Staff feedback and involvement
From PLN
Staff feedback and involvement
Commentaries on providing feedback to staff, getting feedback from staff and patrons and getting--and keeping--staff involved, not just taking orders. Advice from librarians and about library staff appears first, followed by advice from outside the field. We begin with a note emphasizing the positive...
On being appreciated and appreciative
- by Iris Jastram, excerpted and adapted from this March 3, 2008 post at Pegasus librarian. Used by permission.
Have you ever noticed how we work and we work and some things go right and some things go wrong and some things are frustrating and every once in a long while somebody stops and says, "You did a great job." Ever noticed how you have the impression that those "great job" moments are incredibly few and far between?
...People almost never stop and thank their librarians... I'm sure the same is true for lots of other professions. I actually don't think this stems from a general lack of gratitude. I think it happens because most people see a job well done and think to themselves, "That person is so good at his/her job" or "That person speaks so eloquently," and then figure that the person must know this about themselves, and that lots of other people must tell them this all the time.
The longer I've been a professional, the more I've come to realize that most people, even the famous people, actually don't hear from people when they've been especially helpful or insightful or eloquent. I realized this about a year and a half ago when I worked up my courage to write to a very famous library-type to thank him for a presentation he'd given that my colleagues and I found immensely useful. His reply shocked me in its pure joy at having been thanked. Since then I've worked much harder to get over my shyness and thank people when they've made an impression. I still don't do it nearly enough, but I'm working on that.
Well, today I've been putting together my dreaded annual review document for which I'm supposed to condense an entire year into a page or two of "highlights." As part of this process, I've gone through my "100 Dollar" folder. This is the folder where I throw printouts of emails expressing appreciation, notes about when people have complemented me, and anything else that will help me remember the good days...
We need to be reminded that people are appreciative and that we really do make a difference in and among the routines and stresses of day-to-day work life.
Today, as I went through my folder, I realized that I have at least a couple of notes in there for every month I've worked here since the beginning of my very first Fall Term. Every note made me smile, and everyone brought back a flood of generally pleasant memories (especially the one from a student who said she heard from a classmate that I was "a queller of panicked fears" and could she please meet with me)...
This realization sure is a pleasant way to end a long Monday. But it's more than just pleasant; it's also motivating. I know I'll make mistakes, fail, flounder, and generally mess up. I can guarantee you I'll do these things quite frequently if history is any guide. But you know what? Life goes on, and it's generally going in the right direction...
Giving and receiving feedback
- By Mary Carmen Chimato, adapted from this June 15, 2008 post at Circ and serve. Used by permission.
Annual performance appraisal time has come and gone at MPOW and with it comes the ups and downs of giving and receiving feedback. One of the hardest things a manager has to do is provide feedback about a person’s performance. It is especially difficult if the feedback is negative, for aside from the discomfort that comes along with telling someone something they don’t want to hear, comes the potentially unpleasant experience of them telling you all sorts of things that you don’t want to hear. There are some tactics you can employ to make the experience go smoothly and help turn an uncomfortable situation into a positive and constructive one.
Giving feedback
- Be clear. Know what you want to say and make sure you are saying it clearly. Write it out beforehand and practice the conversation that you want to have.
- Be specific. Address the exact issues. Avoid generalizations. Give examples of the behavior or performance that needs to be corrected or is at issue.
- Emphasize the positive. Don’t let the entire conversation be negative. If possible, emphasize and encourage what is working well. However, do not sandwich negative feedback in between positive comments. This may deemphasize the importance of the areas needing improvement. Begin or end the discussion with the positive.
- Focus on the behavior, not the person. This is not personal, it is professional. It has nothing to do with who someone is, but about the actions they exhibit while at work. Discuss specific behaviors and cite examples, do not make assumptions about or imply anything about a person’s personality, intelligence, demeanor, etc. The desired outcome of the discussion is a change in behavior, not a radical transformation of a person’s character.
- Own the feedback. Don’t pretend to be the messenger. You’re the manager, you’ve observed the areas of improvement, you’re performing the evaluation. Don’t try to kid yourself or your employee by acting like the criticism is coming from someplace else.
