To have brian here leading us through but we run these as a way to make our high quality trainings uh one bite-sized and digestible and two accessible for everyone in our free learning community called off-site um so you can join off-site i'll share a little bit more at the end of the session um but for now just in terms of context we host these as a part of a monthly theme as well so our theme for december.
Is around strategic planning and goal setting for 2022. and as always they're led by subject matter experts and guest speakers like brian um and so with that i'm really honored to introduce all of you to brian uh if you've been attending our events and our trainings for a couple months now you probably know ryan but brian is a diversity equity and inclusion trainer and consultant uh he is the vice chair uh on the advisory committee for the calgary black chamber um and has been uh really working in.
This space of training and coaching uh for 20-plus years with ceos business leaders alike um and has also served in several leadership positions for some of america's uh biggest brands including starbucks and kfc um and has also we don't have it on this slide but has also uh been the ceo and founder of his own um consultancy training firm called believer circle as well um as and of course super highly.
Educated with a master's in business administration from saint mary's university um in canada so i also just want to say a personal note with brian he's just been a pleasure to work with uh and our team at learn it is so thrilled to have him have him on our team um so with that welcome brian it's so good to be here with you great carly thank you that's a very warm heartwarming uh introduction i appreciate that and the feeling is mutual well welcome it everyone um and.
I'm gonna bring my slides up because you can't be a consultant without your your slides of course so do you see my slides carving the single screen yep it's looking great all right so um as carly and i were looking at having this conversation about uh implementing effective performance reviews we were we were talking back and forth and i know this is this really is for you we're committed that you walk away with at least one new action you can take on with a topic that for a lot of people can be stressful like ah performance reviews i hate them or you.
In a way that works and it is a win-win for all parties so first my coaching to get the most out of this call is that you pull out a pen and paper and you make some notes as we go along so the first thing i'd like for you to do is to give yourself a rating this is a self-assessment how confident are you in implementing performance reviews give yourself a one if your confidence level is low give yourself a two if it's you know hey.
I'm pretty good at it or you know i'm comfortable with it or um three if you're very very very comfortable so one two or three low medium or high and carly um since you're a studio audience what number would you give yourself in implementing effective performance reviews yeah i would give myself probably a two yeah yeah i have some some experience on the.
On both the receiving and the giving end um but brian kind of as we were talking about right now i've i've learned the reason i say two instead of one is because i've learned on the receiving end that performance reviews can be a really great opportunity to actually advocate for yourself um share areas for growth that you want to grow into um versus be nervous or just like oh god i'm i'm going gonna just be receiving this i have no power here so um so i would say i'm a solid too.
Great okay great all right uh i'd give myself about a two and a half i've i've had experience delivering a lot of performance reviews in my days at starbucks or kfc and i've received a lot in my uh my career as well so for those of you at home that are participating if you actually pulled out a piece of paper and you just like carly and i gave yourself a rating then i want you to what what there is next is you give yourself a gold star all right recognition works.
And recognition works with performance reviews it really is important and we're going to expand on that point as we go through this conversation and also i want you to be recognized because you're not simply a spectator watching television as carly and i are having this conversation i'm recognizing you with the gold star right now for you actually participating actively in this conversation all right gold stars work just as i decided we had the grandkids over this past weekend wes who's four and and by who's uh.
Two and uh you know even as kids you get a gold star west you get out of your
Pajamas and get dressed you know and he got out of his pajamas and he got dressed you know so even as kids i'm not calling our viewers kids um but even uh all of us appreciate recognition and recognition uh is an invaluable part of doing a performance review as well okay all right so we have four outcomes for our workshop today and at the end we're.Going to check in to see if we fulfill them where you are so one outcome for this workshop is that you recognize the importance of having effective performance reviews in the first place and another one of our outcomes for today is that we want to have you expand your capacity to prepare and deliver effective performance reviews and then third is how to conduct powerful virtual performance reviews you know most of us now with covet and.
Everything else that's happened you know we're working alone and there's um there could be a tendency for people to say well we'll pass on the performance review until we are back working physically together but we will coach you today on uh how to do a performance review uh virtually and how it have it be as effective as it as if you're in person and then our fourth outcome is we're gonna coach you on addressing some common performance review.
