Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

3 Performance Management Lessons from Kindergarten

Our son started kindergarten last month. We are fortunate that he has a wonderful teacher at an outstanding school.

However, his behavior in kindergarten started out a little rocky. The teacher took a few weeks to teach them about what behavior was expected in class before she started notifying us as parents about their behavior at the end of each day using the color-coded system you see in this picture. After two days of yellow and then a day of orange came home, you better believe the Ward household was not a happy place. Consequences happened, but we’ve begun to see his behavior improve.

This system seems to be the method that most classrooms are using now, and I think it calls to my attention some key insights- both positive and negative- for performance management in the workplace.

1. Keep it simple. I’m still a little confused in this system as to what color is good, or best and what is bad. I stated in a workshop on performance management last week that while it makes intuitive sense to me that red is bad, why is pink the best? Isn’t that close to red on the color wheel? That doesn’t make sense to me. Then one lady in the audience raised her hand and said that at her kid’s school, red was the best. Really? Confusion abounds. Do we really need such complicated systems to monitor performance? In the workplace, I advocate for a three point scale. Does not meet expectations. Meets expectations. Exceeds expectations. Isn’t it really that simple?

2. Communicate expectations upfront. The teacher has done a good job of showing the kids at the beginning of school what her classroom expectations are and responding with appropriate consequences and rewards given the color-coding system. She gave the kids time to get used to it before the wrath or praise of parents started. (Our little one tattles on himself, so we knew before we actually started getting the colors that things weren’t going so well…).

Do you communicate performance expectations upfront? Your onboarding process should include, day one, a discussion about the performance management system you have in place, the expectations you have for each employee, and an opportunity for those employees to ask questions to clarify those expectations. It will positively impact performance if they actually know what good performance looks like.

3. Give people opportunities to grow and an environment to thrive. I have been pleased to see that the teacher doesn’t seem to label the kids because one day was a bad (or great) day. Pink or red doesn’t define you for life. I think too often when it comes to performance, we assume that once we see bad performance, we are never going to see any good. However, when we understand what makes people tick, we can better adapt to what job responsibilities and environments give them the opportunities to grow and thrive.

Andrew casually mentioned at the beginning of this week that they were all sitting at new tables with new friends. Although I haven’t confirmed this with the teacher, I think that she, after a month with all them, has learned which kids influence each other positively and which ones seem to have a not so good effect. The little boy Andrew has become instant friends with in his class is not at his table anymore. I think they talk too much and end up getting each other in trouble, and the teacher knows this, so, I’m guessing, she modified their environment to help them succeed.

Keep it simple. Communicate expectations. Create an environment for growth. Does your performance management system and philosophy do these three things?

October 4, 2016
Leader, do you need a change of environment?
Long Run Distance: 18

People who are and strive to be leaders tend to take ownership of the situation, the actions, and the results that are derived from effort. We will take the blame, because we also want to take the credit. Rarely do you see a strong leader citing the environment as the problem, and if they do, you feel like they are playing the blame game. Buck up and own it you want to say!

But running in this heat has led me to question if sometimes we do as leaders need to pay more attention to our environment. When it is almost October and you are running 16 miles before 9 am and the temperature reaches 90 before you finish, you begin to question just how strong your performance can be in such suffocating conditions.

I’ve also had clients past and present on both in the leadership coaching and career coaching side of the house struggling with performance issues. And on some occasions, what would really help improve their performance is related directly to their satisfaction with work that has root in them simply being in the wrong place.

Taking some cues from running aliments in the heat, here’s how to know if you need to consider a change in environment in order to up your leadership game:
1. Are you chafing? Chafing occurs when there is a constant rubbing of clothing to skin or skin on skin. It leaves you raw. It is usually has something to do with the heat and the distance you are running. More heat, longer distance, more chafing. And it hurts.
Do you spend time at work and leave each day feeling raw? Is the constant friction causing pain with no remedy- short of a major Vaseline intervention- in sight? You may need to get out of the heat and find a better environment for you to thrive.
1. Are you hangry? Hangry is a play on words we runners (and mothers) use to describe the state of anger resulting from hunger. I’ve been hangry lately, which at first glance seems to be just about the up in mileage, but in considering it, I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that I’m constantly thirsty because running in the heat is totally depleting my fluid levels and making me loose more calories which makes me even hungrier and angrier because the hunger never seems to subside.
Is your environment causing you to be both angry and hungry? Are you hungry for more satisfaction in your work and angry that you aren’t getting it? Has the anger extended outside of work to where you are taking it out on family and friends? If so, time to consider a change in environment.
1. Have you bonked? In other words, is your performance in the pits? Eleven miles in on Saturday after running about a mile in a completely unshaded area and direct heat caused me to bonk. My pace slowed from about a 9:30-9:45 pace to, at the end, a 12-minute mile pace. I might as well have been walking. The distance contributed to this, but the heat made it ten times worse.
Have you hit a wall at work? Is there is no way in sight for your performance to improve given the distain you have for your environment? You may not have it in you to improve or you may not even want to. If so, its time for a change.

