Curious about Conflict?

 

Since we’ve written two books about conflict, The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook and The Conflict Resolution Phrase Book, we’ve done a number of interviews on the subject. To end Workplace Conflict Awareness Month, we’re going to share some of our favorite questions with some updated answers. 

Question: What are some tips you have for managers and business owners on handling conflict within their businesses whether it’s with their employees or other business associates? 

Answer:  Conflict is often creativity trying to happen, but keep in mind that creativity is a process. Creativity can bring fresh ideas into the organization. So, don’t always be quick to avoid conflict, unless it becomes destructive.  

Value and manage the relationships in your workforce. Everyone makes contributions and brings different ideas. Welcome new and different perspectives.  Well-managed conflict can be very positive in moving relationships and the organization along.

Finally, identify the problem at the root of the conflict so you’re certain you’re addressing the right issue.  Ask good questions and give good information.  Don’t get hung up on extraneous and irrelevant facts that have nothing to do with the issue. Resolving a conflict is really solving a problem.

Question: You mentioned well-managed conflicts. What are some ways you can assure a conflict is a well-managed one?

Answer: Listening is key to maintaining good relationships and getting good information. In a well-managed conflict, people share varying ideas, and the others should be listening without judgment, and not thinking how they are going to respond to the speaker.  If you stop and acknowledge “I’m going to hear what he or she is say without getting defensive or argumentative,” you can have some pretty amazing results. 

Take the time to really listen to each other. In doing so, it may occur to you that you never thought about what the other person is saying, and that may spark a good discussion. 

If you’re asked a question, pay attention and answer the question that’s asked.  Giving information that’s not relevant is frustrating and can derail an otherwise effective conversation.

Question:  Organizational change is constant in today’s business environment.  How can managers help employees deal with change to minimize conflict?

Answer: “Spring is a lovely reminder of how beautiful change can truly be.” And in 2021, spring has never looked brighter after a year-long pandemic that we’re emerging from.

Change can be uncomfortable for everyone, but it can also bring new energy into the organization. The challenge is getting through it. We’ve experienced lots of changes in 2020, and organizations are preparing for new ones as people head back to work.

Managers must recognize that people respond to change in different ways. Don’t forget that every individual employee has different needs during these times. Listen carefully when change is announced in your organization so you are comfortable explaining the change to your employees. 

Be honest with employees and explain what is driving the change. Communicate realistic expectations. For example, if your organization is moving to new working arrangements, employees will want to know where they fit in a changing organization. Be flexible and ready to adjust expectations as things progress. 

To learn more about our books on conflict management, visit our website at https://www.bigbookofhr.com/the-conflict-books

The Cost of Conflict

 

So many people avoid conflict, especially at work. That’s a problem especially if the leaders are conflict adverse. Let’s take a quantitative approach of what conflict costs an organization if you address it versus ignore it. Compare the two then decide what’s best for your organization. 

Addressing conflict has associated costs. Consider the situation where a manager observes two team members openly in conflict over some issue and recognizes her need to address it, preferably by sitting them both down and having a facilitated discussion. Calculate those costs: 1) the number of hours the manager spends preparing and holding the discussion times her hourly rate; and 2) the number of hours spent by the individuals in discussion times their hourly rates. This is the simplest approach, and it should be the most cost effective.

If an employee brings a formal, internal complaint, the complexity and costs increase. Someone (internal or external) investigates. It involves time gathering and reviewing background information, determining which individuals to interview, conducting those interviews, and preparing investigation reports. Estimate the amount of time the investigator spends (background, interviews, report) and multiply the estimated hours by his hourly rate. Then add the time spent by interviewees times their hourly rates. There may also be costs associated with legal advisors, depending on the nature of the complaint. 

If external charges are filed, charges of discrimination, for example, this is an indicator that the conflict may not have been acknowledged internally. The cost of responding to an external charge may be similar to internal investigations (fact gathering, interviews, responses).  However, legal counsel will likely be involved, and legal fees will accrue increasing the costs. If a lawsuit is filed, outside counsel’s legal fees will dominate. Needless to say, as the conflict moves further from the root cause, the costs will grow exponentially.

