Performance Madness!

Ah, the performance review.  One of the most anticipated- and dreaded- events of the year, as these reviews often come with annual raises- which takes you down a whole other rabbit hole of how these reviews come together, and the reindeer games that ensue.  Reindeer games? It is no longer the holiday season.  Let it go, gang.

A survey of 837 companies performed by WTW revealed that only 26% of those surveyed felt their performance appraisal process was effective.  A Gallup study (2022) found that 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their organization's review system; that same study found that only 20% of employees are inspired by their review.

When you consider that nearly half of all companies provide performance appraisals once a year, it is critical to get this right.  Failure to address these issues contributes to a toxic workplace culture. 

Learn about the most common issues with performance appraisals, including central tendency error, halo effects, and more.   Hear harrowing tails of the dreaded "360 review". Glean sage advice from Melissa Tipton for both manager and teammate to get the most out of the review process- and how leadership needs to set the stage for standards and properly allocate the raises.

Our hosts are joined by return guest Melissa Tipton, Director of Client Strategy for Compass Business Solutions.  Melissa is a visionary in rethinking the employee experience. Having worked across multiple industries, Melissa partners with clients to capture their culture, mission, and values to drive organizational performance. Melissa holds a BS in Education from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Park University.

Compass Business Solutions
Inc.com: 18 Ridiculous Tales of Performance Appraisals
SHRM: The Performance Review
People Logic: Mistakes in Performance Reviews
Peoplebox: Types of Performance Reviews
Unleash Uncommon Results with Escatena
Republic of Tea- Our favorite! It is too good to spill!
Want a new job after that review? Hire My Mom can help! Use code "ToxicTearoom" at checkout to get 15% off job listings and a popular remote work course!

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:01

The Toxic Tea Room podcast is for entertainment purposes only, not to get a review or anything. Neither the toxic tea room nor its parent. That one booth Productions, LLC, is responsible for the statements or opinions of its guests, submissions or content derived from publicly available sources. Like your performance review content should not be in interpreted as targeting specific companies, organizations, or individuals. Rate that the Toxic Tea Room podcast and that one booth productions, LLC are not responsible for any actions taken by individuals as a result of any content produced on this podcast. Listeners are encouraged to vet any recommendations with certified professional personnel. They are also encouraged to talk about performance reviews at our blog. For more information and info on our disclaimer and to read our blog and fun Easter eggs throughout, visit our website at ww toxictroom.com. I'm, Stella.

>> Speaker B: 1:07

And I'm the one signing off on the performance appraisal. I'm Roberta. Welcome to the Toxic Tea Room. Well, we are super excited to have Melissa Tipton as a returning guest. Let's pause real quick for the cue, the applause.

>> Speaker C: 1:35

Thank you.

>> Speaker B: 1:35

Very excited. Very excited. As you all may remember, Melissa Tipton is director of client strategy at Compass Business Solutions. Melissa is a visionary in rethinking the employee experience, which is why we like her so very much on this podcast. Having worked across multiple industries, including hospitality, healthcare, technology, and education, Melissa partners with clients to capture their culture, mission, and values to drive organizational performance. Her ability to connect quickly with people allows her the unique perspective of understanding how to recruit and retain high performers in a growing, remote, work environment. We want it to stay that way, by the way. Want choices. People should have choices. With an exceptional record in increasing engagement to training and equipping future leaders with the skills they need to lead successful teams, Melissa understands the importance of developing people and investing in their growth. Melissa holds a bachelor of science in education from the University of Illinois. Go. Go, Alina. And a MBA from Park University. Melissa, it is a pleasure and an honor to have you back.

>> Speaker C: 2:44

Thank you. Did you read this from my performance review? This was my self evaluation.

>> Speaker B: 2:49

Just a little reflection. You did great on your self appraisal. Very nice work.

>> Speaker C: 2:54

Yes, I'm excited to be back. I'm excited to talk about performance appraisals. I like to call that also continuous feedback, because it just shouldn't be once a year, but, passionate about this topic. Hopefully, people will gain some little nuggets. and let's talk about what's working and what's not working with them.

>> Speaker B: 3:11

Let's do it.

>> Speaker A: 3:13

So welcome back. We're so glad to have you back. Thank you, M. It's a new year, and we're excited to dive into more topics around workplace issues this year. Did you know that according to one study of 1000 companies, almost half, 49%, gave these performance reviews only once or twice a year? Only 28% were giving them quarterly. But despite even the lack of frequent formal reviews, there are more issues. According to another study, one in four companies in North America, about 26%, said their performance management systems were effective. So, according to a survey of 837 companies conducted last fall by consulting firm WTW, and only one third of the organization said employees felt their efforts were evaluated fairly. I'm not done. A Gallup survey conducted in 2022 found that 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their organization's review system, and fewer than 20% of employees feel inspired by their reviews. So, Melissa, with all of that, what are your thoughts on this topic in general, and what are you seeing out there around this topic?

>> Speaker C: 4:47

It's hard to follow all that good news. let's start at the beginning. what I'm hearing is people are thinking that they're ineffective. and I think that stems back to, are we starting at the very beginning and creating, like I talked about earlier, a culture of continuous feedback? If the only time they're having that conversation is one time a year, or we'll talk about later, different types of reviews, or it's just based on this error that I made in the last month, and now it's December, and now we're going to just write this review based on that one error that I made. Despite the eleven months of really good, productive work, it's hard. You can understand why there's not a lot of buy in. so I think from the employee perspective, if that's the only time they're hearing that feedback, if that's the first time they're hearing that feedback, it's really hard to understand the value of that. Flip to the manager side. We have managers that are very technically sound. We put them in positions and expect them to know how to manage people, appropriately and like they're humans and with empathy and emotion. but we don't give them the tools to do that. We say, hey, it's December. Fill out this form. You have 36 direct reports. It needs to be back in two weeks, but make everyone valuable and authentic and do your best. Good luck. I think it starts at the very beginning. How are we, helping, people to understand what does giving and receiving feedback, and then how are we equipping our managers to understand what does a valuable review look like? Not just in December, but how are we continuously offering that feedback throughout the year so that, our team feels engaged and understands that I really do care about your development. This isn't, Oh, I'm going to use this time because I've been meaning to tell them this, and now this is my opportunity to get it on paper, but rather I care about you as a person and your contributions. How can I help you get to that next level in this new year?

>> Speaker B: 6:42

That's so important. That is so important. God, I have so much to say on this topic. This is going to be such an important episode for me, too, because I've always taken performance appraisals very seriously. Anyone that's ever worked for me knows I used to have. I mean, this is old school, but I used to keep little folders, and every time there was something that was positive, I put it in the folder so that I could remember to incorporate it into the review. Real time positive feedback, of course. Real time negative feedback, of course. Because that's a learning opportunity. And if you don't know that, you should be learning something from this lesson because nobody told you that it's wrong in the moment to hear about it months later. To your point, Melissa is senseless. So I would keep a little folder. I would literally print out emails. Look, I'm sorry I wasn't sustainable back then, but I would print out the emails, put them in the folders. If I got letters from customers, we would do a big thing and I would put it in the folder. So I wanted to have those. I really, really took performance appraisals seriously. I would make recommendations for classes and books on certain topics where my team needed to improve. I wanted to let them know how I viewed things and how their work was important and what they could do to improve and what their career goals were. I really put a lot into the performance of use. but apparently I'm the anomaly compared to some of the things that are out there, particularly with the data shows. And according to one source, the most common issues with performance appraisals are. Drumroll, please. Central tendency error, which is the statistical measure that identifies a single value as representative of an entire distribution.