Challenges and some questions so again those of you at home and i'm going to ask carly in a moment to i'll put her on the spot but which of these four most resonates with you which of these outcomes would make a difference for you number one number two number three or number four carly how about you it's honestly hard they all um feel pretty foundational and important but i'm gonna say number three um just because that's.
Still even though we've been in a virtual world as a team at learn it for uh almost two years it's still a point that i think is um can be challenging just to have that same human element in a virtual setting so tips around um just just communicating clearly virtually would be really helpful but it's a toss-up between two and three for me right well they write both of them down okay two so one thing you're looking to get out of this uh call today is to expand your capacity to prepare and deliver effective performance reviews.
And another one of the the outcomes that carly's focused on is three how to conduct powerful virtual performance reviews those of you at home again pick one of these that you're going to focus on and then at the end we'll ask you you know did we fulfill on this where you are or not okay moving right along um there's a lot out there on the topic of performance reviews even as i was preparing to deliver this with you you know i went on the internet i read a lot uh we have our own design specialist at learn it that we consult with.
That prepared this deck and there's a lot out there so let's take a few moments and just go through some common definitions in terminology so performance reviews are also called performance appraisals uh performance evaluations or career development discussions so whatever term you use we're talking about the same thing and then there's a systematic what's the definition of a performance review it's a systematic general and periodic process that assesses an individual.
Employee's job performance and productivity in relation to certain pre-existing criteria and organizational objectives that's a mouthful we're not going to give you a test on this but we just want to have a common understanding as we go through this conversation today now what's the purpose of a performance review the purpose is the process of assessing an employee's process towards goals and to provide constructive feedback for skill building okay and then.
This is really important the last part here is there are four distinct aspects that are critical to doing implementing effective performance review is one is set an inspiring context by default i know for myself when i was working in the restaurant hospitality industry the context that i had when randy jarrett my boss said brian we're going to be doing your performance review next week the context was oh my gosh i'm in trouble i better.
Look good this week but we want you to set an inspiring context one and
We'll repeat ourselves as we go through here one of it's a two-way conversation one of if i am the boss and carly reports to me i'm not like the police person you know trying to catch her in a trap i really am out to have carly be successful and this is our opportunity so you want to take time to set an inspiring context second aspect is you.This is an opportunity for some goal setting and ongoing communication so i'm not waiting you know uh up until our annual time for carly and i to talk by the way i'm not carly's boss but i'm just using that as an example and then third is you want to conduct effective performance reviews so the performance review itself you want that to be very effective and then lastly align on a plan for the future so in this last box here we're going to dig into each one of those four aspects.
But carly just anything for you so far on the definitions or terminology before we continue no thank you brian i think uh i think this is great i just love your point around um not just being a one-time conversation or like a some giant shock with the performance review i think that's just a great point of um of of it not being something that people are fearful of or there's going to be some giant surprises that there's context and um conversations that.
Support support around the performance for you too so thank you for sharing that yeah absolutely thank you all right um now a performance review or performance assessment however you whatever terminology you're comfortable with it's a formal assessment in which a manager evaluates an employee's work performance and where you identify their strengths and weaknesses and you offer feedback and you set goals and i love this definition here this of uh what performances and um this is from alicia khan who's an.
Author and speaker and she's been interviewed by the harvard business review and what it comes down to performance is the way people act their behaviors and for the goals that they achieve their outcomes so you want to stay focused on you're looking at their performance not um nothing else and oftentimes people can collapse their performance with what the boss might think they should be doing okay so we're going to be making this.
Point a couple of times throughout our conversation today all right now let's go through a little uh case study let's have a little fun with this here uh and then after this case study that i put up here i'm going to ask you i'm going to give you a pop quiz so be ready there are two people that work janice and fletcher and let's look at their approach to performance review so janice and fletcher are new supervisors and they're attending their first training workshop now they've not covered material on performance reviews yet but they're.