Now consider a situation where there is a conflict that is not brought to anyone’s attention, or perhaps it was, but was not addressed. Are you aware of how many people leave your organization because they have “suffered in silence” until reaching the point where they decide to leave?  The associated costs include lost productivity (can you calculate the extent?) and turnover (which you should be tracking). 

If a work environment is allowed to grow toxic, and the cause of the toxicity is ignored, consider the costs of low morale, lost productivity and extensive turnover.

So, what’s an organization to do if they want to minimize the costs of conflict?

• Foster an environment where differences and problems are addressed. For example, the two team members who can bring their conflict to the manager.
• Train managers how to spot issues so they don’t escalate.
• Empower employees to confront conflict in a positive way, and support them when they bring the conflict forward. 
• Hold all employees to the same standards.
• Invest in training for managers and employees. Compare the training costs with the cost associated with conflict outlined above. Consider which approach brings your organization a larger return on its investment.

You can read more about conflict in our books, The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook and The Conflict Resolution Phrase Book. To learn more, visit our website at https://www.bigbookofhr.com/the-conflict-books

What’s a Manager’s Role in Conflict?

It is Conflict Awareness Month, and you may be seeing a lot of articles and posts about ways to manage conflict in the workplace. One of the parts of conflict that is frequently overlooked is the role managers play in conflict between their team members. Should a manager jump in and try to resolve conflict or not?  

Managers often find themselves trapped in the middle of a situation, a situation or issue that is not theirs to solve. What’s a manager to do?  A manager doesn’t necessarily own every issue – the employees do. Here are five tips to help managers understand their role in and the best approach for dealing with workplace conflict:

• Know when and how to intervene. Different circumstances call for different responses. If one employee’s lack of performance is preventing other employees from getting their jobs done, the manager has a direct role to play. He must address performance deficiencies of that team member. If an employee is struggling because of issues outside the workplace, then expert help, such as an employee assistance program, should be suggested.

• Give your employees the space to grow. Employees need the freedom and authority to solve problems that relate to their work. Help them to learn conflict management techniques and develop problem-solving skills. As a manager, take advantage of this training yourself and model the techniques and skills you learn. Think of the positive impact for your organization when your workforce is skilled in avoiding the negative impact of unresolved conflict. 

• Recognize that tension, egos, and emotions often get in the way. Managers have an interest in developing good working relationships among team members. You should define the problem and the impact it’s having in the workplace. Don’t discount the impact of emotions. Sometimes they are the person’s passion around an issue. Help employees control and balance emotions so they don’t interfere with resolution.  

• Strengthen your own facilitation skills. You are often a neutral observer to a conflict. This is a great vantage point from which you can assist by guiding employees through a mediated discussion. Meet with employees, define roles, and set ground rules. The employees are the primary players, not you. They will be asking questions of each other and proposing solutions. You won’t offer advice, opinions or solutions, even if asked. You’re there to keep the discussion on track.

• Optimize conflict – it’s often creativity and innovation trying to happen. Employees close to the work often have great ideas for better solutions. Help them brainstorm, evaluate and priorities these ideas. When people sit down and talk, calmly and rationally, great information and viewpoints are exchanged. Working relationships are strengthened. Embrace the point of view that conflict is essential in the workplace if it’s part of a creative and engaged culture that wants the organization to grow and thrive. 

To learn more about our books on conflict management, visit our website at https://www.bigbookofhr.com/the-conflict-books

Without Trust, Conflict

 We know that conflict is a necessary ingredient in a good story, but how about at work? Well, if it’s managed and positive, conflict can lead to innovation and creativity resulting in business growth and success. Mean-spirited conflict, on the other hand, is great in a mystery, but at work it can erode trust and derail relationships quickly. 

Every good story has heroes or heroines and villains. They exist in real life and in real organizations. Consider a senior leader described as follows: Always confrontational whenever you ask a question or bring something to their attention. Doesn’t listen and talks over you. Speaks to others in a tone that is scolding and confrontational. Dismissive of others concerns. Doesn’t communicate in a respectful manner. Micromanages people’s time and schedules.