Our run this morning was a 50-degree Godsend. Eight miles didn’t feel like eight miles, or at least the type of eight milers we’ve been doing over the last month at 70+ temps when it is still dark outside. No chafing, no hangry (so far today) and no wall. Satisfaction through an environment change. Do you need one?
September 30, 2016
Leaders, Pace Yourselves with 3 Tips from an Elite Runner to Do So

Week 7 Mileage: 35 miles
Long Run Distance: 16

Our training crew took part in the Hartselle Half Marathon to cover our 13-mile long run last week. It’s a quaint race through back roads of farmland. With a field of only 260 runners, cooler temps (finally!), and a volunteer crew that epitomizes southern hospitality, it was a great way to kick off a weekend.

I went into a race, much to my husband’s aggravation (he likes a game plan even more than I do), without a particular time goal or strategy. I just wanted to enjoy the run and see where it took me based on how I was feeling.

The day before the run, though, I tuned into a Marathon Training Academy podcast on my way back from a business trip and picked up a few tips that were in the back of my mind.  This show was an interview with Jared Ward, a top ten-marathon finisher in the Rio Games, a statistics professor at BYU, a father of soon to be three kids, and a self-described “running nerd”.

Jared wrote his masters thesis about optimal marathon pacing, and in the podcast, he described the lessons he learned from this research:

1.     Pace yourself. More experienced runners, and those that finish faster, tend to pace themselves, i.e., they don’t let the excitement of the race make them go out faster than they should. They started out slower and finished faster (running negative splits). Because of this, in the case of his research, the runners who did this were able to qualify for Boston. “Be conservative with your starting pace. The marathon is a long ways and it is going to beat you up throughout,” he says.

2.     Know when to surge. Those who finish faster know when to surge. They take advantage of the terrain, specifically running faster on the downhill to improve overall performance.

3.     Be consistent. His final piece of advice for those wanting to improve performance in the marathon is consistency. “Having a consistent approach is what helps,” he said, citing that one of the best runners in the world says four years of consistent training is needed to graduate into elite status.

Although I’m not striving for elite running status, I do want to get faster and I do want to lead better. I ran negative splits in the race, taking advantage of the advice to surge on a downhill which actually started my stronger pacing about mile 5.  I started out slow which was able to help me have energy to kick it at the end.

Leadership is a lot like the marathon. It takes pacing, strategy to know when to surge, and the consistency to see the plan through.

One of the things I see most in leadership coaching (and in myself as well) is that driven, type A leaders get excited about a plan and they go out too fast wanting the results too quick, and they (me) get impatient when it doesn’t happen. This leads to one of two things then happening: 1) they (me) either, move on to the next flavor of the month, never seeing anything through, or they 2) (me) end up being too exhausted to finish strong and see the plan to completion. This causes us as leaders to neglect to see the people involved in the process that are learning from our own inconsistency. We never, because of the message we send in our own behavior, teach others to appreciate the strategy of knowing when and how to pace and surge at the right times.

Although this race didn’t result in a PR, (I ran it in 2:01:23. My PR was actually in this same race two years ago at a 1:54 something.) I walked away with something much better- a new friend. She was a mom of two under the age of five, like me, trying to beat her PR of 2:02. We pushed each other through the last mile to the finish line.  I would haven’t ever have run the pace I did in the last mile without her beside me pushing me.

I’d like to think that in leadership, just like in this race, if I had been so focused on going out fast to get to the result I wanted, I would have bonked before the end. More importantly, this would have prohibited me from enjoying the race and making a new friend. Pacing, knowing when to surge, and being consistent in running and in leading focuses us for the long hall, giving us the opportunity to push each other to finish strong.