>> Speaker A: 8:29

Yeah, I think Melissa was alluding to. yep.

>> Speaker B: 8:33

your entire year sucks because you had one boo boo late in the.

>> Speaker C: 8:37

You know, that's the only thing I'm going to.

>> Speaker B: 8:39

That's right now that works for the oscars, because if you release late in November, then that's fresh on everybody's mind. The academy is like, hey, that was really a good flick. We don't remember that amazing movie back in January, but this one right here is great.

>> Speaker C: 8:53

We're going to ride the.

>> Speaker B: 8:55

That's right. strictness or leniency error, which is the strict rater, gives ratings lower than the subordinate deserves. This strictness error penalizes superior subordinates, and the lenient rater tends to give higher rating than the subordinate deserves. I have to talk about this because I've seen both sides of this. Oh, my God. as I grew in my career, and I would have managers that were actually writing the reviews for their subordinates, and then I had to approve those reviews. That was a way for me to provide real time feedback to some of my management team, too, where I would have, an opinion of someone's work. And obviously, as my organizations grew, I don't work with everybody personally, day to day, like I would with my frontline management team. And I deferred to a lot of their specific opinions, but I wanted to see specific proof behind some of those opinions. And I would have managers that you would say outright if you had a rating scale of one through five. Nobody gets a five. In no area whatsoever, nobody gets a five.

>> Speaker A: 9:58

I know.

>> Speaker B: 9:59

So in no area. So I get it. If you don't have a unicorn, that is fantastic. All fives, I understand. But in no area are they excellent. In no area are they a four. They're just three across the board, they're just average. So in no area do they need improvement. In no area do they excel. And then I would have some. That everything's a four. And it's like. But you know, that's not true because I still see your people. You don't need to be popular as a manager, that's the first thing you need to let go of is people liking you. We all know that if you're driving for people to like you or love you because you're their leader, you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt and disappointment. And your performance appraisal time with your team is not the time to garner favor points. I totally understand the strictness or leniency error. I've seen both sides of it. I've seen it express, or they.

>> Speaker C: 10:55

Don'T want to score. I don't want to score anyone below four because that's going to be a reflection of me as a leader. So I have the highest performing department in the organization. So I want to make sure everyone knows that. So they're kind of deflecting themselves and that to be favorable on them based on their team.

>> Speaker B: 11:13

or you get the whole, okay, everybody gets a 3% raise on average, which means your highest performers, you're going to want to reserve that, but that means you're going to have to give some people, like, a 2%. You can't give everybody 3%. So some people have to get less. If you wanted somebody to get more, which I think is the most heinous thing in the world, by the way. Look, I get it. I know how budgets work. Come on now. I totally understand. But then you put a lot of pressure on somebody who may have been an incredible manager, who has brought an incredible team together, has developed people, and they're all performing way above average, and now they get average. Or somebody has to be unjustly penalized to be able, I mean, it's just a terrible thing to do to a leader. If somebody is not performing and they're at a one, why are they still there? You haven't done your job right.

>> Speaker A: 12:06

You know what I've seen and what has frustrated me so much, because I hear all of these things and I'm like, yes, experience that. But, is when different managers in different departments, maybe one is strict and the other is lenient, because then there's a disparity across the organization of how they're rating their employees. And I have seen it. It's so frustrating.

>> Speaker B: 12:33

Absolutely. And so let's talk about that in the halo effect. So the halo effect. This is so aptly named. I love this favoritism due to positive experiences with a person. So someone's got. I envision those paintings in churches where the saints all have the halo around their head. Right. Or the angels that have. You have such a positive experience with an individual that you're rating them based on that experience with them. It's not necessarily reflective of their entire book of work or that you haven't seen some of the areas in which they absolutely do need development, if nothing more, to go to the next stage. Because honestly, if someone is that great, well, if you've got that favoritism and they're that great, then they probably should be in your job. Which is why I think some people don't want to acknowledge that. But I have seen this halo effect more when I'm rating people as fairly as I believe they need to be. And again, once you're a director and above, your approver is somebody, of course, at a VP or above. And I'm rating managers. And if my boss felt I was rating somebody too harshly, and I would say, here's some of the specifics that I put into the review. Here's why I feel they need improvement there. They're great here, and I give them points for that, but they really need work here, here and here. I don't know. I just think, I mean, did they do something to piss you off, Roberta? No, it's not about. It's. This is an objective review. Yes. All the things that you love about them, so do I. But they really need help here. So overall, I rate them here. I don't being, what's going on between the two of you? And it's like, what? No. And it's because that person had a particularly favorable opinion of this individual, and they didn't get to see the work day to day. They didn't get to see the full breadth of what I was dealing with. But when they would go to a client visit, this person was great with clients. I agreed. I rated them highly in those areas. but they had this whole other part of managing other people where I needed them to do some serious work. So that halo effect I've seen in the approvers of the performance appraisal, not just the writers, and it's frustrating when you're a manager, when you're the one doing the reviews, it's so frustrating. recency error, Melissa, this is what I think you were talking about. The raiders tendency to allow more recent incidents, either effective or ineffective, of employee behavior to carry way too much weight in the evaluation of performance over an entire rating period. Or what I like to call you. Don't pay attention to what the hell I do until it's review time and you're just going off of recent memory one way or the other, right? Absolutely.

>> Speaker C: 15:18

and that's exactly what you see, is they're writing a review and they're thinking, oh, wait, last week, they made an extreme error over here. So I'm going to make sure that I memorialize that on this feed forever. More forever, even though I've never had a conversation with them about it. But this is a great opportunity. Plus, I don't want to have a conversation with them about it because it makes me uncomfortable. But if I write it down, then we don't have to have a dialogue about it. I can write it down, and then it's there. And I've addressed it. I've addressed it.

>> Speaker B: 15:45

I've done what I hundred percent. And finally, personal biases which I think everyone knows everyone has. So personal biases can play into problems with reviews. so, Melissa, what do you think the most common is among these issues, or one that maybe we didn't list?

>> Speaker C: 16:05

that's great. I think I'm going to go with what Stella said at the beginning is not understanding how we calibrate and how we truly evaluate an employee. And I think you could have a combination of all of these in one review. You can have these kind of scattered throughout. but I'll even go a step further to say it's important that the review form is actually reflecting what we want the intended outcome to be. You can have someone that scores, let's say, a, five in all the technical aspects. They've mastered every single piece of the job. But if they are a horrible person and they cause a toxic work environment, or they are not collaborative reach, they try to withhold information from people that need it. They're not aligned with our core values. They shouldn't be all fives. So, looking back, I think at step one is, do we have the right review form? That is capturing the information that we need to effectively evaluate the employee holistically. This isn't just about, wow, we can't get rid of them because they are the best salesmen. They bring in, the most customers. The customers love them, but nobody internally gets along with them and they are nasty. They send emails that are aggressive, but we can't lose them. So I think it's understanding, what do we really want out of this review form and are we capturing that? do we put as much emphasis on the core values as we do the technical skill and the ability to do their essential job function?