The challenge in this situation comes when others in the organization who interact with this leader say:

• I avoid interaction and find a workaround.
• I cringe when I have to ask something or bring up a situation. 
• Too many negative encounters – my trust is eroded.
• Behavior that doesn’t model our values.
• Recurring behavior that is creating a negative, unproductive work environment.
• I avoid conflict but the behavior has to stop. 

Sounds like it’s time for some respectful confrontation which should come from the leader’s boss since the comments about this leader’s behavior is widespread.  Some points the boss might make are:

• You’re in a visible and valuable position in this organization, but your behavior towards your colleagues is eroding their trust in your abilities and in the organization. Let me give you some examples of the feedback I’ve received. 
• We strive for a collaborative, respectful culture and work environment in the organization. However, your interactions with many staff members have resulted in expressions of poor morale and concerns about the work environment growing toxic. Here are examples of what I’ve heard. 

This gives the boss the opportunity to point out the behavior and the impact it’s having on others individually and on the entire organization. It also opens the conversation to talk about steps for improvement.

The next thing the head of this organization should do, along with modeling respectful behavior, is empower the employees to respond to negative behavior in a respectful and positive way. Examples of things they can say when encountering or observing negative behavior by anyone include:

• Please don’t be dismissive toward others in your comments.
• Talk like that is disingenuous and doesn’t support the values of the organization.
• This goes against who we are as an organization. I can’t accept this type of behavior at work.

Finally, the organization must support and recognize employees when they confront or report negative behavior. Employees have to trust that everyone is accountable and held to the same standards. 

To learn more about our conflict books, The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook and The Conflict Resolution Phrase Book visit our website at https://www.bigbookofhr.com/the-conflict-books.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

 

The year 2020 ushered in the #WFH (work from home) frenzy as offices closed during the pandemic. Zoom became the normal mode of communicating, meeting and collaborating. As employers contemplate the future and vaccinations allow people to slowly head back to work, it is certain that the workplace has changed forever. Hybrid workplace will undoubtedly be the new normal with employers rotating between working remotely and coming into physical office.

What will this do for collaboration? One thing we learned during the pandemic is that the lack of social interaction and in-person professional contact certainly put a strain on teams. If all team members are not in the same place at the same time, will that strain worsen? 

A colleague who consults with a client in another city shared that during the pandemic, Zoom meetings were a welcome change for her. In the past, she called into team meetings and was a lone voice on a speaker phone in the conference room. She felt more engaged in Zoom meetings when everyone was a square on the screen. Indeed, Zoom is working on a model where people who are present for a meeting in a conference room will have their own video boxes thereby allowing remote workers the same experience. Great start, but Zoom, a 2-D video call platform, does have its limitations.

Enter virtual reality and 3-D holograms. Dalvin Brown reported in The Washington Post on February 9, 2021, that a number of companies are launching 3-D display systems. One beams presenters into meetings and conferences, another enables hologram collaboration within virtual meeting rooms, and yet another enabled holographic-style virtual meetings on their platform. A number of other companies are racing to develop similar Web conferencing capabilities. 

The notion that is driving this innovation is that holograms are more engaging to work with than tiles of faces on a computer screen. Holograms provide the ability to read body language and other physical reactions in cyberspace, and they foster greater collaboration and communication among colleagues who are not or cannot be present in the same place. Not quite in-person professional contact, but certainly closer.

What about the expense of all of this? Traditionally, setting up high-definition holograms required expensive projection hardware and technicians. Software advancements, however, are unlocking ways to use laptops, computers, smartphones and other devices to engage with and stream holograms emitted elsewhere. 3-D display systems are also being developed and start-ups in the 3-D space are positioning their offerings.

It might not be much longer until we can all say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” or beam me into meetings and conferences we might otherwise be prohibited from attending. 

Cornelia Gamlem

How Are They Doing?

While a good manager always pays attention to their staff, right now is a critical time to lean closer to hear how they’re doing.

With so much uncertainty still facing us, and with the personal pressures your staff may be experiencing because of virtual learning, anxiety of getting vaccinated, and who knows what else, you should be paying close attention to just how people are feeling.

Here’s a simple idea to try—ask, “How are you feeling today or this week or right now?” Of course, you must sincerely want to know how that person is feeling, and you must listen carefully to the response you get. Be sure to ask all the employees on your team.

