Dear Rachel,
I enjoy reading your column and find your advice is a breath of fresh air, but I think you may have been a little harsh on Hurting in LA and her bad review ("Rachel, I just got burned on a review," June 26, 2009). In this day and age of reduced staff, more work and longer hours there is less time for supervisors to devote to training and developing their people. Tempers run short, fatigue is a real problem, and everyone is being asked to do far more with less. Unfortunately, the first casualty of this leaner environment is less time in the day to actually manage people beyond simply telling them, do this and I need it by 3:00. The result is that members of the team are not getting the instruction, training and daily feedback that once was the norm as everyone struggles to just get the work done.--Kurt O'Hare of O'Hare and Associates, a New York recruiting firm.
Dear readers,
I knew when I wrote last week's column that some readers would think I was being too harsh in my response to Hurting in LA for giving her grief for being surprised by the bad review she received.
I wrote: "Not to sound too school-marmish here, but getting a bad review is bad enough. Not seeing it coming makes it all that much worse. One has to wonder what else you are not noticing at work."
That was sort of nasty, and not my usual tone, and I have to say, Kurt has a good point.
In these times, with so much extra work for everyone, supervisors have that much less time to mentor and guide. It's so much easier when time is crunched for a supervisor to pass on the opportunity to point out the shortcomings in the work a subordinate turns in.
It often makes more sense to fix the work directly or turn it over to someone else to fix.
The issue, of course, remains what can Hurting in LA do once that bad performance report is written. The answer is, not all that much.
Here Kurt and I agree.
As Kurt writes, "Once someone makes up their mind it's much harder to change their opinion or decision, so taking issue with the review may be seen as just not getting it."
He suggests that Hurting tell her managers she was surprised by the review and wishes she'd known earlier of the deficiencies noted in the review but that she should stop short of getting into the explanation game.
What really matters is not the bad review already in your personnel files but making sure the next review is nothing short of glowing.
Readers know what managing up means. It's making sure that in addition to giving your work your all you're putting the right amount of effort into keeping your bosses clued in on the good work you are doing.
That doesn't mean sucking up, which frankly works a lot less than many people think.
It does mean informing them of your achievements but also striving for feedback.
One could take a passive approach and wait for feedback. A lot of people do so, thinking it's their supervisor's job to let them know how they are doing.
But it's a lot smarter to push for that feedback. You not only get good information, you also build allies. Those supervisors then become invested in your success.
"The key going forward is good communication with their supervisors. Ask them how you are doing. Do they have any comments on the work or suggestions on how to improve?" O'Hare writes.
By opening these channels, the planner or buyer then creates an opportunity to explain why this or that project didn't work out as planned--and ideally gains a sympathetic ear.
That's also really important.
Not everything we do works out they way we'd hoped, and we need good feedback channels when things do go wrong to figure out just what didn't work as planned and why. That way, we head off future snafus--or that's the hope.
Without those channels, without that good feedback up and down the management ladder, snafus too often turn into blame games, and in blame games no one wins.
The same mistakes get made over and over again, and at the end of the year someone gets a bad review. Often it's the person at or near the bottom of the ladder.