- Don’t provide advice. Very often people don’t need advice on how to change poor performance--they usually know the cause and if it is a repetitive problem they have heard all the advice they can hear. Instead of offering your personal insight and advice, allow the person to take ownership of their problem and discuss a plan of improvement. Ask what they can do to change a situation. What can you work on together to reach the desired outcome? How can they work better? What will they do to improve their situation?
- Discuss expectations and timelines. Clearly lay out expectations and the time frame in which to achieve them. Clearly define benchmarks and how they will be evaluated. Make sure that employees understand what is expected of them and that you will be watching for improvement. Make sure employees understand the consequences if they fail to change or improve behavior.
Receiving feedback
- Don’t justify or argue your position. Don’t lose your temper. Ever. Arguing will only make an uncomfortable situation worse and solves nothing.
- Have some perspective. Remember that this is about specific behavior or instances. This is not personal and is not a judgment or indictment of you as a person. You’re having a discussion about how you interact with patrons at a service desk, not about the moral fiber of your soul.
- Think before you respond. Listen to what is being said and consider it before responding. Ask questions, ask for clarification. Don’t interrupt or have a biting comeback for every comment. Consider what the feedback is about and why it is negative. Ask yourself if there is any truth to it before shooting off a response.
- Don’t sulk. Act like an adult, not a child. It is perfectly acceptable to give yourself some space while thinking about what has been said; however ignoring someone, sulking, or being nasty are not effective and mature responses to processing and handling negative feedback.
- Choose your path. No matter what is said and discussed, ultimately what you do with feedback is your decision. You can choose to look at it as a learning and growth experience and use it to improve yourself and your work, or you can stew about it and let it consume you. Own your actions and decisions. Be honest with yourself- is the criticism something you have heard before and are struggling with? Do you need assistance in turning performance around? Are you happy in your work environment?
No one likes to hear anything negative about themselves. Giving someone negative feedback is not a fun experience. It is not something managers look forward to doing. The best we can hope for is that we take a bad situation and make it a positive one by honestly discussing issues and working together to develop strategies for improvement.
How to kill a young librarian's love of librarianship
- By Bill Drew. Excerpted and adapted from this June 16, 2008 post at Baby boomer librarian. Used by permission. It's mostly about indirect feedback--the messages you send by what you do.
I had a very interesting conversation with a young librarian at a recent conference. This librarian has been in an academic library for over 5 years. He is enthusiastic, excited, and extremely intelligent. However, the library he works in has gone through a major regression in management style over the past decade... Many librarians there that used to be innovative when I first knew them 24 years ago are now protecting their turf and working on maintaining the status quo. The worst part of it is that librarians there do not even recognize what has happened.
After this conversation and others...I have come to the conclusion that at several campuses, new librarians are not being allowed to thrive and grow as much as they could.
Here is my list of how to kill a young librarian's love of librarianship:
- Do not allow out of the box thinking.
- Award only those that maintain the status quo.
- Blame people for failures.
- Call young librarians "cute" and ignore what they can really do.
- Tell them "NO."
- Do not allow new librarians to try out different duties. Limit them to only what is listed in their job description.
- Maintain walls between departments.
- Demand unquestioning trust in what you do.
- Veteran librarians know best because that is the way it has always been done.
Comments
- Aaron the Librarian adds a few:
- Hold a librarian responsible for actions and activities where the librarian has no authority or, if on a computer, where the librarian has no sysadmin privileges
- Request a unreasonable project with an impossible delivery date, formally make negative comments in personnel file about lack of follow through
- Request a reasonable project with a mutually acceptable deadline, then a week or two after praising on-time delivery and how acceptable product is, tell the librarian "you don't do anything around here" in the middle of the faculty meeting.
- Anonymous suggests several, including four that relate to feedback and communication:
- Take credit for their ideas/work.
- Discourage experimentation and open discussion of ideas.
- Take a good idea and micromanage it to death.
- Secrecy of decision process.
- Liz notes: Every time the new/young librarian demonstrates professional knowledge in an area where your own knowledge is lacking, attribute it entirely to them being "raised on computers," even if it's not really a technology or generational issue.
- Another anonymous offers this feedback-related item (among others): Keep telling them, "you're only here to move on after a couple of years"
- Bill Drew passed on some feedback-related items received in email:
- Whine about "the new generation" with no work ethic
- Conduct meaningless personnel evaluations
- Keep reminding them that if they don’t like it here, they can quit
- Refuse positive feedback on them from faculty, staff, and students
- If there is someone you like, make sure they get unfair perks.