Don’t be surprised if you get a casual response at first because they aren’t sure you really want to know the truth. How can you convince them to open up? By sharing how you’re feeling and that may not be easy for some of you.

We’ve shared tips in previous blogs about the power of showing vulnerability, but this is even more personal. What if you shared how stressed you are and what you’re doing to move through the stress? Your team will see an entirely different side of you and that you are just as vulnerable to the stresses of our current work environment as they are.

You should have the “how are you doing” conversation privately, but you can share your own stressors with your team at your weekly meeting—whether it is virtual or in person. 

If you hear things from your team in your one-on-one conversations that you can change or impact in some practical way, move as quickly as possible. Maybe it’s a change in their schedule that could make their day a lot simpler to navigate. Maybe it’s a deadline that could be adjusted. Maybe it’s a report that they think has outlived its usefulness and if they could stop doing it, the time they saved could make all the difference in their productivity or in their personal life.

So, show your human side and don’t worry—they will respect you even more than they already do, and you could make a real difference in a life. That difference might save an employee from resigning due to competing schedules and wouldn’t that be worth it all?

Barbara Mitchell

Remarkable American Women

In March we celebrate Women’s History, so I set out to write a blog spotlighting some—women who were leaders, advocates and activists. 

Dorothy Height. In 1929, Ms. Height was admitted to Barnard College but was not allowed to attend because the school had apparently met its yearly quota African American students. Instead, she went on to graduate from New York University. She eventually went on to work for the YMCA and joined the National Council of Negro Women beginning a career of fighting for civil rights and equality for black Americans and women. In 1957, she became NCNW’s fourth president, serving in the role for 40 years, and focused on ending the lynching of African Americans, restructuring the criminal justice system, and supporting voter registration in the South. Her prominence in the Civil Rights Movement and unmatched knowledge of organizing were noticed by several presidents who sought her advice.

In her memoir, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, she said, “I am the product of many whose lives have touch mine…” I had the pleasure of hearing Ms. Height speak at a luncheon in Washington DC in the late 1990s. She touched the lives of everyone present in the room that day. Ms. Height died in 2010 at the age of 98.

Ida B. Wells. Celebrating the 100^th Anniversary of the 19^th Amendment and Women’s Right to Vote in 2020, it’s only fitting to honor a suffragist. Ida B. Wells was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher who battled sexism, racism, and violence. During the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade, a group of Black women marched in the back at the request of the parade’s organizers—who tried to discourage them from marching at all over concern of alienating Southern politicians. Ms. Wells was having none of this. On the day of the parade, she and her group, the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, marched with the rest of the Illinois delegation near the front.

Throughout her career she called out white suffragists and politicians for their racism and exclusionist views, fought for equal education for Black children and young people, a free press, women’s rights, civil rights, and against lynching. She helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Dolores Huerta. Labor leader, organizer, feminist, and activists for women’s rights, civil rights, and environmental justice, Ms. Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20^th century. After receiving an associate teaching degree, she briefly taught school in the 1950s. She soon discovered that she “couldn’t tolerate seeing kids coming to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”  She cofounded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez in 1962 to help the laborers who planted, tended and picked the vegetables and fruits grown on American farms.

On June 5, 1968, she was on the platform beside Sen. Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he delivered his victory speech following his win of the California presidential primary. Only minutes later, Kennedy and five other people were shot walking through the hotel’s kitchen.

These passages just touch on the lives of these amazing women, and there are so many more to learn about. Take some time this month, this year, to learn about these and other remarkable American women. 

Cornelia Gamlem

Zooming Around the House

 

Zoooomm! I used that word to describe how my very young kitten raced around the house. Her legs were short and stubby, but they didn’t lack for speed nor agility. Approach her when she didn’t want you near, and zoooomm, she was running off. 

That was over 20 years ago. What a difference two decades makes. Zoom has taken on a whole new meaning in our everyday lives and given us a whole new vocabulary. Zoom became a verb and spawned words such as Zoomcast and Zoominar. 

