Nii Dowuona started as a programmer, became project manager, then added engineering manager to his workload, picked up an MBA at night and is now VP of Development—all at the same company.

He recently shared four tips that he has worked to instill in his company’s culture.

Avoid giving unsolicited advice.
Always ask for permission first, and don’t be insulted if you’re refused. Reacting calmly will leave the door open for future conversations.

However, remember that people can’t/won’t solicit what they don’t know they need. It’s true that advice can be obnoxious, but suggestions can be offered differently or the advice can be phrased as a question that opens the subject up to discussion. The big problem is often not the offering, but the pushing. ‘I explained so nicely why you are wrong, but you still won’t do it my way.’ is what often is being passed off as advice.

Avoid “guilt trips.”
Never try to make your listener feel guilty. Few adults respond well to such tactics. Instead, straightforwardly ask the person for what you need, explaining the possible outcome of inaction.

This is so true and the same goes for hinting and expecting the other person to not only pick up on the hint, but also to interpret it accurately. Plus, it’s a boomerang whammy, because people who hint often become angry or disconsolate when the hint is missed/ignored or misunderstood.

Avoid offering hollow reassurances.
Don’t attempt to gloss over problems or try to hide the downside of what you’re proposing. Openly acknowledging the facts is the key to positive communication.

Glossing assumes the other party is too dumb to figure the downside out and comes over as insulting, contemptuous and condescending to the other person.

Avoid pressuring a person to change.
Allow team members to hold their own opinions and positions. Arguing won’t change those opinions anyway.

Pressure not only won’t change anything, it often makes the people dig in their heels; at the least, it eliminates any viable conversation on that subject and may cause the recipient to shut down to anything you say in the future.

Granted, none of these are rocket science, but stop and think about how often you do one or another.

What other acts do you work to avoid?

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Last week’s discussion about the difference between busy and productive featured a comment from Jim Gordon. In a follow-up comment he expanded how he deals with this problem when teammates complain, whether by word or look, that he’s goofing off because he isn’t ‘busy’.

“One strategy I used in my groups was to map out every single task we were doing, have the team agree that it is a fair and balanced, distributed workload, and completed the tasks on my terms. By doing this, I was able to finish everything quickly. In fact, on multiple occasions I gave myself MORE work only to finish it hours before the rest of the team to prove a point. I am not saying I recommend this, as I had the time to do it, but the underlying idea behind the method is what’s important.

What this does is put everyone on a common ground – it makes everything transparent. In a sense, it almost divides the group into a set of individuals. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, unless you have booming chemistry it is the best way to accommodate opposite personalities. Busy people will always like busy people better than productive people (think in terms of “misery loves company”). Productive people will like the other productive people. The idea is to work “together” separately and on common terms. I didn’t run into a single other problem after we began agreeing to these common terms. I would say “I’ll crunch these numbers, translate them, write the report on them, and email it to you if you do this other task… does that sound fair?” If they said “Yes,” then as long as you finish your task, they cannot say anything.”

Smart thinking—especially considering that Jim did this in college (he just graduated).

But what if you’re work isn’t quantitative? It’s a difficult solution to implement when your work day isn’t comprised of set duties.

Think about it. How many of your people really understand what you do and why you spend your time the way you do? And that means that when you’re managing by walking around, which is very productive, they think you’re just goofing off and leaving all the work to them.

The solution is simple, whereas the implementation can be difficult.

The solution is to communicate; to talk. To describe to your people what you do and why, so they see your wandering around the department as a job duty and not a time-waster. To make sure that your people can track your productivity even when you don’t seem busy.

Implementation depends on your willingness to share the details of your work and that depends on your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

There are many managers who don’t know what they do beyond the obvious parts and you can’t share what you don’t know.

And more managers than you might think don’t want to share; they want to keep the managerial mystique intact, which means shrouding much of the work in secrecy or at least no details.

The former just takes some effort to identify and describe all the intangibles that make up your invisible work.

The latter is between you and your MAP, but as I keep saying, MAP can change and it’s always your choice.

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How’s your attitude?

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The foremost thought to hold in you mind when creating a positive and powerful review culture is that it’s similar to Chinese cooking—most of the time is spent in preparation, whereas the food cooks quickly.

(Note: terminology can be confusing; ‘goal’ and ‘objective’ are interchangeable as are ‘appraisal’ and ‘review’.)

Here are the underlying steps that you need to learn, practice and absorb into your MAP.

Annual reviews alone don’t work even when that’s all your company requires.

To succeed people need semiformal feedback each quarter along with constant, informal daily input and coaching focused on helping them achieve the goals set forth in the previous annual review. (More on goals later.)

Reviews are the same as every other management task—they require good planning, open communications and accountability on both sides.

The first step to painless reviews is to commit to doing

• one HR-blessed annual review, with full paperwork, during the last two weeks of December;
• four quarterly reviews within the first week of each quarter; and
• constant, informal, ‘how am I doing’ feedback all year long.

Remember that

• any time you set a goal it needs a delivery date to be real; and
• never make commitments you either can’t or aren’t planning to fulfill.

First tell your people what to expect, then post your commitment on the department intranet and tell every person you hire how it works—and follow-through.

When you commit publicly you make yourself accountable.

Good reviews aren’t about filling out a lot of paperwork, whether by hand or computer. Yes, you need to follow company guidelines and use company approved forms, but as stated at the beginning, those are the mechanics.

The secret of a positive review culture is defining exactly what you want a person to accomplish during the year, discussing the goals and refining them together, in other words, the heart is the interaction between you and each person on your team, because one size does not fit all.

The result is that your people not only know exactly what their goals are, but they own them.

Setting Goals

• The basic rule is to never set more than three to five major goals in a year and the exact number depends on their size and complexity.

• Annual review goals should be high level, complex, and take 12 months to accomplish. They can include hard skills, such as technical certification, and soft skills, such as improving presentation skills.

• All goals should be quantified. “Be more willing to share” is a self defeating goal because it offers no way for the person or you to measure improvement; it becomes totally subjective, a matter of opinion and a source of contention at next year’s review. Instead the goal might be “Increase time spent sharing knowledge 10%” and agree on what the baseline is currently.

• Work together during the discussions to break down large/complex annual goals into smaller, more manageable goals that can be achieved each quarter and still more bit-sized pieces for each month, week and even day.

The cool thing is that achieving a constant stream of smaller goals keeps people motivated and prevents the large goals from overwhelming them.

And before you start complaining about the time involved, perhaps you should go back and read your job description or, better yet, go back a little further and think about all the lousy reviews you’ve had along the way, either because they didn’t happen or because they were all form and no substance.

Then think about, hopefully, the manager(s) who saw the value and used reviews to challenge, stretch and juice your growth, so you were ready for a promotion that put you in their shoes.

Then decide which one you want to be for your people.

Be sure to come back next week when I show you a simple, amazing tool that helps identify goals for each of your people and also has some terrific side benefits.

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