Managers: The Power of 'Face Time'

You will notice those are two words, not one: this is not an Apple ad. And yes, this one is long, but read the tl;dr and then realise this might make or break your career as a manager or leader...

The great thing about using normed datasets is that, any time you see a significant population bucking the norms, it is probably telling you something. Working out exactly what it is telling you, is of course the hard part of the equation: correlation does not equal causation.

So what follows is a tentative hypothesis, rather than peer-reviewed research; but it is at least based on years of observation.

Here is the tl;dr generalised version:

"1. People who don't need constructive feedback, survive better and longer in large modern organisations, and therefore tend to be those promoted to managerial and leadership roles. 2. Because of the blindness of these managers and leaders to the value of constructive feedback, they tend to build cultures in which people who DO need constructive feedback cannot survive long-term; which is 3. to the detriment of the organisation."

I am hoping the self-reinforcing nature of this hypothesis is obvious: the more statement 1. is true, the more statement 2. is also true, which reinforces statement 1. and so on. And statement 3. just keeps getting bigger.

What do I mean by needing constructive feedback? And what is constructive feedback, anyway?

Firstly, it is not being yelled at, criticised in front of others or being otherwise abused. No one on the planet needs that. In a one on one meeting (formal or informal) constructive feedback is the process of talking through your work with your immediate boss, and identifying for you what has been done well and what needs attention, and how you might approach that.

That could be as simple as "you are always friendly, helpful and polite with our customers, which we really appreciate and commend; thank you! I have noticed that you are often arriving after your shift begins, though. What do you think needs to change for you to consistently make it here on time?"

At the other end of the scale, it could be "I thought the presentation to shareholders was great, you are very engaging but you told it straight without a hint of sugar-coating. I need to tell you that I did get a couple of comments from large investors that they had found you hard to engage in conversation after the presentation. In this role you need to be able to do both, so let's talk about how you can work on that..."

Those are just quick examples, but I hope you understand the pattern. "Here's what is good; and here's what could use some work".

Why do some people need this more than others? It is because they are competitive in their orientation. By competitive, I don't necessarily mean "competitive with others"; first and foremost they compete against themselves. Their internal dialogue runs like this: "I am performing at this level; how do I raise my game?"

Think about what you see when you watch the Olympics. Prima donnas who have a hissy fit when someone beats them are pretty thin on the ground - or nonexistent. Elite athletes will be upset with themselves if they know they performed below their target, but more often than not, you will hear them say that they achieved their performance goals for the games, expressed in terms of Personal Bests and so on. They are on a long-term journey. Maybe for this Games they just wanted to make the final. They are planning to medal at the World's in two years time (or whatever), and have in mind the 13 (or however many) performance levels they need to pass through by then.

So when we talk about competitive people in your organisation, they are the ones who are driven to improve, to get better, to raise their game and enlarge their capacity.

"Wow, we want to keep them, right?"

Well, there's a problem. You may not be recognising that this is who they are. In fact, you may be saying things like "they are a bit high-maintenance", "kind of needy or something", "always asking me how they are doing..."

So already you can see they are unlikely to be considered for promotion.?But don't worry: if you have been answering them by saying "no, you are doing fine, nothing to worry about, keep going", then they are probably already gone. They might draw a salary for a year or so more, but their focus is now on getting somewhere that will enable them to grow. You are not it.

(Remember that old saw: "People don't leave jobs, they leave supervisors." No one said you had to be unpleasant to have people leave you; failure to give good feedback will do it.)

I mentioned the value of working with normed data at the start, and what it tells you when a particular population is bucking the norms of the population as a whole. Where are we going with this?

I am referring to Birkman Method? data, which is a massive longitudinal (60+ years) dataset of - predominantly - employees of large business and other organisations. Specifically we are talking about a behavioural construct called Incentives.

Like all Birkman Components, we have measured two distinct aspects of this construct: how a person sees themselves, which we call Usual Behaviour; and what they are expecting from the world around them, which we call Needs. When we look at the population as a whole, there are clear percentile norms for both measures. For Needs it is 50, meaning (crudely) that as many people have scores above 50 as have scores below. For Usual, we round up the norm to 25 (as being more memorable; it is actually somewhat lower, around 17 last time I asked).

[Full disclosure: just now I ran a summary of the last 100 profiles through my Birkman account. I can see every conceivable pattern of scoring in the sample, but the averages for Incentives in this random sample of 100 individuals were 24 on Usual and 50 on Needs; 'close' and 'bullseye', respectively]

This is telling us something important. That (very) low Norm we have on Incentives Usual tells us something about Social Desirability. In other words, we are saying that most people would like to be seen as "Team Oriented: I am here to play my part, whatever the team needs". Those comparatively rare people who score high on Incentives Usual are saying "no, I am more 'Me-oriented' than 'We-oriented', I am conscious of wanting to become better at what I do."

Please note, we are not saying high scorers won't support the Team, nor are we saying that low scorers don't want to improve; but there is a distinct perspective in play here. And so far we are only talking about how people see themselves.

Now, remember what we said about Needs and its Norm of 50. Despite the fact that most people show up saying that "I am just here for the team, guys!", half the population are secretly expressing a real need for 'knowing how they are doing', which is most usually accessible via constructive feedback from their immediate superior.

So why don't we simply recognise that these are the people who are driven to be better and to do better and give them the support they need?

We said it already: Social Desirability on Incentives is in the direction of being a 'Team Player'. If someone starts asking for feedback, doesn't that sound a little needy, or even self-centred? ("After all, there is no 'I' in Team..."). This is especially true if you yourself are a Manager with a 'low / low' scoring pattern on Incentives, and trying to understand what may well be a 'low/high Incentives' employee.

Which by the way, is my consistent observation: I keep seeing functional teams where the managers and leaders average around 20-25 on Incentives Needs, and the rest of the team averages 60 or 70. Yes, some of the team have lower Needs scores (60-70 is an average, right?); and they are the ones most likely to make it into management. But a lot of people who have higher Needs scores are struggling to stay engaged because of the lack of feedback.

How do we break this death spiral? (And I promise you, that is what it is: a death spiral.) Well, I do my part; if you are a 'low / low' Incentives leader and you have done the Birkman with me, I have told you that constructive feedback is super important for you to be giving to all your people (and that you can always back it off a little for those who complain or seem a little weirded out).

But the other thing we need to do is recognise that "seeking feedback from your boss" is a sign of something really positive, and to be encouraged. Not marginalised.

By all means, keep it simple:

Give each of your people a little 'face time' every week; and be willing to engage in a constructive discussion with them about their work, aimed at helping them become better and more successful. This will yield much higher returns for the business, and for your reputation, than anything else you were planning to do.