Back in the day when I was a young leader in a pretty big organization, one of my favorite meetings to attend was the yearly talent review session. This is the meeting where each manager would review the talent on their team and benchmark performance across a wider group.
What I loved about this meeting was the opportunity to see how my peers evaluated talent. This job is important for both the person being reviewed and the leader doing the reviewing.
For me, what was really interesting was observing the manager doing the reviewing. I didn't know much about the people they were talking about but oh you could tell a lot about how credible the manager doing the reviewing really was.
For the person being evaluated, their livelihood can depend upon how the leaders accesses their performance.
When it comes to this talent review, for some like my friends in sales, the evaluation can be pretty straight forward; did you hit your target goal or not? While some organizations will add other behavioral aspects to a sales professionals performance, what performance in this arena boils down to is; did the sales professional hit the number or not. For the most part, pretty clear.
For other organizational roles, performance can be a bit more nuanced. Often HOW the person goes about the work is as important as WHAT the person did. I have worked with a lot of really talented people over the years who got the WHAT they did exactly right and HOW they went about it exactly wrong.
Take, for example, the operations leader who was told by an executive that a division in the company was not performing well and asked to "go in and fix it.” So what does the young leader do? He goes in and fixes it!
He spent some time assessing the situation and talking to people.
He started to reorganize the team to what was a much more efficient way of working.
He changed the system that the team had been using to process orders and communicate with customers so that the entire purchasing process was more transparent.
He brought in temporary workers to get all the billing caught up that was months behind.
Everything he did needed to be done. It needed to be fixed.
Then he got fired.
Not because WHAT he did was in any way wrong. It all needed to be done.
It was HOW he went about the work:
As he assessed the situation, he did all the talking about what was wrong and no listening to what people on the ground thought.
As he reorganized, he used the whiteboard in his office and then made changes without even asking anyone else what they thought.
He announced over email that there would be a system change.
One morning at 8am people from the "agency" were at the empty desk when the accounting people came in. No one in the department had any idea they were getting "help.”
I can just hear you right now...Come on, Scott...No way, that did not happen...
I am here to tell you I saw it with my own two eyes! And have seen it on multiple occasions.
Of course the story is more complex than I am telling, but when you step back from all the fog of the situation that is precisely what happened.
I can also hear you saying something like, "That would never be how I operate.” In our organization we would never treat top talent that way.
Before you go too fast and dismiss this topic,I want you to carefully consider that position. The young leader, considered a top talent or he would not have been sent in to remedy the situation, thought he had a clear mandate from the executive. Indeed he did! They had adequately discussed WHAT needed done. However, agreeing on a plan for HOW to accomplish this goal would have been better for everyone involved.
Interesting to me is how someone goes from top talent to "packaged out" of the organization in less than two years. Were they really top talent? Did they not have the proper "air cover"? WHAT really happened here, and HOW did we let this situation get out of control?
Could it be that the real mistake was in how the talent was reviewed in the first place? Are we setting people up for failure because we as leaders we are not being honest with ourselves about talent?
What is the biggest mistake leaders make when reviewing talent?
Here are some thoughts on things that I have observed with leaders as I have heard them discuss and evaluate their talent:
Leaders use non-specific language
"Go down there and fix it,” was the mandate. Rather than pausing and asking what that even means, the young leader hears:
You have done great things in your current role.
You’re a real superstar.
We trust you.
We believe in you.
Everyone knows things are a mess down there, what can go wrong.
We are giving you a raise and a promotion.
The error I see leaders make when it comes to the use of non-specific language is that they have thought about things for so long, in their mind what they want is very clear. The leader has scenario planned and worked out many fine details in their own mind so that when "go down there and fix it" gets communicated, the leader knows exactly what this means and the person receiving direction is left to fill in all the blanks.
Remedy
Spend time together. Quality and quantity time. Spend time talking not only about the WHAT and the HOW, but the WHY. Invest in your talent with your time. If you are feeling (like most leaders) that you do not have time for this, then you either need to delegate more or at least assess if you want to have these conversations on the front or the back end of the assignment. You are going to have this conversation either proactively, which is what I am suggesting, or retroactively in the person’s exit interview.
Show empathetic concern
Things happen. Nothing is perfect. People make mistakes. People who make mistakes still want top raises and bonuses. As a leader, you really need to balance your power gradient assertiveness and empathy. Instead of picking a fight with the person on their performance, would it really be so hard to just sit down and try and understand their perspective? I know you think you have it all worked out and you understand the situation completely. Your biases are in full swing when you see an employee who didn't handle something quite right and rush in all quick to judge. As a leader, I realize you get paid to make judgements; it is part of your calling. But before you take off the gloves and start a fight, why not try and understand what it is like on their end? I am in no way saying you have to agree with everything people on your team are saying or bringing to you, but would it hurt to just listen to their perspective?
Remedy
Practice the gentle art of asking instead of telling. Get curious with the other person about what happened. Try to get a sense as to where they are coming from. Foster the relationship that leads to more open communication.
Over-glow
I thought about putting this one first. When it comes to evaluating talent, especially if we are the manager or leader who hired the person, we can let the glow of our own self-worth radiate over others. We will actually position routine tasks the person is responsible for as outstanding achievements. The strategy is a good one, actually, and it goes something like this; I will say the person is great. Really they are average. And at the end of the talent assessment they are pretty good. So what the manager did was get an average person a pretty good performance rating.
Remedy
Make talent review about the talent and not the manager. Most managers come into talent review realizing this is as much about their performance and what they can get for their team as it is the actual talent. Organizations need to hold leaders accountable for accurate evaluation, not how hard they fought for the team.