>> Speaker B: 17:27

I love that. You should not be, by the way, those of you listening that either are managers or above, maybe it's your own businesses that you're thinking of. Going to Chat GPT and asking them to give you a review form is not what you want. Performance appraisals are very rarely objective in all respects. There are some things that are like, if you have a measurable KPI and you say, okay, you are always at or above that. So I'm going to rate you a four. When you're above, you're not hugely above, but you're always at or there, you consistently hit it or go a little above. I'm going to rate you a four. That's great. Your application of whether it's a three for meets expectations or a four for exceeds is still subjective, even on something that is a metric that is easily measurable and objective. So we have to remember that if we as leaders, do not set what we expect our managers to do with that subjectivity, I would always tell my team, look, meats is not a bad review. We have high expectations. Our core values are strict. This is what we want. This is our culture. If I rate you out of meats, that means you are that high standard. You are representative of that culture. Not everybody is a four or five, but being a three doesn't suck. But we've conditioned ourselves to think that that's a c. That's average. No, it's not. It means our high expectations that most people can't even consider meeting. You do, and that should be applauded. But again, if you don't have that conversation with your entire leadership team, and I've been in areas where HR has led that conversation, which is typically appropriate, HR tends to oversee this process. but it's those kind of subtleties that cause the variations, manager to manager, in their review, department to department. And while everyone say, don't talk about your performance reviews. everybody talks about their damn performance review. Sorry. Everybody does.

>> Speaker C: 19:33

Just, like, compensation.

>> Speaker B: 19:34

Exactly right. Everyone's going to talk about it. So why not get ahead of it and just say, listen, you have to be a little subjective because it's your opinion that's going into this review, but your opinion should not. Like, if somebody has a quota, say, I'll go the sales. and they've always hit their quota. You give them a five because they always hit their quota. Then what do you do with the person that goes way above and beyond their quota and is just crushing it and is also a good individual and is actually helping other departments and is right there when a customer needs something, who gets the five then? So I do think that there is a lot of that that needs to be driven within organizations. it's such a common thing, but you'd think we'd have figured it out by now, but clearly not. I don't think anyone's figured it out.

>> Speaker C: 20:24

You talk about training the managers. I think it's as important, too, is to train our employees. What are they going to expect throughout the year? I was working with an organization, and they said, okay, it's, December 2023. We want to do a performance appraisal on all of our employees. Here's the things I want included. I'm looking over this list. These are things that the employees have never even been talked. They've never talked.

>> Speaker B: 20:46

That's ridiculous.

>> Speaker C: 20:47

They have no idea what a KPI is. They've never seen this form before. It's never been, but yet we're going to hold them to the standard that we've never even circulated or educated them about. So I said, okay, la pause. This is great, but let's introduce this in January for a 2024 look back period. Let's talk to them about, hey, we're excited about making sure that we have transparency in your feedback. Do we want to help you develop as a person? We want to know where you want to be in the next twelve months. So how can we get there? So we're going to talk about it in January. We're going to continue to talk about it all through the year. So then in December, when we decide to roll out this new form, they know what to expect. And that's the other thing, too. Do they know what to expect during this annual performance review meeting? So that they are equipped to be able to also be able to say, hey, this is where I want to be this year. This is my list of accomplishments. I'd love to talk to you about my biggest failure because guess what? That's okay, too. What did you learn? How did that make you a better person? Because that's what I'm interested in. It's not the error that you made, but it's how will we do something different this next time so that we have taken the information in, we've applied it to what we're doing, and we can make a better decision next time?

>> Speaker B: 21:58

Yes.

>> Speaker A: 22:00

So, yeah, what I'm hearing and reading through all this is that there is a very human element to this process and leaders should come prepared to be as subjective as possible. They should avoid things like only doing one annual review, avoiding critical feedback and only focusing on weaknesses. For example, using a one size fits all approach, and probably one or more, comical issue is making the employee review themselves and then just reading it back to them, as has happened to me at more than one company. So what about.

>> Speaker B: 22:44

Oh, yeah, absolutely. One of my managers. True story. One of my managers wanted us to write our self appraisals. And when I write a self appraisal, I'm being critical on myself. everyone is their own harshest critic, but also their own biggest cheerleader. Right. On self appraisals, I'm the former. I hate writing positive things about myself. I don't take positive feedback well. I just don't, I just always feel that there's room to improve. And so if you're going to tell me I suck. I'm in there with, like, pen and paper saying, yes, I do suck. Tell me how I suck less. What can I do to suck less next time? And, this particular manager wanted us, and we were all in sales, which, again, is pretty easy. Did you make quota? Did you exceed it? Were you nice to people? The customers love you. It's fairly easy. Wanted us to write a self appraisal. And so I did, and he returned it and said, you didn't do this quite right. And I said, how so? You have to write it in the third person. I'm sorry, what? He wanted us, to write our self appraisals in the third person because that became our performance review from him. He would read it and see if he agreed with our ratings. He would make a little adjustment here and there if he felt we were too generous with our rating or too harsh. Mostly, he would adjust when it was too generous, and then he would sign it and then would give it to us. And when I got my first appraisal from him that I, again wrote, he said, you know, I got to give it to you. You review yourself quite fairly. I mean, I wouldn't change a thing because you didn't change anything. Like, do you have any insight to give, governor? Do you have anything that you could afford me to improve my life, sire? Is there anything that I can do better in these areas where I rated myself harshly? He's like, no, I think you nailed it. So just go do what? You're very self aware. That's admirable. And also rare, apparently.

>> Speaker C: 24:59

he's like, and I really don't know what you do day to day, because I'm not that engaged with you, even though you're on my team.

>> Speaker A: 25:05

That's where I'm at. Because there's two things. Because I've had the same exact thing where I have to write it. And then my manager is like, oh, well, just tweak this a little bit. And I'm like, dude, you don't know what I do. You don't even know what I do. That's number one. And number two is, at a few companies, all of a sudden, we had to write our own review, and there is no training or coaching. And so I had to help all.

>> Speaker B: 25:40

A, lot of.

>> Speaker A: 25:41

I've helped a lot of people who were like, how do I even do this? I don't keep track of what I do. And so who is training people how to write these things, especially for entry level or junior people who have never had to do it. Come on. It goes back to what you were saying, melissa, is that set the expectation. Train people, give them what to expect. Because if an employee is told, hey, at every milestone that you're doing, maybe write yourself a note throughout your week so that you can come to the performance appraisal with data, that you wouldn't have otherwise kept track of.

