BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 261
What to Ask the Person in the Mirror
tionships with clients. This meant that senior
professionals would need to spend significantly
more time out of their offices in meetings with
clients. When asked how his own time was
being spent, the CEO was unable to answer.
After tracking it for a week, he was shocked to
find that he was devoting a tremendous
amount of his time to administrative activities
related to managing the firm. He realized that
the amount of attention he was paying to
these matters did not reflect the business’s priorities and was sending a confusing message to
his people. He immediately began pushing
himself to delegate a number of these administrative tasks and increase the amount of time
he spent on the road with customers, setting a
powerful example for his people. He directed
each of his senior managers to do a similar
time-allocation exercise to ensure they were
dedicating sufficient time to clients.
Of course, the way a leader spends his or
her time must be tailored to the needs of the
business, which may vary depending on time of
year, personnel changes, and external factors.
The key here is, whatever you decide, time allocation needs to be a conscious decision that
fits your vision and priorities for the business.
Given the pressure of running a business, it is
easy to lose focus, so it’s important to ask yourself this question periodically. Just as you would
step back and review a major investment decision, you need to dispassionately review the
manner in which you invest your time.
Feedback
When you think about the ways you approach
feedback, you should first ask: Do I give people
timely, direct, and constructive feedback? And second: Do I have five or six junior people who will tell
me things I don’t want to hear but need to hear?
If they’re like most ambitious employees,
your subordinates want to be coached and developed in a truthful and direct manner. They
want to get feedback while there’s still an opportunity to act on it; if you’ve waited until the
year-end review, it’s often too late. In my experience, well-intentioned managers typically fail
to give blunt, direct, and timely feedback to
their subordinates.
One reason for this failure is that managers
are often afraid that constructive feedback and
criticism will demoralize their employees. In
addition, critiquing a professional in a frank
and timely manner may be perceived as overly
harvard business review • january 2007
confrontational. Lastly, many managers fear
that this type of feedback will cause employees
not to like them. Consequently, leaders often
wait until year-end performance reviews. The
year-end review is evaluative (that is, the verdict on the year) and therefore is not conducive to constructive coaching. The subordinate
is typically on the defensive and not as open to
criticism. This approach creates surprises,
often unpleasant ones, which undermine trust
and dramatically reduce the confidence of the
subordinate in the manager.
The reality is that managers who don’t give
immediate and direct feedback often are
“liked” until year-end—at which time they
wind up being strongly disliked. If employees
have fallen short of expectations, the failing is
reflected in bonuses, raises, and promotions.
The feeling of injustice can be enormous.
What’s worse is the knowledge that if an employee had received feedback earlier in the
year, it is likely that he or she would have
made meaningful efforts to improve and address the issues.
While people do like to hear positive feedback, ultimately, they desperately want to
know the truth, and I have rarely seen someone quit over hearing the truth or being challenged to do better—unless it’s too late. On the
contrary, I would argue that people are more
likely to stay if they understand what issues
they need to address and they trust you to
bring those issues to their attention in a
straightforward and prompt fashion. They gain
confidence that you will work with them to develop their skills and that they won’t be blindsided at the end of the year. Employees who
don’t land a hoped-for promotion will be much
more likely to forgive you if you’ve told them
all along what they need to do better, even if
they haven’t gotten there yet. They may well
redouble their efforts to prove to you that they
can overcome these issues.
During my career at Goldman Sachs, I consistently found that professional development
was far more effective when coaching and direct feedback were given to employees throughout the year—well in advance of the annual
performance review process. Internal surveys
of managing directors showed that, in cases
where feedback was confined to the year-end
review, satisfaction with career development
was dramatically lower than when it was offered throughout the year.
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