Webinar Series 1: Getting the Most Out of Your Performance and Development Review Discussion
Last Friday 6th January marked the first of what we hope will be a series of webinars that will be delivered to you throughout the year. Our purpose is to deliver information that helps you get the best out of your journey at Colart. Whether that be a focus on your career development, resources to help you in your daily tasks and many more.
And, rather than show you something that might be deemed as prescribed, we intend to show how others have developed their own best ways of working that get the most out of them and their teams.
Series 1: Getting the most out of your performance and development review discussion delivers an in-conversation session between Jake Kersey, General Manager, International Sales and Jane Beeston, Chief People Officer. Jake tells us about his approach to getting his teams to talk about their motivators, strengths and development areas when preparing for their performance and development discussion. He has shared the template that the team use for you to try out. View this by clicking here and in the link below
One question coming from the webinar last week was a request for key take-outs from this session and we have detailed this for you below:
Take-outs
Why
Recent discussion groups with line managers about retention and what’s important to people, highlighted a key theme. This theme also aligned with insights from exit interviews conducted over the last year. In summary, people want to develop in the company. Without this growth, they are less likely to be engaged or stay with the company.
What
- Start by understanding the motivations of your team members
- Understanding the motivations for each person in your team adds an additional layer of depth to the development discussion and helps to shape the setting of individually appropriate targets and development areas.
- Keep the discussion alive by reviewing the identified strength and development areas in a regular basis ideally quarterly and link this discussion into your usual business as usual 1:1 update so that the discussion does not become an added chore.
- Don’t be afraid to look outside work for areas to grow, use the motivators to help think about what makes your team member happy, and look to see where the teams strengths can help others on their development journey. Look at the whole person as a motivation outside of work may have positive repercussions for the workplace and vice versa. Personal development is not just “work” it can be applied anywhere.
- Allow a “language” to evolve in the discussions which is specific to the individual. This language appeals to their motivations and can help the development to become part of the way they work.
- Allow the dialogue to adapt over time and tailor to the person using 360’s and the mid/end of year development questions to deepen the discussion.
- Do not judge something as having a deadline for completion but about taking development steps overtime, framing for each person’s motivation.
- Play an active part by being a connector for the person by tapping into connections that can support or enable the person’s development.
- Seek out those opportunities for connections beyond your team or business unit.
- Commit to the discussion as the time and effort will pay dividends for you, your team and the business.
How
Attachment to:
Jake and Jane thanks for taking the time to share this discussion with us. I couldn’t make the live webinar but did find 30mins to catch up on the recording, and it reminded me of one of the first challenge’s to overcome in this area -1. find/dedicate the time for the dialogue and that it doesn’t need to be silo’d to ‘work’ development.
Thanks both, a really useful webinar, some great insight on how development conversations could be done differently!
The one point I find myself disagreeing with, is that we keep calling ourselves (Colart) a ‘flat structure organisation’. We have plenty of management levels in place, so I can understand why people would comment on this on exit interviews… I don’t think either that we have a flat org structure. Having said that, what I find refreshing is how, despite these management levels, our organisational culture is not too hierarchical! And I do believe that can give one plenty of room for growth, both professionally and personally. As long as we’re honest about the limitations it can also pose we give a fair and balanced view to all existing, and potential new, employees!
I didn’t get chance to watch this live, so thank you for posting. Really interesting dialogue and a great prompt for me to think about how I can better support my team in their personal development.
One thing I strongly agree with, is the need for transparency of wider business opportunities to support the growth of our people. I, like Jake, feel I have visibility of my team, teams I work closely with, but the wider business is a bit of a black hole. Some sort of manager forum, could be an idea. A place to add specific needs you might have, where other managers could respond? A place to advertise opportunities that are available? Or support your team can offer? It would be worth considering hosting a post end of year and mid year performance management meeting, facilitated by HR, where managers can express some of the needs identified from the review process. This would allow us to see if there is any synergies that can be addresses on a business wide scale.