>> Speaker B: 26:32

I hate the concept that the performance appraisal has to be something that is like, you're either prepping for war or, I hate that. I just hate that. It's simply a, hey, I just want to sit down and tell you how you're doing in these core areas, that it's really important to our business and to our company. I just want to let you know what I think of how you're doing. And a, self appraisal should simply be, well, here's how I think I'm doing, and then we compare notes. It's as simple as saying, okay, so let's see why you think you're doing better here. Because, honestly, I have had one self appraisal where this was a great employee. but they were very self aware in their self appraisal as well, and I rated them much lower in that area than they rated themselves. And so it was an area we were going to discuss. She brought some great stuff to the table, to your point, Stella bringing some real data that I was not aware of, and because, I knew of the project, but I wasn't aware of her direct role in supporting that team, because she wasn't on the team, but she was supporting from behind the scenes. And when she brought it all, I was like, wow, that's incredible. I changed my rating, and I changed my commentary for submission, because that's a self appraisal and a performance. You should be having a conversation. You should be talking about it, because unfortunately, performance appraisals also tend to tie directly to how much of a raise you're going to get. And so I never wanted to short someone's raise because I wasn't aware of something. But the self appraisal is a very valuable tool. But you had me, edit your own self appraisal for a performance review, Stella. You had me at that, where he's like, yeah, this is pretty good, Stella, if you could just edit these things, because I'm too lazy as your manager to even do the own edits on the review you wrote for yourself that I'm going to assign my name to, would you please do the edits for me and resubmit thanks. Appreciate you. You're a team player. thank you.

>> Speaker C: 28:32

The other thing that I'm hearing, and I think we all agree on this, is the interactive component of the performance review. Conversation is critical. So it's not me just giving, like, okay, let me give a self appraisal and then not getting feedback. It's not my manager doing it unto me, like, here's how I think you did great. Or, okay, we got 10 minutes. Let me just read what I put in here, because I don't think you are smart enough to read this either before or after. So let me just read verbatim so we can fill this time quickly. I can check the box and move on to the next person. But it's more about. Let's talk about your development. What was your biggest win this year? What do you want to do next year? one of the things we've incorporated this year, even at compass and with our clients, is, and we call it the hairy, scary goal. And it doesn't even have to be related to work. What is something that you want to accomplish this year? I have one colleague that wants to learn a new language, and, she's like, we're going to do this. Mine. I'm going to try to relearn the piano. I played the piano when I was younger. I can kind of flip around, but my skill is gone. So understanding that the performance review is also connecting with the person as a person, not just the employee. But let's make this again holistically. What is your interest? What's something that's not related to the organization that you're just excited about this year? Maybe it's not something huge. Maybe it's. I just want to take time for myself to read a book a month or whatever. That is so understanding that that relationship and that interactive process of the performance appraisal is just as important as accomplishing the checkbox that we need to.

>> Speaker B: 30:06

Agreed? Agreed. Stella, you've got to have something to say on this, right?

>> Speaker A: 30:13

Doing good things. Maybe this year, if you need an uncommon performance that you can evaluate as stellar, you could keep giving antiquated reviews. But why not reach out to the supply chain experts who can help your productivity without a performance review? Escatena has a proven record of fast tracking to unleashing superior results, and I hear they'll give you a free consultation. So visit escateg. Net today for your free consultation and to unleash uncommon.

>> Speaker B: 30:53

So are you saying stellar? Because that's a pun. Stella. Stella with an r at the end. I'm just asking. I appraise you as a five on, this one, Stella. No worries.

>> Speaker C: 31:12

If we could give six, I would.

>> Speaker B: 31:13

Write in six in the blank line.

>> Speaker A: 31:16

That's so awesome.

>> Speaker C: 31:17

just because I have the highest performing team.

>> Speaker B: 31:20

Excellent, Roberta.

>> Speaker C: 31:21

But I'm a little bit.

>> Speaker B: 31:22

That's perfectly acceptable. I just know I have work to do, that's all.

>> Speaker A: 31:28

So, Melissa, how is compass helping companies, this year, and what are the things, some of what you're doing and how compass can help businesses?

>> Speaker C: 31:40

Yeah, absolutely. I, think it starts with the culture. What culture are we providing? So, when we get in with a client, we are not just saying, okay, we're HR consultants, so we will create your employee manual. We'll help update your policies and procedures, and we'll show you how to do your files. We say, let's look at the employee experience holistically. And are we creating a work environment where people thrive, where people want to come into work where they feel like they are valued, their voices are heard, there's growth opportunities, and, that's what we're doing. We are working on organizational excellence with c suite, with business leaders. We're doing training and development. So anything that touches that employee experience or that employee lifecycle, we want to get in and help you. Just elevate that. if you want more information, you can look at www.wearcompass.com reach, out to me on LinkedIn. Would, love to have a conversation to just learn about what are your pain points? we know you come in with maybe one, but then we dial back and peel back the layers, and we get to the root cause to say, yes, you might have a retention issue, but let's take it five step further. What are the trends we're seeing? What is happening? yes, you have this performance review cycle that you feel like it's ineffective. Let's dig in and figure out why. Is it tied to the core values? Do you have the proper training in place so people know what to expect? And do people feel like they're valued as employees? So, a little bit of everything. Stella, we're excited for 2024. and just looking forward to, helping any industry. We're not just one specific area, but we kind of touch and dabble in everything from startups all the way up to thousands of employees. So thank you for asking.

>> Speaker A: 33:21

Yeah, that sounds great. And it sounds anything but toxic. exactly.

>> Speaker C: 33:27

That's great, right?

>> Speaker A: 33:28

Yeah.

>> Speaker C: 33:29

Usually we're engaged with people when they do have those toxic characteristics. And we're in there very quickly to say, hey, time out. Let's figure out how we can make this so.

>> Speaker B: 33:39

Absolutely love that. And we will put, all those links in the show notes, folks, if you weren't able to catch that, don't worry, we're going to have that link available for you. So thank you so much, Melissa.

>> Speaker C: 33:51

Absolutely excited to be here. It's always fun.

>> Speaker A: 33:54

So I do want to circle back to this notion of writing your own reviews, because I don't think it's necessarily all bad. For example, it's going training, perhaps, on learning how to quantify and highlight what you've been doing. Since I worked at multiple places where my bosses were clueless about what I did day to day, which, how does that even happen? But it does. Writing. It actually challenged me to level up and really look at my career goals. However, the employer hires you to do something, how is it that your boss can't articulate what it is that you're doing? And, like, in Roberta's case, how can you make a good decision on my potential merit increase when you didn't even take the time to write the review? So we kind of touched on this again. But, really, Melissa, like, bosses and leaders should be understanding what their people do. And I get it. When you're assigned 36 people, that's what you're doing all the time. and that's only what you're doing, perhaps outside of reporting up. But, how important it is it to actually know what your employees are doing?

>> Speaker B: 35:21

Yeah.

>> Speaker C: 35:21

And that can be accomplished even with just a quick touch point on a monthly basis. Get it on your calendar where you're going to check in on this person for 5 minutes. If you're in person. I'm sorry, but that still happens. But if you are in person, in an office and do a five minute check and just say, how's it going? What can I do to support you? Do you have the tools you need to be successful and supported in your role? What's going? Well, if it's remote, you put a five minute check in on the calendar, do it by Zoom, or even if it's, if you're on different time zones, if it's international, you send a quick email. Wanted to check in on you. Anything I can do to help? What's been your greatest win this week? So just those little touch points. First of all, help your team stay engaged. It promotes this collaborative environment where if you're giving and receiving feedback on a regular basis, when you have to have those tougher conversations, even if it is at review time, it's more accepted because you've already created that culture where it's a safe space. It's okay. I am comfortable receiving the feedback because I know we balance out the positive and the development opportunities. So making sure that throughout the year, the leader is intentional about connecting with their employees so that there is not a time where you're like, oh, this is the first time I've seen you in six months, and we're going to review you now. or I haven't talked to them since April and now it's December and they're scoring me on this. So making sure and being intentional about being present and providing that feedback so that it is valuable when we are doing that performance eval at the end of the year.

