Are you ready for some FOOOTBALLL??
The NFL season is quickly approaching and it’s always an exciting time of year. I get very invested in not only my team, great plays and wins/losses; but also new players joining teams across the league and seeing these young people realize their talent (must be the recruiter in me). Any honest NFL star will tell you that a big part of their ‘player development’ is due to the impact of their coaches. Successful coaching is not just improving technical ability but giving constant feedback and motivation to keep up the player’s drive for success. The same approach is effective in business.
We’ve been asked numerous times over the years for the best way to execute ‘performance reviews’ in a way to motivate staff. Unfortunately, the old structure of sitting down once a year to offer a rating scale is not that welcome by the employee and is not overly effective in offering information. If a person leaves the meeting after hearing ‘everything is great’ that doesn’t really offer any benefit; however, highlighting that ‘this and this and this’ need improvement doesn’t really give the motivation that a person needs to make necessary changes either. Making notes and bringing up examples of things that have taken place throughout the year, but haven’t really been addressed until that moment, can also create friction and make things that might not have been a big deal at the time into a big deal because of the added time and attention.
A more effective way to offer feedback is to be more fluid with it and manage things as they come up. Build trust with your team, allow them to participate in setting goals, and give them some freedom in how to reach these goals. Then check in to make sure we’re on track and rally with them when things take a wrong direction. Setting objectives or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is a good way to keep on track but make sure they’re clear and reachable. If you’re always setting objectives that are just out of reach, that can have an opposite impact than intended. Sometimes the philosophy is to ‘reach for the stars’ to keep a person motivated, however; when a person feels that they never actually accomplish a goal, they can lose the motivation to try.
Focus on being the type of coach that the team is comfortable coming to with questions. Be open to ideas and trying new ways and then monitor and discuss results in a less formal, honest approach. If you’re required to facilitate annual reviews, you can use the information from the discussions throughout the year to highlight how the employee faced and overcame challenges and to set new objectives for the next year. When our team members are invested in the unified goal, because they feel they are part of the team, they are naturally motivated to succeed.