Go finish strong today!

September 23, 2016
Paid Parental Leave

Did you see where Trump announced a plan for paid family leave? Smart move Mr. Trump. Love him or hate him you’ve got to give him credit, this was a smart political move to draw the female vote, especially given that his opponent might have a leg up on the female voter pool.

The day after this announcement, I got this information from a friend (who is in fact pregnant):

The gist is this:

“The United States is at a crossroads in its policies towards the family and gender equality. Currently America provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child-related tax breaks, and limited public childcare. Alternatively, the United States’ OECD peers empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children. The potential gains from strengthening these policies are enormous. Paid parental leave and subsidized childcare help get and keep more women in the workforce, contribute to economic growth, offer cognitive and health benefits to children, and extend choice for parents in finding their preferred work-life strategy. Indeed, the United States has been falling behind the rest of the OECD in many social and economic indicators by not adequately investing in children, fathers and mothers.”

I want to nod my head, but then the libertarian in me kicks in, fighting my inner mom and focus on forward thinking practices in the workplace. Do I think it is a good idea to provide paid parental leave? I most certainly do. But is it the government’s job to mandate that employers provide it? That’s where I start to get squeamish about it.

Many of the most forward thinking companies in the nation already offer paid parental leave, or some version of it. And here’s why as you see from this article back from 2015 on why Amazon was just another that announced they would expand their leave policies:

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would expand its leave policy for new moms and extend the policy to dads for the first time. It’s just the latest tech company to do so, as Silicon Valley realizes the best way to attract top talent is to offer flexible work schedules and ever-flashier perks. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 75% of the workforce will be made up of millennials in just a decade, and employers are kowtowing to their work-life preferences; a recent survey by Ernst & Young found that “millennials around the world are more likely than other generations to cite paid parental leave as an important benefit.”

Employers do it because it is in their best interest to do so. If they want to attract the best talent and retain them, and then seek to create an environment where they can be as productive as they possibly can, they realize the need to provide flexibility during a time in life when it is needed. Short of people deciding they aren’t going to have babies anymore (and that ain’t going to happen), if you want to recruit and retain the best, it’s in your own self-interest to offer flexibility. The industries and jobs that don’t require a leg-up in talent are becoming fewer and farther between in the U.S. and across the globe.

So what if the government could find a way not to mandate something, but be a catalyst for showing employers that it is in their best self-interest to offer this and other quality of life benefits? Love to hear from you on how this might be done.

September 20, 2016
Leaders, Do You Surprise and Delight?
Week 5
Mileage: 32 (I only ran 28- I fell down the steps on Sunday and my foot looked like this for the beginning of the week.)

Long Run Distance: 13 (Half- Marathon Race)

We ran 14 miles last Saturday, the longest distance my husband and training partner have ever run. It went fairly well, but running towards the “finish line” of this run topped it off as a memorable one. As we rounded the corner, we could see that someone had left four cold beers on the curb for us. Our neighbors had timed our return and set them out, gleefully watching through the windows to gauge our reactions. It was a fun surprise (regardless of whether or not we even wanted a beer or not) for a variety of reasons that I think leaders can learn from:
1. Pay attention. The surprise showed us that our neighbors knew enough about what we were doing and when we were doing it to time our “reward” right. They were going out of their way to pay attention, placing the beers on the curb in just enough time to not be seen but also make sure they were still cold. Do you pay attention enough as a leader to be able to catch people in a way that surprises and delights them?
2. Know your people in order to customize. They knew us well enough to customize our beer selections, and to even take it a step backwards, know that we actually drink beer. (Don’t get caught up on the beer here as the example if you’re not into alcohol or disagree with drinking. More power to you if you are, but the beer is just a metaphor for anything that is customized to your people to surprise and delight). Do you know your people well enough to customize surprise or planned rewards to be meaningful?
3. Create an experience that lasts longer than the actual reward. The surprise created an experience for us that we will remember. It was unique, funny, and our neighbors came out of the house after we reacted to our treat (Drew gulped his down, I still reached for the water) and they helped us celebrate the run. I’m sure this will become a “remember the time when story” amongst our neighbors. In the competitive marketplace for talent, employers and leaders who create experiences for their people that are memorable and unique will attract and retain talent more effectively. Are you creating experiences that last with your employees?
Go surprise and delight today!
September 16, 2016