I listened to a podcast sponsored by Washington Post Live about “The Future of Work” that featured Zoom’s COO, Aparna Bawa. She joked that people suddenly understood what the company did since their solution was now embedded into everyone’s daily life. On a more serious note, she explained how their explosive growth during 2020 was unplanned, and she lauded her fellow Zoomies for their speed and agility in coming together to meet these new demands as they grew from one million to 300 million daily meeting participants in three months. These employees, she reminded listeners, were also impacted by the pandemic, with the majority of them working from home and sharing the same concerns as Zoom meeting participants. 

Zoom has enjoyed success because of their focus on their customers – responding to their feedback as quickly and as appropriately as possible – and their focus on their employees – addressing their concerns, thereby addressing their customers’ concerns. The result is the company’s focus on delivering innovation and value. 

The second reason for their success is the nature of their technology, which Bawa described as a testament to the technology team. Zoom has a highly scalable, cloud-native architecture with a distributed backend infrastructure. Nineteen co-located data centers working along with public cloud storage allows them to leverage so they can increase capacity and meet demand. What a great example of human resources (Zoom employees) and technology working to serve the customer.

Zoom, like all organizations, is wondering what will be the impact in a post-pandemic world on their business model. Since it appears that remote work does not negatively impact productivity, hybrid models and flexibility are likely to be the norm. Does this mean there will be less demand for Zoom? Bawa acknowledges this may be the case, and if so, that they will, once again, adjust their business model.

This opens up new possibilities for Zoom. They are working on a smart-gallery model where people who are present for a meeting in a conference room will have their own video boxes, thereby allowing remote workers the same participating experience. Another development being explored is a noise-suppression feature to eliminate background noise. No more apologizing for sirens, garbage trucks, or barking dogs. I could name a few people who will welcome this change.

In the meantime, as you are Zooming around with your Zoommates (hey, another new word), consider the possibilities for positive change we can embrace when we get to the other side of the pandemic. We all have the opportunity to contribute to defining what the new normal will be.

Cornelia and Barbara

Employee Appreciation

Employee appreciation often brings to mind those tangible things that employers and managers give out as tokens of gratitude. Beyond rewards and recognition bestowed on employees, organizations show their employees that they value them through intangible means.

March 5, this coming Friday, is Employee Appreciation Day, and we talked about it this week on Thank God for Monday. We discussed the intangible ways that employers show employees they are, indeed, valued. No surprise, it starts with a positive culture, and leaders live that culture through their actions.

Our latest book, They Did What? is filled with tales of mischief and misbehavior. One of the lessons in that book is turning a negative situation into a positive one. The HR executive and her leadership team are quick to act on employee misdeeds, and they are committed to resolving issues, no matter how disruptive the situation. The mere fact that they waste no time and are visible to the employees sends a huge message about how much they value their employees. They recognize that good people want to work with other good people in a positive environment. Their actions also help avert even bigger problems from occurring. 

How leaders approach and solve issues also sends powerful messages regarding employee appreciation. HR leaders often confront situations where people just use bad judgment without meaning any harm. Nevertheless, there are repercussions that affect coworkers. Taking the time to get all the facts and listening to the employee rather than jumping to conclusions lets the employee know they are respected. It can also allow the employee to be a part of the solution. 

Not all misbehavior is deliberate, but it can be disruptive. These are often situations where there are underlying causes for the behavior, such as illness or personal issues. Exercising diplomacy and preserving the employee’s dignity is critical in these situations. There is a fine line between helping the employee and getting involved in their personal lives. Having an outside resource, such as an Employee Assistance Program with trained therapists, can be a lifeline for the employee and the organization. 

Addressing employee behavioral issues as soon as possible, getting an employee on the right path, and offering the right resource for an underlying issues are all powerful ways to let employees know they are valued, appreciated and respected for the individuals they are. Other team members take notice as well. They see support being provided to coworkers who need it.

When the behavior may be deliberate, workplace harassment for example, immediate action sends the message to everyone that the behavior is taken seriously, and the leadership is committed to a positive workplace environment. 

They Did What? Unbelievable Tales from the Workplace is filled with many examples of how HR Executives and organization leaders address a multitude of issues involving misbehavior at work all while preserving the employees’ dignity and respect.

