Ducks In A Row: Review Love
by Miki Saxon
People hate reviews, but done correctly reviews are a terrific tool to provide individual attention, improve retention and show your love—tention reviews as opposed to tension reviews.
I won’t bother explaining the latter; everybody has suffered through a tension review at least once in their life and probably far more.
The biggest difference between the two is in the level of communication and frequency.
Done correctly tention reviews happen constantly and are called feedback. Think of them as a manager’s response to the “how am I doing” sign implicit on every member of their team.
We all crave feedback, which includes
- sincere strokes (given publicly),
- constructive criticism (given privately),
- career growth (what we have to do to take that next step), and
- friendly general interest.
Truly great managers add
- how can I improve,
- what can I do to help you, and
- how can I help our team excel?
Another part of review love is inherent in the communications necessary to setting solid, intelligent goals for each team member—
- solid because they make sense and are achievable, while still being a stretch, and
- intelligent because each person can see how their own objectives support their team’s goals, which, in turn, support the overall goals of the company.
Tention reviews also recognize that individual annual goals often need to be adjusted as a change in the company’s goals sets off a ripple effect throughout the organization.
And for those managers’ who claim they don’t have the time because of their real job, I’m here to tell you this is your job—cut corners or ignore at your own peril.
Your comments—priceless
Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL
Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:10 am
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by leadthetribes and Ryan Yip, Artie Davis. Artie Davis said: Ducks In A Row: Review Love http://bit.ly/8Xzc1s. People come & stay where they feel loved […]
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hi Miki,
I found your post very interesting and I like that fact that you used the word love, though not a business term, certainly it is a human one and we are in the business of managing human resource.
I wanted to compliment the content of your post with an overall concept I use in my management coaching practice called Collaborative Coaching Conversations. Giving, “review”, feedback, etc…is really a function of coaching. A manager is a coach and coaching is really done all the time, just in different contexts (e.g a sit down review) or a stand up feedback conversation with different strategies and outcomes in mind.
My phrase…coaching is not so matter of what you do, but who you are…a relating style that is more dimensional and when done effectively, gets more results.
Thanks for a great post!
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hi JoAnn, I’m glad you liked the post. Review love takes time and effort along with a MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that believes in the value.
Personally, I hate the terms “human resources” and “human capital,” both make people sound like a commodity to me. I’ve had similar conversations with clients over the last 30-odd years, just using different language—terms seem to be the major difference between coaches:) Similarly, RampUp’s tag line is “To change what they do change how you think”
I appreciate your taking time to add to the conversation, please come back again.