>> Speaker A: 36:51

I did want to mention one other thing because this has happened m at two places, actually, which is very weird because usually, ah, in larger corporations, your boss isn't let go. But at two different places, my boss was let go. And so their boss became my boss. And believe it or not, they were completely clueless. In one case, like, the guy had no idea what I was doing. And it was so ironically, baffling because I was doing, like, when my boss was let go, I was in the middle of an annual bid and his boss didn't know that I was in it. And it represented something like$30 million of spent and they had no clue that I was in the middle of it. so how important is it, to let your boss know how the reviews are going? I mean, you would think that people at the top levels understand at least a little bit about how the reviews are going, but how important is it to communicate up? And it's not just reading the papers or looking at the scores. It's actually kind of knowing that these junior people exist and what they're doing?

>> Speaker C: 38:35

Yeah, absolutely. And also for just understanding, what does secession planning look like? Who are my high performers that might be ready for development coming into this year and might be slated for positions? Who are my people that are great workers? But maybe we don't have them in the right seats. Maybe there's a better place suited for them. It's not necessarily a performance issue. but maybe this isn't the right fit for them. So those conversations you should be having with your leader on a regular basis. So there is some familiarity with the team and there's an understanding. I will tell you, too. when you were talking about there was leaders that left in the middle of this process, I was working with an organization, and, unfortunately, there was a reduction in workforce right before the performance review process. So you had departments that had no leaders assigned to them or new leaders that kind of absorbed them as their own. that honestly didn't have any. They were coming from other departments. They didn't have the opportunity to really evaluate their performance. so what do you do in that situation? Do you just scrap the whole thing? Do you still move forward with it? What we need to do is make that an opportunity to have the new leader engage with the team. It's not going to be appropriate to have them score them on the traditional score if they really don't know. We could do the self appraisal. But that's why that interactive conversation is so important to say, hey, tell me about what you do, what's been going great in the department. what is your biggest idea, your suggestion coming in that I need to know as a leader coming into the new year so we can still have those performance conversations. I think we just rescript them so that the employee doesn't feel like they're shortchanged. Like I have someone that has no idea who I am or what I do or hasn't even worked in my department scoring me. But, hey, I have a new leader that's excited to get to know me and my contributions to the department, and it's an opportunity for us to get to know each other. So I think depending on the situation, there still has to be that interactive discussion, even if it looks different than it would under a normal year.

>> Speaker B: 40:30

Wow. I'm going to take us back just for ten quick seconds, because something just occurred to me. The bosses that are leveraging self appraisals and passing them off as their own appraisal of a performance, their approvers are lazy, too. Let me tell you why. You know what a voice is when you're writing, right? Like, I can read something. I know who wrote it, because some people a write exactly as they talk. And that's a problem because you're like, yeah, you have an opportunity to not just say what you want. Like, you can actually edit. And that's something, that's a skill some people need. and so you know exactly who wrote that. And then there are others who are very good at writing. And if you know your leader who's writing that review and you're the approver, you know how they write, and you're like, I don't know that that's this guy or girl. so how do they manage with multiple voices since they wrote nothing? Like, to me, that's fascinating. Their approver either is wise to it or just lazy. And just signing off is my guess. I don't know. Anyway, I just occurred to me, I'm.

>> Speaker A: 41:39

Like, how did it.

>> Speaker B: 41:41

Because I know that.

>> Speaker C: 41:42

And how does that feel on the other side? Like, well, I know they clearly didn't write this. This is not even the words that they normally use.

>> Speaker B: 41:48

Look, I got to be honest. The manager that I was referring to, I know who my peers were. Some of them, I don't know how they got dressed by, themselves and came to work. I'm just going to put it like that. They're great talkers. Like, they were salespeople. They're great talkers, but their emails were even incoherent. So I'm positive their performance appraisals did not read like mine did. Confident of that. So it occurred to me, I'm like, okay, so it's not my issue anymore. But I'm just saying, if you're one of those lazy managers that just does a self appraisal in the third person and think you're done, you might want to not. Okay, so let's talk about the types of performance reviews. So there are performance reviews based on reviewer and the reviewed. There's manager led, which I think tends to be everybody's most common experience, peer based, which. That's interesting. self performance, which we've talked about, the self appraisal and the 360 degree review. Then there's cadence based performance reviews. Again, I think most of us are familiar with annual mid year review, quarterly reviews, and monthly reviews are most common. Then we have outcome oriented performance reviews. So goal driven performance appraisals, project based performance appraisals, and then there's other review types, which are tied to career growth and promotions. So there's a number of ways that people establish performance reviews as a typical standard. Again, I think you should review in real time as often as possible. If somebody does something great, acknowledge it right then and there, just like, man, you did a great job on that good work. It doesn't have to be anything formal. And if you're a really good manager, you take a note of that. And if they keep doing things like that, you highlight that, as this is a really strong area for you, and this is where you can continue to grow and where you should be able to use that particular skill set very effectively. Because guess what, folks? There are managers. That are people managers, and there are managers that are task managers. If you're a task manager in charge of people, you still have to be the people manager, whether you're comfortable with that or not. That's a growth area. And if you're a people manager, you still have to be, in a way, a, task manager, even if you're not managing the task itself, getting done. But you have to understand it enough that you know if it's being done well, you know what the desired outcome is going to be. And in both cases, you got to look at your management of people as just as important as everything else you're doing. If you have a superior that wants a weekly report, you got to give them a weekly report. And you've got to look at your staff and say, okay, I used to do this. I say, not only would I try to remember, I'd print out an email, stick it in a file. I'd write something in the file like, hey, I want to remember that this happened. This is really good. At the end of every week. And this was just a habit I've had since the 90s. I'm so old. so flipping old. There was some Gen z listener going, oh, my God, you were managing in the 90s? Holy shit, you're old.

>> Speaker C: 44:56

How long ago was that?

>> Speaker B: 44:58

Oh, my God. 2000 was already, like, almost a quarter of a century ago. It's 2000, man. Are you guys even relevant? What are performance reviews anyway? So that's not a slam on Gen Z. That's just me having fun. Gen Z is my spirit animal. anyway, every week at the end of the week, first thing in the morning with my coffee at my desk, I would think about what happened this week that I don't want to forget. And if it was tied to something I was working on, if it was a problem, if it was something we solved, if it was a particular employee that did something really well or really poorly or really that just wasn't how we wanted things done with a team, I would take note of it. And at my next conversation with that person, if it was later that afternoon or even the next week, I would say, can we revisit this? How did you feel about this? Yeah, good that, you know, that that wasn't cool, because I didn't think it was cool either. And is our problem this person, or is it this issue? What do we need? It's part of your job. When you're managing, that's the whole point, is you're managing. And so, performance appraisals, if you sit down like you said it best because everyone's had that experience, both as the reviewer and the reviewee. Because, by the way, every reviewer is also a reviewee, folks, that everybody gets through this anyway. You're on both sides of that spectrum. you have two weeks to get all of this done, and if you haven't done the work throughout the year, you're just using cut and paste answers. And we've all read know, I'm going to pick on Stella real quick. Not that I've ever done a performance review for Stella, because I just didn't, I just didn't. That didn't happen. so it could be something like, in the area of give me a typical performance area. Just shoot one out at me. Essential job functions. Stella is competent on her essential job functions. Stella is able to complete those functions without supervision on a daily basis. Stella communicates the importance of those functions to her team. Three meets expectations. See, that's what you do when you're lazy versus cute. Exactly.