Cornelia Gamlem

Workforce 2020

 I was cleaning out a bookcase of business books over the summer of 2020 and came across Workforce 2020. Written in 1997 and published by Hudson Institute, this study was the sequel to Workforce 2000. Thumbing through it, I saw a passage about telecommuting. The authors had some interesting things to say about the topic.

High-speed, reliable telecommunications devices (meaning mobile) open up options, and the rapid advances in telecommunications in the 1980s allowed increasing numbers of Americans work outside a traditional office setting, mostly at home. “Telecommuting,” they said, “is becoming increasingly common.“ They went on to cite predictions by the U.S. Department of Transportation regarding the percentage of the labor force (10%) that will telecommute by 2002. 

It is unlikely the authors of Workforce 2020 could have predicted the lightning speed at which remote work occurred on a large-scale basis in the year 2020 when employees were sent home to work because of the pandemic. 

The study went on to say that telecommuting would become more common and be increasingly attractive to both employees and employers, affording employers the opportunity to decrease real estate costs and increase worker productivity by up to 20 percent.

Fast forward to December 2020 and a holiday letter from a friend. His organization moved to near 100% telework and, to his surprise, it had gone relatively smoothly. He attributed it to many core services moving to the cloud during 2018 and 2019, and having the infrastructure pieces in place to handle the switch. As a manager, and he’s not alone in this sentiment, he had been skeptical of remote work. (So much for increasingly attractive.) However, to his surprise productivity hasn’t lagged and in some areas it increased—as predicted in the study. He enjoys the environment where he can focus near exclusively on the task at hand and doesn’t miss the one-hour commute each way, every day, another point made in the study. Of course, he has a very real concern that lack of in-person professional contact is having a negative effect on his team. 

By now, there is no denying that working, at least for people who work in offices, will not go back to the way it was. Change was thrust upon organizations and many found they were not prepared. Out of the chaos that we’ve experienced comes opportunity. Organizations are finding new ways to work which are efficient and productive. New ideas are emerging and people are learning new skills. As we emerge from the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, hopefully the new normal will embrace accepting change and putting people first. 

Cornelia 

The Legend of Larry King

 

It seems to me that we are losing a lot of amazing people lately. I’m thinking of the recent death of broadcast legend Larry King. HE will be missed.

When Larry was on CNN five nights a week, I tuned in as often as I could—especially if his interview was with someone I either admired or knew could teach me something.

What I didn’t think about until reading all the tributes to Mr. King was the things I was also learning from watching him interview people from all walks of life and doing it in a way that appeared to be effortless.

In my HR career, I’ve interviewed thousands of job applicants, so I know a little about how to gather information during an interview. Now that I am a published author, I’ve been interviewed many times for radio, podcasts, and webinars as well as a speaker at conferences and meetings. So, I’ve seen interviews from both sides.

Larry King had a wonderful way of getting people to talk. He made them feel comfortable. He asked the questions any of us would have asked if we’d met the person, but most importantly, he listened to their responses.

When asked about his tips for interviewing, he said, “I open with broad questions, listen carefully, focus on details, interrupt if the person filibusters or grows boring, and have the discipline to stay out of the way.”

In our book, The Manager’s Answer Book, we talk about the importance of being a good listener. We say on page 126, “Listening is hard work for most of us, and we’ve spent little time learning how to listen. A good listener makes a deliberate effort to understand the other person’s message. A good listener listens to learn, is interested in what the speaker is saying, and lets the speaker know they’re listening.”

Larry King said he wasn’t afraid to sound like he didn’t know everything—another key to being a good interviewer and manager He said he was willing to admit he knew a lot less than his interview subject. This is another good piece of advice to anyone who wants to be a good listener.

He excelled at concentrating on what the interview subject was sharing. He wasn’t focused on what his next question would be. He really listened to what was being said because he trusted his instincts to come up with the next question. 

This last point takes some work but can be done. We wish you well as you work to become a better listener.