- One commenter wondered why this was limited to young librarians and added:
- I think one of things that kills anyone's love of librarianship is this very urge to start making assumption that it is only the "new" librarians, or the "young" librarians or certain "generations" (yeah, because those exist) that think certain ways or want to try new things.
- Editor's comment: One anonymous person added this: "Something else that is frustrating is the fact leadership development for librarians seems to be targeted at those in the profession for 10 or fewer years. Not everyone is on a short trajectory to move up in libraries and it might be beneficial to includes librarians who have been in the profession longer than 10 years." I can only speak for myself (with 40 years in the field...) in saying that PALINET Leadership Network, at least, targets all librarians thinking about leadership.
Leader's Digest
- by Leslie Dillon
Employee satisfaction
While employees gave their bosses “high marks” in a recent study of worker satisfaction, staff still suggested areas for improvement:
- 43 percent want bosses to use their employees' skills and abilities better.
- More than 35 percent want the boss to step in more often to resolve conflicts.
- Just over 25 percent wish bosses would ask for their ideas and listen more readily.
Worried your staff are suffering from too much pressure? Well, don’t fret! Fewer “than 10 percent wish their bosses would put less pressure on them.” (Sales & Marketing Management, Manage Smarter)
Stop saying "Don't bring me problems-—bring me solutions"!
I never liked hearing that remark from a manager, so imagine my relief when I read this article! Apparently it's one of the more counterproductive things a manager can say.
Frances Frei, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, believes you can improve your organization's performance by "creating an environment that encourages both identifying and solving problems." Insisting on only solutions actually encourages your staff to ignore problems they can't "figure out how to fix." What you're really telling them is “I only want to know about the [problems] you can solve.” That stifles collective solutions.
Research shows that in environments where it's not safe to talk about problems, performance lags. Frei advises readers to create a "culture of accountability that doesn’t limit recognition only to those who find both the problem and its solution... The bottom line is that you can’t improve performance if you’re not solving problems, and you can’t solve problems you don’t know about." (Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay with Frances Frei, “Don’t bring me problems—-bring me solutions!”, Harvard Management Update, March 2007.)
Inner work life: Understanding the subtext of business performance
Managers know that employees have good days and bad days--but how do those swings affect performance? People perform better when their workday includes more positive emotions, stronger intrinsic motivation (passion for the work) and more favorable perceptions of their work, their team, their leaders and their organization. And managers’ behavior dramatically affects employees’ inner work lives.
The single most important differentiator between employees’ best days and their worst days “was their sense of being able to make progress in their work... Far and away, the best boosts to inner work life were episodes in which people knew they had done good work and their managers appropriately recognized that work.” (Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, “Inner work life: Understanding the subtext of business performance,” Harvard Business Review, May 1, 2007. Full text is available from HBR for $6.00 or on EBSCOhost's Business Source Premier.)
How to get others involved
“Employees genuinely support only those things they had a hand in creating. …That realization fundamentally changes the way you manage.”
To get things moving in an organization, you need involvement from both a realist’s and a humanist’s perspectives. On the realist’s side, you need involvement in developing plans and budgets, and ensuring that deadlines are met. On the humanist’s side, you need to make sure everyone understands the plan and is committed to it, and figure out how to handle resistance. You need to think about both the types of involvement and the levels of involvement needed.
Seek to involve “people with diverse points of view--this usually results in more innovative solutions.” It also makes sense to bring “resisters, detractors, and other troublemakers onboard.” It’s better to have them use their energies for a project than against it.
To keep people involved, keep “the vision for the project front and center. Remind people what’s going to be different.” Give them regular progress reports and let them know their input is valued.
Closure is critically important because it’s “at the completion of a project that you build a foundation for the future. Celebrating what’s been accomplished makes people more willing to participate in other initiatives.”
(Richard H. Axelrod, ”Five questions with Richard H. Axelrod: How to get others involved,” Harvard Management Update, August. 2007. Available on EBSCOhost or from Harvard Business Online for $4.50.)