>> Speaker C: 47:12

Cut, paste, cut past in that standard.

>> Speaker B: 47:13

No one is going to sue me. Language, right? Versus essential job functions. Stella is extraordinarily competent at her essential job function. She is a recognized expert in the area of import and export with ocean freight and freight forwarders. She's built a network of providers that are providing real value and services to the company. We appreciate her and her role and being specific about it. That's the difference between a manager who knows what their folks are doing versus a manager that is just completing a performance appraisal, because they need to get it done. That's the difference.

>> Speaker A: 47:54

I wanted to say something here, for people that are remote, because I led a completely remote team for, just under two years. And one of the things that I took the time to do, because I was very invested in my people, since I didn't get to see them physically very often, is if I saw that a person was doing really well, but didn't know how to convey it, I challenged them to give me a presentation weekly, and it was only like a 20 minutes presentation, but I was leveling them up to say, hey, you do really good work. Now present it to me as if you were a leader. And the other thing is, if someone was doing something wrong, absolutely got on a Zoom call and said, okay, let's evaluate what happened and what were you thinking to make this decision? Like, I tried to get under what was the root cause of the decision, and then, okay, moving forward, how would we correct this to try to change how they were looking at things. I think remotely it can be done. I had a very successful team, but I was constantly in front of them. I constantly was saying, you present things to me, or when there was an issue in the data, I went to them and said, okay, let's talk about what happened here. Why was the decision made, but not in a. You can't make mistakes. Let's look at the mistakes and look at how we can improve them. So the notion that people have to be in the office, and I don't want to beat this dead horse, but these things can happen remotely just as well, as they can happen in the office. And that constant review, like you've alluded to Melissa, I felt like I had to do it more remotely because I didn't have that interaction. But it can be done, and it is essential to understanding how to improve your people. And now those people that gave me the presentation, they could analyze their presentation. I gave them some feedback about what they were presenting, and I asked them question. I challenged them. I said, so why are you showing me this? Does this matter? Like, would this matter to a leader above me? And so I challenged them to think so that they could grow. And I just wanted to say, these reviews, all these reviews maybe serve a purpose, but again, what is the purpose? And are we doing it to actually grow the people on our teams?

>> Speaker B: 51:15

Can we talk about the 360 feedback real quick?

>> Speaker A: 51:19

Yeah.

>> Speaker B: 51:19

And I am sure that even just that tagline, 360 feedback means different things to different people. I will explain quickly two ways that I have seen this used. And, Melissa, you may have other ideas of how people even consider 360. The first way is that it's intended to be not just your manager, but also people on your same team, your peers. And if you have subordinates, their evaluation of you as a leader. And it is basically inter departments. Here's just, everybody weigh in. Everybody just weigh in. And, we want this to be not just my perception of an individual, but, everyone you interact with to a certain degree, which is great conceptually, I can get behind it. Conceptually, I can, because it's a great way to see, and also, by the way, expose areas where you might be excelling. And your direct manager doesn't see that because it's not part of their interactions with you, but other people really appreciate certain things. So, conceptually, I can get behind it. Here's the challenge I have with 360 feedback, is if you are not running an organization or your entire company does not have a culture that is safe, that the feedback has to be specific that we're not here to criticize that. We're here to offer feedback, and we don't have the training which to do that in a productive way. It can backfire spectacularly. There are people who have been called to weigh in on reviews and simply didn't. And what does that do for that individual, getting the 360 review? It's like you don't even care enough about me as a peer to weigh in on something you know is important. Important to what I see in a raise. Toxic people that exist in companies. Sorry. That they do. Some of them are really good at hiding how flipping toxic they are. And the higher ups don't think they're toxic at all. They think they're wonderful, engaging, beautiful people, but nobody who reports to that person would absolutely define them that way. You get someone there that's toxic, they can use an opportunity to really tear you apart in those reviews. it needs to be done right. It's a powerful tool. If you have the right culture, because you're getting different views. And if you are driving a culture where to Stella's points, you want to improve and you want to help people grow. It's a great way to do it. But if you don't have the right culture, oh, my God, it can be absolutely devastating, and it can ruin relationships. It can undermine trust. I think of the last company we worked for, Stella. And can you imagine a 360 review there? Nobody would tell the truth. Nobody would tell the truth because we couldn't trust anybody there, so nobody would tell the truth. People would use it as an opportunity to undermine or backstab, because that's just the freaking culture that was there and that was applauded there, for heaven's sakes. They had. What did we call them, Stella? It wasn't what we called them. It's what they called themselves. They were, paid informants. Shut up. So, like, how are you going to do a 360 in that environment? Right? You got to have the right culture. And the one time, and I will share this. again, this is a 90s reference, but whatever, folks, okay? I'm old. shout out to those in Gen X that are still alive and killing it. All right, we're not boomers. You guys get that confused. Those are our parents, okay? The ones that made us drink from hoses and wouldn't let us to live in the house. Those are the boomers. We're Gen X. We just want to be left alone. So here's the thing. My very 1st 360 was literally 360 here's. What I mean. I was a director. The way that they organized it in this company was I sat in the middle of the floor on a chair, obviously. And the team, including my direct reports, my peers, my subordinates, like my second level subordinates, and key people from other departments, sat in a circle around me.

>> Speaker C: 55:25

That is unbelievable.

>> Speaker B: 55:26

I just sat there. I'm like, this is going to be a ride.

>> Speaker C: 55:30

That sounds like an initiation of something. Honestly, sorority or.

>> Speaker B: 55:35

God, I thought I was joining a cult for a second. I'm like, I thought, this is a review process. And nobody had to write anything, but they had to tell me. And so the facilitator, who was not an employee, not HR. So red flag warning number one, no vested interest in any of this, right? I know compass comes in and does good work, but this is not a compass approved project. This was not how you guys.

>> Speaker C: 56:00

That would not be on our list of things.

>> Speaker B: 56:01

First thing this facilitator said is, all right, we're going to target this first question to Roberta's direct reports. What can you tell Roberta right now? What is the most important thing she needs to do to make it easier to work for her in that voice, too. I'm doing a great impersonation. My Team, dead ass silence, right? They're just like, we see her all the. We're not touching that. I'm not going to be. The. One of my managers raises her hand and says, okay, if there's anything. Here's what we need, Roberta, you're so busy that it's hard to get on. Like, I gotta get a question answered. There's a line outside your office. Because there always was. There was literally a queue. Five to six people deep, at all times. At all times. And it's so hard to even get your attention. And I listen, I said, okay, that's fair. And I looked at my team, I said, you guys are the queue outside my office. So here's what would help me help you schedule time with me. I get that some things can't wait necessarily, but those should be the exceptions. If we have to have conversations about an issue, if we have to have conversations about strategy, if we have to have conversations on anything, could you just schedule some time with me? Like, literally just put it on my calendar so I can kick people out of line?

