Transcript
Intro
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teamsâŚteams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real-world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered B2B sales teams. Well, we're coming into Christmas, and with Christmas for many businesses, we also see the return of annual performance reviews. Just before Christmas or certainly into the new year. Very, very common for businesses running on calendar years and for those running on financial years, July to June time periods, we'll often see mid-year check ins.
So these are such a time commitment exercise. Both Leaders and individuals themselves need to be spending a lot of time preparing for these. And I constantly get feedback from people that we work with about how they spend so much time sending out the details, so much time preparing, how they have to chase up. They get poor engagement levels from their teams. The meetings feel mechanical. I get that so many times they feel that providing ratings on a number is really difficult. How they provide feedback can be tough because they either don't like doing it, they find it difficult to support with examples, or even their team members don't necessarily take it on board all that well. Right. And that invariably all of the performance review meetings end up talking about bonuses and annual salary reviews, and they tend to be what dictates success or failure out of these reviews.
So the question I have for everyone listening today is âWhat if those annual performance reviews or these annual performance reviews could be game-changing to be growth-driven meetings?â Well, it's very possible, and I've seen it work many, many times across many businesses that I have worked with. So how do we make that happen? Practically speaking, how can we as leaders actually embrace this?
Well, the first thing is mindset. And yes, I will often come back to talking about LeadersâŚmindset, right. How you grow, how you learn, and how you approach things. For me, the mindset about performance reviews are critical. And here's five things that I'd love you to write down and keep front-of-mind, or if you can't write things down, take it from the transcript later on. But these are the things that are really important as Leaders that we need to be good at to make sure these performance meetings are actually becoming growth-driven vehicles.
So the first one is, this is a two way conversation. It is not a review where Leader simply rates employee. Now, everyone's heard this before, but my question and my challenge is, have you genuinely gone into these meetings, seeing them as a conversation where you can learn as much as the other side, or do you go into them with a whole lot of pre-prepared notes that are to be delivered with a format to be followed? Right. So for me, there's really three critical things to get out of this. One is to know what's working and what's not working. If you go in with that mindset, it will help with your two-way conversation. Number two is, understand how we're all going to get better. And the last bit is no distractions. So make sure that you can have very clear meetings.
So that's the first part. The second part around Leader mindset is that if you can go into these meetings understanding that it's one of the most productive times to really develop true growth programs, the chance to throw out some of the old and bring in some new, then you are winning before you even walk into that meeting. Right. Being able to break the status quo of even how the meetings run is very important.
Number three is, performance review meetings are absolutely the best time that you can put your team up in lights. So, if you can go in there wanting to understand where your team members have really succeeded and where they feel they've succeeded, and that you can then take that externally and put them up in lights, then bang, you're getting growth driven meetings that people start to look forward to.
On the flip side, there is those that aren't hitting their goals. If you can go in with that really curious mind to understand how you can bring them up to speed or how you can help them again, you're winning there.
Number four, this one for me is critical around your mindset. No surprises. So if you have something to share in a performance review meeting that hasn't come up before, then there's a real learning opportunity for you next year to be actually making sure that when issues arise or when really good things happen, they're being brought up at the right time. Right. You don't want to leave them to performance reviews because they just don't get handled as well.
And last but not least from a mindset point of view is if you as a Leader can make sure that both parties are walking into that meeting, understanding that it's a no consequence meeting, then you generally get much better engagement. If people feel like whatever they say might impact their rating, then you're less likely to have them challenge you. You're less likely for them to be really open about what they want from the business in the coming months or years or the challenges that they're facing. So as a Leader, if you can go in making sure that both parties understand this is a discussion to how everyone can be better with no consequences, then you are ahead.
So that's a two-way conversation that's making sure that your mindset is ready, that it's about real growth rather than a script. That's making sure you focus on putting your team members up in lights or helping them be the best they can be. No surprises for these meetings and that it's a no consequence engagement.
So that's from a mindset point of view, if as a Leader, how you can go in and make sure these meetings are more about growth. Now, if you do nothing else but touch on those five things, you're winning already. So five minutes. Tick. Listened. Got some success out of this podcast, and away you move forward.
But what I'd like to do now is go through three of the really common ways that I've seen teams over the last 20 years really nail performance reviews as meetings that drive growth from a true mindset of wanting everyone to be the best they can be. So before I begin in this, you'll notice that most of all of these chips actually are predominantly forward facing. So we focus about what we can do rather than what we have done. We'll acknowledge the past, but we'll really focus on changing the future.