Six steps to effective feedback
Providing effective feedback is one of a manager’s most important tasks; it’s also one of the most difficult. Here’s a six-step model, proposed by Jack Stahl, current CEO of Revlon and former president of Coca-Cola, to facilitate feedback and make it more effective.
- Value the individual. Begin by affirming what the employee contributes to your organization. Be sincere and thorough. This step is critical because it frames the conversation.
- Ask the person to identify his/her biggest challenges. Ask the employee to assess his/her performance, including both
strengths and challenges. This will help you pinpoint areas for targeted coaching.
- Provide targeted feedback. Give specific examples of behaviors to change.
- Agree on areas to develop for the future. The objective here is to focus the individual’s development and encourage him/her to practice specific new skills. You could also point him/her to training opportunities.
- Agree on the benefits of improving and the consequences of not improving. This step is designed to fuel the employee’s motivation to improve or change.
- Commit your support and reaffirm the person’s value. “When people feel valued, they can hear difficult feedback without being demoralized by it.”
(Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay, “A CEO’s six steps to effective feedback,” Harvard Management Update, August 2007. Available from EBSCOhost’s Business Source Premier or from Harvard Business Online for $6.50.)
Encouraging dissent in decision-making
Contention is essential to good decision-making.
There’s a “widespread and problematic” propensity toward silence “in both the public and the private sectors.” People tend to avoid speaking up about things that are important to them, not only when it’s bad news but also when something’s perceived as a good idea. This reluctance to speak up stems from fears that superiors won’t like an idea or that it may criticize the status quo. The costs of speaking out seem more certain than the benefits.
How do you get contention in decision-making? Here are a few pointers:
- Start at the top. If high contention isn’t demanded at the top, you won’t see it anywhere else in your organization. Senior managers are often the ones responsible for suppressing dissent. Alfred P. Sloan Jr., president of General Motors in the 1920s, said in a meeting of top decision-makers, “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the subject here.” Heads nodded around the table. “Then,” continued Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting, to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.” Senior managers must “be able to hold paradoxical ideas, or to think in the future and the past, simultaneously.”
- Compensate candor. Encourage dissent and develop incentives to reward it.
- Honesty at the heart. Honest, thorough, ongoing self-criticism is at the heart of improvement.
- Listen. Sometimes the smartest leaders shut out others’ voices. They don’t listen because they believe others’ comments aren’t worth listening to. Listen anyway!
“Decisions are seldom better for silence, and overcoming that is a key task for the leader of any organization.”
(Garry Emmons, “Encouraging dissent in decision-making,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, Oct. 1, 2007.)
How to make sure your constructive criticism works
Your top employees may have the hardest time hearing honest feedback because they haven’t “learned how to learn from failure.” They can become defensive and blame others. “In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it most.” Another reason for resisting feedback is long tenure at a job or in the organization. The longer someone’s been in a position or the older they are, the more likely they are to resist change.
Here are some techniques for getting your feedback heard:
- Prepare as if you’re making a presentation. Gather all the instances of negative behavior and organize them into key themes. Then frame the discussion in terms that the employee values most.
- Reinforce the message--repeatedly. You may need to have several conversations before the person acknowledges that there’s is a problem. You may even need to have regular meetings with the person. Look for opportunities to give them immediate feedback about old, unchanged behaviors or new, modified behaviors.
- Customize the conversation. Tailor your remarks “to fit the employee’s communication style.” If the person is detail-oriented, give them step-by-step specifics. For someone who’s impatient with detail, come to the point quickly and give only as much detail as is absolutely necessary.
- Be aware of power signals. The location you choose says a lot about power. If you use your office to deliver unexpected, unwelcome criticism, you might want to sit in a guest chair rather than behind your desk—-except in those situations where you need to assert your power.
- Consider what the culture communicates. The corporate culture plays a large role in how employees respond to criticism. If your organization clearly values continuing improvement and rewards it, then employees will be more likely to accept thoughtful criticism and hear what they need to hear.
(Anne Field, “Block that defense: How to make sure your constructive criticism works,” Harvard Management Update, Sept. 2007. Available from EBSCOhost Business Source Premier or from Harvard Business Online for $4.50.)
Perfecting performance reviews
Both managers and their staff need to do plenty of preparatory work on performance reviews. Here's some practical advice from an expert:
- Train employees to expect and request feedback throughout the year. They should keep a record of their accomplishments, plus a list of questions and issues to address.
