Please Mute Your Phones!
Who would have ever thought the mute button would play such a predominate role in the world today?
Who would have ever thought the mute button would play such a predominate role in the world today? As much of the world remains closed to physical contact, communication, enabled by technology, keeps us connected and informed. Let’s remember when the physical world opens back up, and it eventually will, just how important communication and the art of connecting is with each other.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Lead Where You Are - Cultivating Authentic Relationships
In this excerpt from our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, due to be released on January 13th, 2020, we discuss how we can regain the art of cultivating relationships and move past just ‘bits and bytes’ communication.
It is incredible to think how developing, cultivating, maintaining, and leveraging personal relationships has dramatically changed just in the last decade. The ease of communicating is replacing the fine art of relating. Our ability to communicate anywhere, anytime is the new norm no matter your generation, gender, work environment or position in life or work. It is easy to lose the art and practice of developing relationships and rely strictly on communicating.
In our upcoming book, Lead Where You Are we explore three key types of business relationships and how we can lead our way back to developing and maintaining impactful connections with others, moving past the “bits and bytes” of communicating to actually building something lasting. We learn that all relationships are not created equal and with little time to devote to cultivating relationships, it is important to recognize the differences and the strengths and the pitfalls of each. And finally, we discuss how to utilize your sphere of influence.
Here’s an excerpt from the Leading Relationships chapter:
PROPERLY INVESTING YOUR TIME
Let’s begin by defining what is a relationship. Depending on which dictionary you grab or website you navigate to, they will all give you something to the tune of “Noun. The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.” In today’s fast-paced and complex world, the time available to establish and cultivate relationships is near zero. To effectively lead and influence where we are, we must get back to developing and, more importantly, investing in authentic, personal relationships each day. As stated before, not all relationships are created equal, so not every interaction will be an investment in authenticity. However, it is important to develop your personal awareness and skill set for identifying the interactions that require a proactive investment from those which are more transient and transactional in nature and impact. With limited time, and that limited time ever-fleeting, we obviously can’t invest the same time and effort in every relationship. Think back on your interactions with others over the past day, week and month and you will likely see a startling pattern. It is highly likely that 80 percent of your impact and value has come from only 20 percent of the relationships and interactions you engage with in a given timeframe. Yes, that’s correct, only 20 percent of your relationships will account for an overwhelming percentage of your personal impact and effectiveness! We call these our Critical 20. This is precisely why it is so imperative that we know how and where to spend our relationship investment efforts.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Relics of Bygone Eras - The "Rank and Yank"
Related Fun Fact of the Week: Real Vaudeville shows would “Drop the Cow” on bad or overly long acts with "the hook", a shepherd's crook extended from offstage to pull away the performer. Oftentimes by the neck. Though he didn't originate it, the hook is forever associated with Howard "Sandman" Sims, a tap dancer who would use the hook on bad acts at the Apollo Theatre.
Talk about getting yanked! Ouch!
The pace of change is rapid. In fact, everywhere you turn the landscape of organizational performance is littered with relics of bygone eras. Last week we talked about our first organizational relic from the past…”climbing the corporate ladder”. As we discussed, climbing the corporate ladder is now being replaced by leveraging agile, individual and team performance networks that match unique talent to unique organization opportunity.
Our next left over symbol of a past performance bygone era is the use of “forced” or “bell curve” performance ranking systems, commonly referred to by the employees as “rank and yank”. This rating practice was championed by Jack Welch, CEO of GE and gained popularity with management throughout the 80’s. (Trust us, It was never popular in the employee population).
The practice of using a bell curve or a forced distribution to rank employees invariably kills morale, pits employees against each other creating unnecessary and unhealthy competition, and wastes thousands of hours with managers and HR professionals sitting in “collaboration meetings” fighting for their people. Even though GE and many other high profile organizations have stop using this method, many organizations still subscribe to what, hopefully soon, will be a long forgotten, ineffective, organizational practice.
With the evolution going on in organizational performance and the every increasing need to attract, develop, and cultivate specialized talent and skills, it important to replace “rank and yank” with continuous performance pursuit conversations and a “lead where you are” performance environment. The onus of performance accountability shifts from a leader reviewing and force ranking performance, to both the leader and employee pursuing performance with the employee continually owning and proactively reviewing their ongoing performance activities and results each month.
Organizations that have replaced this performance management relic in favor of continuous performance pursuit have seen tremendous improvements in both employee engagement and performance results.
It is time to make “rank and yank” a historical footnote in our organizations and business schools.
Want to know more on leading where you are? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package, complete with online courses, guidebooks and other resources.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The Corporate Ladder
Related Fun Fact of the Week: The longest wooden ladder in the world measures 135 ft long. It was made by the Handwerks Museum, St. Leonhard, Austria and completed in April 2005. The ladder has 120 rungs.
What a ladder to climb!
For over 50 years, the term “climbing the corporate ladder” was often a definition of success. The idea of starting at the very bottom and working your way to President or CEO seemed to be the the ultimate working dream.
But, “climbing the corporate ladder” is no longer seen as a path to success, just a symbol of past, ineffective, highly political performance models that often would define the most “qualified” as having the most organizational tenure or time in a position. Or even who you know that might assist you in skipping a few rungs on that ladder.