So number one, goal setting. And if you haven't heard me talk about goal setting two podcasts ago, Episode 37 was all around time management hacks, and there was a big piece in there around goal setting. But for this meeting, the annual performance review, it's really important that our goals are actually the goals that they're working on. So many times I see a performance review meeting conducted around the KPIs from a PD, and these KPIs are just no longer relevant, right? They're all about previous tasks that needed to happen, or they're about new product launches that never occurred or rolling out an old CRM program, but certainly not things that are really relevant now. So how do we get around this? Well, the important part is to make sure that we are setting our goals on what they need to achieve now and in the future, rather than what is around our PD. Once you've done that, then going back to update the PD is fantastic if you can get that done. But the most important part here is to make sure you set SMART goals. I think most people know now what smart goals are. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely or time-based. Right. So we need to make sure that we set our goals to be SMART. And then we need to aim for three to five within these performance reviews that are all about what they need to achieve in the next twelve months. So if we can make them smart and particularly make them engaging so that our employee will actually buy into these goals, then we're off on a winning pattern. If, on the other hand, we're having our goals related back to our PDs, find that engagement really drops back, it becomes very mechanic and very much pre-prepared.
So here's the game changing part. If you can spend time not just building your goals, but also then talking with your team member about how you can embed them into the next twelve months, measure them, review them, refine them and grow them, that's where you change this into a growth driven conversation. So where you put them into one-to-ones, into team meetings, into projects that they might lead themselves into people that they might work with. Right? So if you spend your time building the goal, but then focusing on how you bring that to life at a structural level, you have a tick for a growth driven performance review meeting. Okay? So that's number one, goal setting and then spending time focusing on how you can roll it out into the next twelve months.
Number two, and we focused on this a little bit as a mindset for a Leader, but really drilling into the two way outcomes that come from performance review meetings. Right? So two-way outcomes are critical for me because it's not just about what the employee can do to improve, but it's about how we as Leaders can improve and even more importantly, how the organization can improve. And I have used this personally for a long time as to how I approach performance review meetings. For me, and I remember specifically, is I have always been a Leader that has held people accountable. And for me, I didn't always understand what that meant on the other side. The turnover in the businesses I've had has always been very low. However, it took until I added this into performance reviews and I specifically asked for feedback around what else needs to happen for me to continue to validate at the employee's mind, holding them accountable. And what came out was really clear once I started to ask these questions, and it was, âHey, Ben, we know you hold us really accountableâ, and in general, this was the feedback I got. âBut we can also rely on you to do what we ask and be loyal to us in return.â So that was a nice proof point that allowed me to say, okay, so when I'm holding people accountable, I need to make sure that I continue to do what I say I'm going to do and make sure I'm giving people every chance to succeed. Now, I'd never quantified this until I started to find it out through the annual performance reviews. So for me, it was a great piece of confirmation around how I was acting and leading. But more importantly, what came out of that was that they said, hey, you're so structured in your days that we find it hard to get time with you outside of our one-to-one meetings. So is there a way that we can spend more time with you? And what came out of that is a little bit about what I spoke about in Episode 37 around phone calls being the way to contact me if you need me. So everyone in the team then knew that if you needed time, phone me right. If I'm in the office, come and see me. And that was the way that I'd allow for a little bit more time. And I knew in return that if I saw them calling me, it was because they needed some time and they needed some advice or some perspective or a decision to be made. So for me, this all came out of the annual performance review meetings. And it made such a difference to how I grew as a Leader.
Okay, so the Employer, Leader and Organization needing to take feedback from these two way outcome meetings. Some advice I have as to how you can roll this out is very much around finding out for me is engagement levels. So where your people sit within, you can use an engagement model. You can use lots of different things. What they get, what they get, they want, they get, they don't want, they don't get. They want and they don't get and they don't want. Go back 30 seconds and repeat that again if you need to. Their engagement model, right? Where are they on a one to ten engagement levels. And you can certainly have different titles for these rather than numbers. Peer feedback. It's really important to understand where their engagement levels are at because you can then start to drill down as to what you can do to improve it or understand why it's at that level. For me, if you can make sure that as part of these two way outcomes, you are consistently asking about how they can grow, right? So you've got your goals, you're setting for their performance, but you're also focusing on how they can grow. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. That absolutely sets up a great two-way outcome meeting here. When you're providing feedback, it's really important as part of these two-way outcomes that you are allowing not only them to provide you that feedback, but also when you provide it, it's in a structured approach that allows them to take it on in a non-threatening manner. For me, I like the Rose Bud Thorn model. Right? It's pretty straightforward. It's like the flower rose, flower buds and flower thorns. Rose is your good bit of feedback, your bud is your new growth areas that people can really improve on or opportunities for them to take advantage over the next twelve months. And then the thorn is the area where you want to cut out. So I like providing them all together. Or alternatively, for some people it's two bits of good feedback with one constructive bit of feedback, but really understanding where your team members are at before you're giving them that feedback. But the game changing element here, the way to make this all about a growth mindset is to tie back all the feedback you're getting about organization around yourself and around the individual back into the goals and action items for the year. So it's the same as the goal setting that I spoke about a minute ago or five minutes ago. It's all about making sure that you can take what comes out of your performance review into actionable and chunkable items at a feedback level for the next twelve months.