- Let them know they can ask managers for more. Employees should ask for specific examples when there's criticism and they should ask for positive feedback, as well.
- Create an atmosphere of open negotiation. Train your managers to talk about negotiable points in open terms.
- Ask for more training. Managers need to let their staff know it's all right to ask for more training. Managers and employees should "jointly commit to a personal development plan."
("Performance Reviews Perfected," Inside Training Newsletter, Oct. 5, 2007.)
Moving management online (parts 1 & 2)
In Moving Management Online (Part One), Gary Hamel argues “that the web has the power to turn management-as-usual inside out.” (What’s surprising, at least to me, is that while the internet has “dramatically transformed” the business world, management hasn’t really changed much at all.) Hamel believes that in the future, “the internet will change the work of management just as thoroughly as it’s changed every other facet of commercial life [because] the internet is an immensely powerful tool for multiplying human accomplishment.”
Two tasks are essential to increasing what people can accomplish:
- Create an environment in which individuals are empowered, equipped, and encouraged to give their very best.
- Aggregate individual efforts so that people can do together what they couldn’t do on their own.
“If we’re clever, and a bit courageous, the web may well allow us to overcome some of the systemic pathologies of our long-in-the-tooth bureaucratic management model.”
In Part Two, Hamel explores five “design flaws” that limit the performance of traditional organizations and gives possible Web-based solutions for these flaws:
- Design flaw 1. Share of voice equals share of power. In a typical organization, the farther down employees are, “or the more unconventional their views, the harder it is for them to get a hearing. In contrast, the views of senior executives are often assigned a lofty ‘coefficient of credibility.’” Potential Web-based solution: A democracy of ideas.
- Design flaw 2. Creative apartheid. In many organizations, innovation is often “the responsibility of the ‘creative types’... Everyone else is viewed as peripheral.” Potential Web-based solution: Distributing the tools of innovation.
- Design flaw 3. Under-informed decisions. “Hubris, unchallenged assumptions and inattention to competing viewpoints often lead to poor decision-making at the top.” A recent survey revealed that senior executives believed nearly 1/4 of their decisions were wrong. Potential Web-based solution: A market for judgment (e.g., your organization aggregates the views of a cross section of employees).
- Design flaw 4. A monopsony (one buyer facing many sellers) for new ideas. Typically an employee with a new idea must go up the chain of command to seek funding. “This is often a substantial barrier...for new ideas.” Potential Web-based solution: An internal “band of angels.”
- Design flaw 5. Persistent misalignment between power and competence. Organizations “get into trouble when the mental models of key business leaders depreciate faster than their political power”. There’s often a substantial time delay before authority is realigned. “The price paid for this time lag: an organization that fails to adapt to fast-changing circumstances.” Potential Web-based solution: Reverse accountability--where power is “automatically redistributed” when environmental changes devalue executive knowledge and competence.
Hamel concludes with a couple of questions for his readers: “Can you think of other design flaws that limit the ability of large bureaucratic organizations to innovate, adapt, and get the very best out of their people? If so, do any of the beb’s nascent social technologies seem to offer the potential for a design fix?”
(Gary Hamel, “Moving management online (part one)” & “Moving management online (part two),” Management 2.0, Harvard Business, Nov. 1, 2007.)
Related articles
- We got trouble... - an overview for articles on internal difficulties.
- How healthy is your organization? - Meredith Farkas and Jeff Scott comment from different libraries and different perspectives.
- Planning for innovation: Experience at the Library of Congress - The Library of Congress needed a new five-year strategic plan. Deanna Marcum recounts the process used to involve staff in the process and lessons learned about staff involvement and innovation.
- Performance improvement - Feedforward - A different approach to feedback.
- Problematic communication and behavior - a group of checklists and article summaries
- Evaluate performance, not people - Jamie LaRue considers a different level of staff feedback: How library boards evaluate directors.
- "Hey boss, I want your job!" - Jamie LaRue shows signs of his organization's health, asking staff what they want over the next few years.
- Looking in the mirror - Questions to ask yourself and (new) employees about where you and your institution are now and want to be in the future.
- Generational notes - A variety of notes on generational issues.