I want to give you the time, but I'm in the office at 05: 57:19

00

a.m. And I don't leave until 07: 57:22

00 p.m. And that was the truth. Then every single day. I should not be that close to the day to day that you guys are forming a queue outside of my office. So where are we failing in that? And let's just have that conversation.

>> Speaker C: 57:39

Yeah, where's the bottleneck?

>> Speaker B: 57:40

Because I should not be the bottleneck. I empower all of you to make whatever decisions you need to make. But the flip side of that is I hold you accountable for the results because how can I not? You can't have empowerment without accountability and vice versa, because it doesn't work. But I was fine with it because I'm like, you're not going to throw me off by that. It was just od. And I thought about it. I'm like, I'm not your typical person. If you put a normal person in the middle. And I have to say it was just a big circle because I had a team of six direct reports, but my total organization was over 100 people. And obviously not all of them were there, but they took like, five or six from my second level downs. So people that would be supervisory, and then I had peers that were other directors. And I just sit and I'm like.

>> Speaker A: 58:28

That is so uncomfortable, so bizarre.

>> Speaker B: 58:31

And I'm like, are we good? It lasted all of 15 minutes because everyone's like, we don't even know how this is supposed to work.

>> Speaker C: 58:39

And the facilitator, I'm sure everybody, that is bizarre. It's like what you do at a sleepover. You're going in the middle and we're all going to be the mean girls and tell you what we don't like about you, or we're not going to say anything. And just numbers.

>> Speaker B: 58:55

I actually made a joke once at one of my peers who always had something to say in a meeting. Like, you work with those people, you wonder if they get compensated by the word, right? Because they're like, they're going to own that floor until they decide they're done talking. And I looked at him and I'm like, his name was, I'm just going to call him Jack. We won't say his name because I'm going to sit there and go, I know who the hell you're talking about. That guy did always get paid by word. It was in his comp plan. so I looked at Jack, who we'll call Jack. And I said, nothing from you, Jack. We're in a meeting. Nothing from you, Jack. And he laughed. He's like, no, I'm good. Great. And so it was over in 15 minutes was the most unproductive thing but she did. This facilitator said, this is a 360 review. This is your opportunity to tell Roberta what she can do to make it easier to work for her, easier to work with her. M. Are we done? Because nobody here wants to say, jack.

>> Speaker C: 59:50

That would be so traumatizing, especially for someone that's like, you're a strong person. so I can. Not that we'd want anyone to go through that, but can you imagine a brand new leader that is still in their development.

>> Speaker B: 1:00:02

Good.

>> Speaker C: 1:00:03

That has never had training on giving or receiving feedback, is uncomfortable being put on the spot. Let's just run everybody out of our organization. Let's make them so uncomfortable in their first day that they're like, I'm getting out of here. This is what it's about. But there are ways to do the 360.

>> Speaker B: 1:00:18

Right.

>> Speaker C: 1:00:18

And I appreciate you saying that, that if you create that culture where it's safe, we do a lot of them, especially in leadership positions. And what's important is the person that the 360 is about. You have them be part of the process. I always say, give me whatever, however many we're doing. Give me a list of ten to 15 names.

>> Speaker B: 1:00:36

Let it be a mix of people.

>> Speaker C: 1:00:37

That you work with really well, people that you find more challenging, people that are newer, more tenure, different levels. And I want you to send the introductory email. Tell them, like, hey, I want this feedback. I want to be the best I can be. I want to know, what are the blind spots? is my perception of myself different than other people? And usually it is how others view me. So there's so much value in it. But do not put somebody in the middle and surround them with people and give them rocks to throw. Yeah, that's.

>> Speaker B: 1:01:05

I want to share one other thing really quick before we, go to wrap, because I just saw it this morning. I literally just saw it this morning. It started off as a TikTok, and I won't say the name of the company, but it is a company in the tech space, and 2023 was hard for tech. I think we might actually do an episode on that coming up. but they were doing a round of layoffs, and this person was aware of it. They were all remote, but this person was aware of it because she saw her teammates were all getting scheduled for pop up 15 minutes meetings, and then they would send her a text saying, hey, I just got laid off. And then, boom, she got scheduled for one of these pop up meetings. So she knew what time it was. She went ahead and decided, you know what? I'm going to record this and make a TikTok out of it, which is so Gen Z to do that. part of me is imploding inside with, like, no, don't do that. That will kill you career wise. Don't do that. And the other part of me is applauding. So I don't know where I go with this, but her boss's Boss was actually the one who set up the meeting. And they had a woman who she said, I've never spoken to you before, who was HR, and they joined the call, because if you've been through these things, folks, in any way, in any part of that, it's always two people. Because what? You need a witness, that's why. You don't need two people to let someone go. You need two people to have a witness. That's why. And so I guess her witness decided to be her cell phone and TikTok, and they gave this typical speech of, hey, the reason we're here today is you're not performing to standard, and we're going to need to let you go. Here's what I wasn't expecting. The rebuttal. She literally said, now, this is her boss's boss. She literally said, well, let me stop you right there. this is the first time we've ever talked, so maybe you're not familiar with my performance. Let me fill you in. I, have more activity than anyone else on my team. I've produced three contracts. And she goes through, and she said, and my frontline manager, who I think is your person, told me that I'm doing great and I have nothing to worry about. So this comes as a complete and total shock to me because I've never talked to either of you before today. And then the TikTok ends. So I'm sure she still got fired, but at the end of it. But, it's a complete failure on both their parts. First of all, she already knew what was going on. Because, folks, if you don't recognize it, nobody is immune. When you start seeing people getting scheduled out of the blue for Zoom meetings come in, and we're going to have a quick 15 minutes meeting, and you look at the attendee list, and it's those two, ah, you're getting fired. That's just how it works. You're getting fired. Sorry. Some people have actually scheduled a bunch of people on those. We know of a company that did a mass Zoom call, which is horrible. We're letting everybody go, but that's more of a layoff due to economic things. This one, they were talking to her about her performance, which is od that the boss's boss led that one versus the boss. Like that was odd. So a complete failure on the company's part of managing this in a much more subtle and discreet way. For folks, again, I do not recommend doing what this individual did because the TikTok has the name of the company. She has the recording of the two people on it, which, by the way, they can't do anything about the recording because what do they always start with? I mean, you're on Zoom, you know, you're being recorded. You have a witness there, so there's no confidentiality here, folks. Sorry, but it's not good form. Even though you're pissed, it's not good form to do that because you have to be able to trust. And that's. I think the thing that I would like to close my piece of this with, before we wrap up, is performance appraisals are based upon trust. I trust that you're reviewing me fairly. I trust that you're giving me constructive feedback. I trust that you want to make me the best that I can be. Or at the very least, you're telling me from a completely objective viewpoint to the degree possible how I'm doing here. And if you don't trust your reviewer, you're not going to trust what they say. And if you then extend that to how do I trust the company that I work for if I am required to lend my time and my skills to achieve whatever it is that I'm hired to do, and my review is not indicative of you, frankly, giving a shit about anything that I do, or at least being specific about what I do, you're going to undermine that trust and eventually just erode it. Where performance appraisals one of the most important tools that you can have as a leader, especially if you truly care about the people that you work with and for, you're ruining that for not just yourself and the opportunities that can lend to you and your own development as a manager, you're ruining that person's perception of you as a manager of the company they work for. And you're creating a culture that is toxic. That is toxic. And folks, it's such an important part of what we have to do as leaders. Don't make it an annual thing where that's the first time they hear that you're disappointed. Don't make it an annual thing where it's the first time they hear that you're elated. Don't pass it. don't be lazy about it. Don't have somebody write the reviews for you and a self appraisal. And to save you time, if you think that your time is too important to spend in reviewing the people that you've asked to give it their all for you, you're an asshole. Don't do that. I'm just going to call it out. You are an asshole. You have to tell your folks with your words, your integrity, your specific examples, your oversight, or you have no business being a leader. You're just somebody. If you spend more time managing up than you do managing your people, you don't deserve to be a leader. Sorry. That's Roberta's view on things. And you know what? Your people will know that that's who you are when you give them a performance appraisal that's half assed. So, Roberta, out. I'm done with my. I'll, step off. I'll tell you, 2024 is NFG year for me.

