Related Fun Fact of the Week:

What were the first words ever spoken on the telephone? They were spoken by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, when he made the first call on March 10, 1876, to his assistant, Thomas Watson: "Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you."

What a connection that must have been!

It starts with you changing your personal model for performance, even if you exist in an organization where the primary feedback process is a performance review conducted 1-2 times per year with 80-90% of the feedback focused on past performance and little time devoted to planning or developing future performance and potential. 

To truly sustain that next level of performance success in this complex and ever-changing business environment, pursuing your performance requires ongoing performance connections, not in just once or twice a year review cycles. These connections are employee led, not manager led, and consist of 15-20 minute conversations that establish an ongoing dialogue of forward feedback focused on performance clarity, alignment, and accountability.  The goal of each performance connection is to ensure progress towards delivering your commitments and meeting the expectations you proactively set with your leader in each previous session.

With each performance connection, you should be engaging in discussion and development with your manager around gaining better organizational, situational, and self-awareness and enhancing your eligibility, suitability, and viability.  To prepare for these performance connections you can loosely use this ratio of time in your twenty minute discussions:  Five minutes on progress since last connection, five minutes on current opportunities and any barriers and your perceived impact to date and the final ten minutes should focus on establishing and aligning your next steps of commitments and setting new expectations.

If you struggle on what to discuss, here are a few examples:

• Organizational, situational and self-awareness

• Eligibility, suitability and viability

• Personal behavior, strengths and opportunities

• Current and future potential

• Teamwork and your impact

• Your legacy and what you want that to reflect

From each performance connection, you and your leader should leave with greater performance clarity, complete alignment, clear accountability on your commitments, and an understanding of what to expect and future desired impact.  

It’s your performance, your career, in your control. Make your connection today.

If you want better employee engagement, try engaging your employees. We know you will be amazed.

For more information on ELO employee engagement contact us or shoot us an email at info@cornerstonelearning.com.

For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!

Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.