Barbara Mitchell

Ratings & Reckonings

 

Washington Post columnist Michele L. Norris wrote a piece about racial reckoning in December 2020. She described a reckoning as “...not an action item on a wish list. It is a thing. An accomplishment. A checked box. A reckoning by definition refers to the moment when we finally deal with an ugly situation. It is more than just admitting that there’s a problem.” An epiphany, she explained, is not the same thing as a reckoning. Think of epiphanies as those aha moments we often have.

Undoubtedly, 2020 was a year of disruptive discovery with lots of aha moments. Turned on our heads by the pandemic, we saw drastic changes when it came to working. Leaders in likely all organizations had epiphanies on many aspects of work. One that comes to mind: performance appraisals and evaluations.

Many organizations adjusted their performance evaluations in 2020 to account for the challenges created by the coronavirus. Google combined its usual two review periods into one and rated employees against revised expectations. Facebook suspended performance ratings in the first half and used a formula to calculate bonuses that were above the standard target. In the second half, it returned to its typical process. Box, the file-sharing service, encouraged more regular feedback between managers and employees and had just one, not two, formal review cycles.

On the same day that Norris’s column appeared, there was a post on LinkedIn by Dan L. Ward. “My best advice for those considering what sort of rating/ranking process to inflict on employees who have survived 2020 is to leave those poor people alone. They have suffered enough for one year!” Ward has led the redesign of employee performance management systems at three major organizations, processes that were rated industry best practices.

Other organizations made changes in 2020. Goldman Sachs, acknowledging that the dynamics of today’s challenges underscore the need for more transparency, had managers meet with employees three times a year, formalizing a process that was only encouraged before. Hopefully, employees received more meaningful feedback.

Some organizations suspended formal reviews for 2020, recognizing that no one, employees and managers alike, needed the additional stress. Some of these organizations are contemplating never bringing back a formal review process. 

Have these changes accelerated the shift toward more frequent feedback? The world of remote work forces managers to have more check-ins with team members. Will this be the new default?

When work returns to its normal rhythms, or something close to it, will leaders in organizations have a reckoning about performance management—namely, taking a systems approach rather than being preoccupied with performance ratings and rankings?  

Granted, performance management systems must be unique to every organization and meet their individual needs. However, the dreaded performance review, with its associated ratings, is an ugly situation in many organizations. One reason is that they are often tied to pay increases, promotions, and future layoffs. If the only time you talk to employees about their performance is when you are also talking about money, what are they listening to hear? Perhaps it’s time for a reckoning in many organizations―an opportunity to move their performance management system to a feedback mindset rather than one focused on quantitative measures.

Cornelia & Barbara

Powerful Inspiration

I love all the pageantry of an inauguration. There is the majesty of the Capitol Dome as a backdrop. There are the military bands playing patriotic songs. There are the former presidents seated together—not by party affiliation but by the office they held.

On January 20, 2021, if you were watching the Inauguration, you witnessed a remarkable event. Not only did a new President and Vice President take their oaths of office. Not only did Lady Gaga sing our National Anthem and Jennifer Lopez remind us that this land is ours, but a 22-year-old poet from California, the National Youth Poet Laureate, recited a poem she’d written that sent shivers down my spine. I think most of will agree that the star that rose from that day on the steps of the Capitol was this young poet from Santa Monica, CA.

Amanda Gorman at 22 years of age showed more poise than many people three times her age. She walked up to the podium, after a step was placed for her to stand on so her face would show above the microphones. Without missing a beat, she read a poem that was so powerful and so on point that it was hard to believe she’d written it. And we found out that she’d had to revise it just two weeks prior when the Capitol where she was standing to read her poem was targeted by a mob of insurgents.

Not surprising, she became an overnight sensation—adding almost a million Twitter followers in a day. However, according to those who know her, this was nothing out of the ordinary for young Amanda. She’s been inspiring people her entire life.

Her 10^th grade teacher, Alexandria Gazzaniga Padilla says she “used to save Amanda’s pages to read last so she could savor every word.” 

The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote, “The future is us: Amanda Gorman’s powerful inaugural poem inspired us to reflect on our past and rise together.”

These days, I will take inspiration where I can find it and I certainly was inspired by Ms. Gorman. Here are the closing words of her poem:

“When day comes we step out of the shadows

aflame and unafraid,

the new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light

if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Amanda Gorman, 2021