“WHAT IS YOUR JOB?” – SETTING PRIORITIES –

“WHAT IS YOUR JOB?” ?– SETTING PRIORITIES –

I was having a discussion with a GEHC colleague last week, and the topic came up about it being the time of year to finish up our 2023 Performance Summaries and define our 2024 Priorities. And as we were talking, the topic came up about “What is your job?” And I immediately thought of Professor Fred Kofman.

If you ask most people “What is your job?”, they’d reply, “A teacher.”. “An engineer.” “An accountant.” “A salesman.” But is that really their job?

Using the example of fútbol, (soccer to us Yanks) – say you were playing forward in a soccer match. Your team is a man down (due to a red card), your team has a 1 point lead, and your opponent is threatening to score. Do you stay in the forward part of the field? After all – you’re a forward. Or do you drop back to help the backs and midfielders defend the goal? Of course you leave your assigned position to help defend the goal – your “role” may be that of a forward, but your “job” is to help your team win, by preventing your opponent from scoring.

Professor Fred Kofman addresses this differentiation very clearly, using the examples above, in his YouTube video, “Your Job is Not Your Job .” While your company hired you for a “role”, ultimately what does the company expect from you? To make the company successful. Does that mean operating outside of your assigned “role” if necessary? Yes.

Many of us have just completed our 2023 performance assessments and have defined our initial 2024 Priorities. For 2023, were you evaluated based solely on your performance to the tasks associated with your assigned role? Or were you evaluated on the entirety of your efforts to make GE successful?

What’s the difference? Perhaps you were involved in a mentoring program. University recruiting. Active participation in a Women’s Network grop. Some community outreach effort with an Employee Resource Group (ERG.) Participating in a skills-development program, such as “Working Out Loud” or “LEAN Ambassador.” ?

Are these tasks part of employees’ defined roles? Not usually. Do these tasks holistically help your company be successful? Yes.

Unfortunately, many employees are typically evaluated only to their assigned tasks. The “other stuff” (volunteer or ERG activities, such as those listed above) is often viewed as “fluff” – a nice to have, but ultimately not a “value add” when addressing individual Priorities or Performance Summaries.

Agreed, you don’t want employees spending the majority of their time on volunteer activities and not completing their assigned tasks. But does your company sufficiently encourage ?development of these “soft skills” that build team cohesiveness, work relationships, and enhanced communication and collaboration?

Dr. Raghu Krishnamoorthy, past GE Chief Learning Office and Chief HR Officer, recently shared a very insightful article on LinkedIn, titled, “Beyond the Individual: Shifting the Competency Paradigm .”

In this post, Dr. Raghu Krishnamoorthy advocates for companies to move from an “Individual competency model” (focused on individual competencies) to a “Collective competency model” (where the skills to work collaboratively in a team are addressed as well as individual skills.) Dr. Krishnamoorthy notes that often reward systems are designed around individual achievements, which incentivizes employees to focus on their personal performance over team performance.

Recognizing that the team, or organization, is the prime consideration, and not the individual, opens up new competencies to be addressed that should enhance overall employee effectiveness. What are the 5 key Collective Competencies?

1)??? Team Alignment – How team members work together effectively.

2)??? Full Circle Communications – Every team member keeps every other team member fully informed, so all information is freely shared and available.

3)?? Collective Performance Monitoring – Team members monitoring each others’ work to prevent or quickly correct mistakes.

4)?? Shared Trust – The belief that all team members will act in the overall group’s best interests, including protecting all members’ individual rights and interests.

5)??? Back Up Behavior – Team members voluntarily jump in to help redistribute tasks when workload issues come up.

When it comes to performance evaluations, should employees only be scored on performance to their assigned tasks, and their individual competencies? Or should an employee scope of “Priorities” expand to the whole of their efforts to help GE succeed, including displayed collective competencies, that drive enhanced teamwork,? collaboration, culture, and community?