Okay, so last but not least here, where we can really be changing annual team performance reviews into game changing growth meetings is all about what we focus on. And for me, we want to be capitalizing on strengths and managing and supporting weaknesses. So performance reviews traditionally will actually focus on weaknesses. So great, we'll celebrate what you did well, but then we'll really hone in on how do we get better at what we're not doing so well. For me, changing the mindset is important here, right? Target what's going well and make sure that we personalize this to the individual's level so that they can continue to deliver on that for the next twelve months. Right. And even better is how they can supercharge that to really nail it, because there is no perfect specimen when it comes to an individual contributor or a Leader. We all have areas of strengths and weaknesses. But if you can nail really supporting and optimizing strengths, then two things happen. One, you end up improving their performance on the areas they're good at. Right? That's pretty natural. But two is my experience says that employees become more open to working on areas they're not so good at. They feel heard, they feel like their strengths are going to be capitalized on. So they then are prepared to work on the areas not so strong. So in terms of managing weaknesses, there's a few ways to do it. Right. But certainly number one is training. You'll roll that in. But where you can delegate areas they're not so good at, or even more importantly, redesign or systemize, that's fantastic, because we can't simply train everyone to be good at everything. But where we can recognize that our performers, our individuals who really perform that we need to support their strengths and manage their weaknesses, then we're onto a winner. And these meetings become really powerful because the drag, the anchor that's dragging along around having to focus on the areas they aren't so good at becomes a much more constructive conversation. So very similar here. The super tip here is to build your learning plans that come out of this, that focus around the outcomes that are needed. So the learning program should absolutely be on strengths, but with anything we put in there, it needs to be embedded into our regular cadence; our one to ones, our weekly meetings. Right, our group meetings. And you'll find that themes come out across your teams where if we can have the conversations focused on strengths and then weaknesses, we can actually get really strong buy-in as to how we can improve these over the longer term. Right. So that's three areas where we can really change performance reviews into growth driven meetings.
Goal setting. Absolutely. Number one. Number two, making sure they're two-way outcomes for the individual, the leader and the business. And number three is really focus on how we can capitalize on strengths. Yes, we need to manage weaknesses and make sure the really key non-negotiables are being performed on. But if we can get them being really good at what they're really good at, then we're away and we'll certainly have some confidence for the next twelve months.
So that was very much about forward facing, growth driven performance review meetings. For me, that's the way to make it stick, that's the way to have them really engaging and the way when all that time that's put in each year in midyear is rewarded with performance. So get the plan right. Work out what you need to do and make sure it's supported throughout the year and we can find some terrific results out of here.
So my final word on this for today, before we move on, is that performance review meetings can really be anxiety drivers. A lot of people really don't look forward to them, and I'm sure you've been in that situation with either yourself or someone around you. So your job as a Leader, and even your job as an individual, should you be preparing for leadership, is to actually understand how you can soften this. And there's a few little ways you can do it. But for me, I focus really heavily on softening the approach, the lead-in into those meetings and having a conversation or two beforehand that reassures the people who are going to the meetings, what we're going to do, and then what our outcomes want to be. And then we can precede that we're talking about things like goal setting for the future. I want to hear your feedback. I want the organization to get better. And we're going to make sure you are a super-powered B2B performer that actually allows the meetings to start off well. Because as a Leader, you actually have direct control over how these go, so you can make it happen. You then also have direct control over the follow up. So it's really up to you to make that happen so that next year, when your team members come into these meetings, they have great confidence that what's discussed actually happened during the year.
So that's it for today. If you weren't able to get all the notes, please jump on to strongersalesteamseamseams.com in your own time. There's transcripts there and you can go through everything you need to. Contact me if you'd like a little bit of extra help. I get across every connection that comes into the business, so you will certainly hear from me, and I'd love to know how you're going about performance reviews or if there's anything we can do to help.
But before we leave today, it's all about our health and wellbeing. Tip. And we touched a little bit around routine in these performance reviews. So I'd like to focus around how routine really is the vehicle towards our destination, right, particularly when it relates to personal health and fitness. So for me, if you're looking to make changes in your life as we come towards that end of year period when we often write this down, is write down those changes you want to make, right? Try and then break them into small parts. So if it's exercise. And you want to get your exercise up to five times a week at 45 minutes, exercising every morning at 05:30 a.m. Pick one at a time to roll out. Roll out five days a week first and do whatever you need to do. Then in week two, then start to look at the time, right. So your first week might have only been 15 minutes sessions, right. In week two and three, then start to build those sessions up. And then if it comes down to time, start to bring your time forward every day that you might approach those exercise regimes, right? So rather than saying, hey, here's my goal, and I want to get it all done at once, is start to build the routines a little bit at a time. Nail a small change, embed it, get it right, and then go for the next. Nail it, embed it, get it right, and then go for the next one after that. Because we are human and it does take time for us to get things right. So for me, build your routine steadily, one bit at a time, and give yourself a break to get there. Super impactful, because once you get to that nailed exercise regime, it can make all the difference to you. Okay, that's it for today. Keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.