Thankfully, organizations are rapidly evolving from archaic “corporate ladders” to agile “performance networks” that identify and leverage unique talents and experiences and matches that talent to unique current and future performance opportunities.
Positioning yourself for this evolution of performance requires knowing, cultivating and leveraging your unique talents. Developing the capability and capacity to lead where you are, no matter where you are. This means leading your personal performance, not waiting to have your performance managed or reviewed. Leading change, not waiting for change to happen or letting the status quo consume your performance environment. Being accountable, even when others aren’t. Creating and sustaining authentic relationships, moving past just the communicating and truly connecting with others. And working with purpose and conviction, coming into work each day with a plan and attitude to help others be the best they can be by being the best you can be.
By leading where you are and intentionally developing the unique leader and talents within yourself, you define and cultivate your own future and you don’t let symbols from the past define your path to success.
Want to know more on leading where you are? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package, complete with online courses, guidebooks and other resources.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Leading Performance Connections: The Wrap Up
Random Related Fun Fact of the Week: Steven King did not tell his kids bedtime stories; he made them tell him stories!
This is just a leader instilling an employee-led, leader supported mindset in his kids at an early age!
During this series on reimagining personal performance, we have discussed the much needed evolution of moving from the decades old, less than effective performance management process with the annual and semi-annual review written and delivered by your manager, to next generation performance enablement where you and your manager focus on pursuing performance with the main catalyst of performance being a monthly 20-30 minute performance connection that is employee-led and manager supported. These ongoing, proactive performance connections provide real time clarity, awareness and alignment to success.
Last week we introduced a unique way to continually assess your personal performance, we called it UBER Driven Performance. This performance model allows you to assess your impact and value contributed after every interaction. Did you perform at a 1-2 star level or 4-5 star level after that meeting, phone call or even that hallway interaction? And how would those you were interacting with rate you? This UBER focus on performance, over time, will drive your performance success to whole levels in every interaction and every situation.
Now, we wrap up this series with what we do if we are not meeting expectations that we set and our performance is not where we want it. It’s time to have a crucial performance conversation with our manager or the team that we might be impacting. For years organizations have been offering training for managers on how to have that crucial conversation with the objective to provide tools and a script that tells their employee what they probably already know but don’t acknowledge or accept accountability for poor or less than desirable performance.
It is time to proactively lead our personal performance even when our performance may not be meeting stated expectations. Rather than waiting for our manager to have that crucial conversation with us, it is imperative we take proactive accountability as soon as possible to acknowledge our activity short falls, possible barriers to success, or other factors that are leading to missed expectations. Our crucial conversation is structured to move quickly to acknowledge any personal performance issues that you control or influence and accept responsibility for making changes by using our proven 4 A’s of performance accountability model (Accept, Act, Adjust, and Achieve) to rapidly get back on track exceeding expectations and ensuring performance success.
Over the last few weeks we wanted to enable your success by encouraging each of you to take control of your personal performance, career, and to own and proactively pursue performance success, not just having a manager, one time a year, review our performance and call that development.
Lead the performance evolution currently underway, shift from having your performance reviewed to proactively pursuing performance, every day, every interaction. If you need support and guidance in making this performance shift, we can help. Also, let us hear from you on your personal performance journey. It’s your performance, your career, your results in your control.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Leading Performance Connections: An Uber Driven Performance Mindset
Random Related Fun Fact of the Week: Did you know that once the 4-minute mile run barrier was broken in 1954 by Sir Roger Bannister, it only took 46 days for the next person to break it and then within the year three more runners broke it? Now within the last 60 years over 1,400 runners have now broken that barrier.
Bonus Fact: You have to run 15 miles per hour or 22 feet per second to achieve the 4-minute mile!
So don’t let perceived barriers hold back your performance!
At the end of each Uber ride what happens? Your receive a notification on your phone to rate your driver, providing direct, relevant feedback. There is absolutely nothing the driver can do once the ride is over and that feedback has been submitted. Their only recourse at that point is what? Yell, stomp and holler? Maybe, but that won't change anything. The only productive recourse is to make the next 3,4,5 rides 5-star experiences.
Now what if our everyday interactions, our conversations, meetings and emails were all rated and given feedback in this way? While that is a stretch, what if we held ourselves to that standard? The future of performance lies here. As mentioned last week, the current performance management process must be disrupted just like UBER has disrupted the transportation industry. When we begin to have the 20-30 minute performance connections, in addition to our semi-annual and annual reviews, it is imperative to have an UBER-driven performance mindset. Rating and giving ourselves honest, constant feedback, as well as accepting feedback from others. What's the ultimate outcome of this shift? It becomes employee-led (your) performance being developed and pursued by the employee (you) with no surprises. It's your performance, your career, in your control.
As the shift begins to happen, it then becomes easier to start celebrating and acknowledging milestones and achievements along the way. They are documented and discussed on a consistent and ongoing basis and the outcomes and successes are clear and aligned. Remember, there should be no surprises come year-end!
Next week we close out our Leading Performance Connections series by recapping what we have talked about the past few weeks and discussing how and when to have crucial conversations.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.