Submitted by madmatt on
in
Forums
For those of you out there religiously performing O3s:
What do you do and say to make it an overall positive experience for your directs?
How do you encourage the good and discourage the bad without punishing a direct's talking candidly with you?
"What can I do to help you
"What can I do to help you overcome this issue?"
"Do you think that XYZ would help any?"
"How do you think we / you should proceed?"
Sometimes asking questions is a more readily accepted form of gaining buy-in for improvement.
Other times, you just need to lay out the expectations of work results. It's not judgmental or derrogatory. It's a simple business need.
"I need status updates from you about each project on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays by 10:00 am."
Nice. So if someone
Nice.
So if someone says
"And this week we finished the Widget Foundry project."
When the Widget Foundry project was way late and way over budget. But above they avoid saying the negative stuff.
How do you get them to admit falling short so you can work through it?
Assuming that you've had the
Assuming that you've had the O3's religiously throughout the Widget Foundry project, I would think you would have had those discussions during that time.
"I see that this project is at 95% of capital spent though we've only achieved 12% of our goals. What can we do to address the underlying issues?" Perhaps an act of nature caused destruction that hadn't been planned for in the budget. Perhaps another team is holding up the process, causing escalating costs, and higher level mediation is required to staunch the flow of capital.
This discussion can then lead into the "I need status updates from you about this project on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays by 10:00 am until we get costs contained and the project on schedule."
If the DR isn't forthcoming about the areas that are of concern to you, it's your job to bring them up. Some (cruddy) managers will launch into diatribes and really beat-down their DR's about their shortcomings once the boiling point has been reached. Other (good, MT-trained) managers will have ongoing discussions about the behavior so that nothing is a surprise to the DRs. Unless you as the manager tell the DR what is expected of them and share with them the points on which they will be judged at performance assessment time, how could one possibly expect them to read minds and correctly guess what's expected?
Or did I miss the point entirely?!
I think you nailed it on the
I think you nailed it on the head. If you are having frequent conversation, bringing up failures shouldn't be any surprise.
I guess once you bring it up it is important to end it on a positive by not blaming, but by helping and working through to an solution, an agreed-upon course of action, and then stating that you have confidence in your direct and that you are there to help along the way.
Whoa..... just hold on here bucko
It is great if they leave an O3 with the warm fuzzies and that you are building the trust relationship. However, these are business meetings and you are discussing outcomes. So let's not lose sight of the target and compound that by confusing blame with them being accountable and responsible.
As the manager, you are going to be successful if your people are successful. Think about it this way. If you don't have them performing well, it is going to reflect on YOUR next O3 with your boss, your next quarterly review or your next annual review. How do you want those to go?
*RNTT
Ask the right questions.
Madmatt,
I like Ashdenver's responses. Most of the time I've found the direct already knows internally what they need to work on and what competencies need growth. Asking the right questions will help them discover their opportunities and define the action they need to take.
-Davis