan, R.S. & Nadler, D.P. The Strategy- focused organization: How balanced scorecard companies thrive in the new business environment (pp. 69-105). Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Smith, A.B., Wellins, R.S. & Paese, M. (2011). The CEO’s Guide To: Talent Management A Practical Approach. Pittsburgh, PA. Development Dimensions International. Retrieved from http://www.ddiworld.com/ddiworld/media/booklets/ceoguidetotalentmanagement_bk_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf
Study Finds Experienced Talent Management Brings Higher Earnings & Other Benefits. (2010). HR Focus, 87(3), 8-9.