>> Speaker C: 1:07:16

Just so everyone knows, Ted talk by Roberta.

>> Speaker B: 1:07:22

For me, NFG, for those of you that don't know, is an acronym. Figure it out. That is me in 2024. I decided 2024 is going to be the year where I call out what needs to be called out. I welcome debate. If people say, you're not being fair, let's talk about it. Because I'm always about the debate. I am no longer about swallowing castor oil because somebody else thinks it's good for me. I'm going to call both sides of the carpet if that's what needs to be done. But, for me, the toxic work environment needs to go the way of the dinosaur already. And if I have to be the meteor to make that happen, I will. I don't care.

>> Speaker C: 1:07:59

I want to be on your team.

>> Speaker B: 1:08:00

Yes. And you can review me, and I know it will be valuable.

>> Speaker C: 1:08:04

Let's start the 360.

>> Speaker B: 1:08:06

Tell you what, all our listeners can give us reviews and say whether or not they think we're worth it. That's cool, because, again, we'll take the feedback. We've got five stars right now, so I'm not mad about that. But, I mean, we'll take feedback. You can always send us your suggestions at actually the teabag@toxictroom.com.

>> Speaker A: 1:08:28

Yes. So, Melissa, do you have any closing thoughts to this topic in general? yeah.

>> Speaker C: 1:08:36

Let's do it right. Let's make 2024 the year that we actually get it right. And if you work for an organization that's toxic and you're unfortunately going to be there. Do your own thing. You can still be intentional with connecting with your employees, with doing those conversations that are happening throughout the year. You don't have to wait for it to be done, at the top level to be able to implement it. Implement some of these strategies now to build that trust with your team beginning in January. So throughout the year, you continue to help develop them as the best they can be in the role that they're in. So thank you. Thank you for having me.

>> Speaker B: 1:09:09

You're always welcome back.

>> Speaker A: 1:09:10

Absolutely.

>> Speaker B: 1:09:11

We love having you on. Melissa. We didn't sing this time, so that was okay. I guess. That's an important.

>> Speaker A: 1:09:16

I know.

>> Speaker C: 1:09:16

I was waiting, like, what's our going out music? Some harmonies?

>> Speaker B: 1:09:21

I don't know. I guess we just thought about, Don't know. I don't know.

>> Speaker C: 1:09:26

Next time. There'll have to be a next time. Then next time we'll have to have something for sure.

>> Speaker B: 1:09:29

Absolutely.

>> Speaker A: 1:09:31

So please remember to subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and TikTok. And you can also support us by supporting our various affiliates and look on our blog for additional and we will.

>> Speaker B: 1:09:46

Share this exact episode and resources in the show notes and on our blog@toxictroom.com. Blog.

>> Speaker A: 1:09:55

remember, performance should be something you are always proud of. Regardless of what level you are. Always keep striving for more, not just surviving.

>> Speaker B: 1:10:06

And with that, we out. What?

>> Speaker A: 1:10:10

One last thing, Roberta. I only counted two ums. and I said once, but for the most part, we did a really.

>> Speaker B: 1:10:17

So. Two ums. Two nickels in the jar.

>> Speaker A: 1:10:20

Yes.

>> Speaker B: 1:10:21

How many times?

>> Speaker C: 1:10:22

I didn't know we were counting.

>> Speaker B: 1:10:23

Oh, yeah.

>> Speaker C: 1:10:23

I should have been prepped before.

>> Speaker B: 1:10:24

Yeah. It's okay.

>> Speaker C: 1:10:25

I love to infiltrate some of my comments with.

>> Speaker B: 1:10:29

On our last episode, we talked about how when we listen to ourselves in post production and our producer takes out a lot of the ums, and I'm the worst. I am the queen of And I don't talk like that in daily life. But for whatever reason, when I'm recording, it's horrible, and I hear a lot of it in the finished work, but you have no idea how much actually gets edited out. The only stuff that remains is stuff that if he were to edit it, it would screw up other people. It's got to stay. And the other thing that I do is I say I mean a lot. And again, it's not something I do daily. I don't sit there go. Well, I mean. Or, I mean, I don't talk that way, but for whatever flipping reason I get on this podcast, I put these headphones on. It's like I have a tick or something. So it's one of my resolutions is we're going to stop that, and we have a jar that we're putting nickels in. We were going to do quarters, but we'll go broke. So we're going to do nickels until we can curb our behavior, and we'll count up our ums. So we've got two ums. And. No, I means I didn't catch an. I mean, we'll be honest, though. Like, when we listen to ourselves. I'll put it in the jar. If I said an. I mean, if you need to invoice.

>> Speaker C: 1:12:01

Me for any of the above, please.

>> Speaker B: 1:12:03

Our guests are exempt from it. This is our own personal self improvement plan. We did a self appraisal on our show, and we said, if we listen to our very first episodes, compared to where we are now, massive improvement in how we manage our episodes, we're going to be back one day listening to those first few and be like, oh, thank God we had guests, because, good.

>> Speaker C: 1:12:26

Who were those people?

>> Speaker B: 1:12:27

Those people sound stupid. we're talking about such important topics, and we're stiff as a board. We're like, so, yes. And what about XYZ and ABC? And one, two, three. How about you, Stella? do you have an opinion on ABC? Why, yes, Roberta, I do have an opinion on ABC.

>> Speaker C: 1:12:45

Thank you for asking.

>> Speaker B: 1:12:46

I was just about to interject. You listen to those early ones, we're like, good God almighty. But now it's obviously. It's much more relaxed and conversational. Those early ones were. We didn't know what we were doing. We'd never done a podcast before. So as we continue to improve and we hear ourselves saying, And I mean, And I mean, we're like, yeah, I gotta knock that off. So thank you, Stella. Only two ums. That's awesome. Yay. And with that, we're out. Bye, everybody.

>> Speaker A: 1:13:14

Bye.

>> Speaker B: 1:13:16

Away.