Discovering their personal philosophies about them over lunch now janus doesn't believe a fair performance review can be made on an employee's work unless assignments have been discussed and expectations agreed upon in advance she thinks work should be assigned in measurable terms so both she and the employee can track performance as the work progresses okay so that's how janice feels about him fletcher on the other hand thinks that that approach is dangerous.
He feels employees should be given only a general idea of what's to be accomplished fletcher thinks employees who participate in establishing performance objectives will set them too low he prefers to leave performance expectations vague to see what the employees accomplish on their own if their standards don't measure up you'll let them know then and there all right so here's the pop quiz carly i'm going to put you on the spot here.
Who do you think will be the best at performance reviews and why janice or fletcher's approach janice is the one that's more specific right he's more specific uh my answer would be janus just because having measurable yeah measurable outcomes yeah okay goals are again all right great yeah now we're gonna go through that a little bit more um and just keep you know stay with us right there at home.
So um we're going to look at why janice's approach is an approach that's going to be more effective over these next few slides conversations so the performance review is a part of a larger picture inside of an organization and we want to take a moment to distinguish the difference between a performance review which we just defined and performance management so performance management is where you ensure that a set of activities and.
Outputs meets an organization's goals or key performance indicators so that's a bigger picture we're not talking about performance management here now learn it does have we have other courses where we dig into performance management and you can go online carly will tell us about that at the end of how to look at other learned courses but we're not going to get into other aspects of performance management in today's conversation we're focusing on.
Performance reviews so there are five goals of an effective performance management process all right now again we're not going to be looking at all this today but we want to just make the difference between performance management performance reviews one is aligning on individual employees day-to-day actions with strategic business objectives another is providing visibility and clarifying accountability related to performance expectations another is documenting individual.
Performance to support compensation and career planning decisions another is establishing focus for skill development and learning activity choices and then creating documentation for legal purposes to support decisions and reduce disputes now when we talk about the performance review very simply the performance review experience is twofold there is the planning for growth looking at the future and then there's the self-assessment.
Looking at the past now not all performance reviews include a self-assessment i realize that some companies some organizations have a pre-designed performance review where the boss and the boss only or their supervisor fills out and does a performance review and then gives it or shares it with the person that they're evaluating what we advocate and it's not like one is better or one is wrong one is worse.
What we encourage people to do is also to include a self-assessment portion why because if carly is the person that i report to it's it is useful for me to have a lot of advance notice and for me to fill out my own self-assessment independent of what carly my boss is going to fill out about my performance then when we actually have a performance review carly as my supervisor would walk me.
Through her evaluation first and we would be a two-way conversation a dialogue and then i would have an opportunity as well to share where i saw myself with my self-assessment and then we also want to have an aspect of the performance review looking at where do we go from here planning for growth now we'll say more about that later in our our session but we wanted to make the case that it's twofold okay all right so performance reviews what are they doing they're summarizing an.
Ongoing year-round dialogue so you want to keep in mind that this is a summary of how they've done over a long period of time however here's a tip for you performance reviews should be like you know it around swimming pools they have the no running sign around swimming pools performance reviews take out the running and put in surprise it should be a no surprise zone so if you're doing a performance review.
And the person that you're you're reviewing is surprised by something that said then consider you as the person doing the review have missed something throughout the year so we advocate and make the point that you want to be giving informal feedback you know ongoingly throughout the year and not saving it up for your annual or your biannual uh review.
Yeah no i just um i just i think that's i think that's such an important point just being on the receiving end of a lot of performance reviews um and as someone who loves feedback and tr i always say hey like i would love feedback just on every project when i turn it in like i would love you know feedback right up front or review it and get edits right there and then um i just want to reiterate i think that's a lot more impactful than six months later hearing oh yeah you really missed the mark on that project or you know oh this you know you were late on.
The deadline like i think just um you know nipping things in the bud right when they happen kind of like you said is is great and then of course you can aggregate everything in this review but um i think that's great one thing i wanted to touch on too brian and you have experience um on the receiving and giving in at large organizations and for for us at learn it you know our internal team is a little bit smaller and you know i get direct face time with our.
Ceo um so i get a lot i feel like i have i have a pretty it's my performance reviews are pretty conversational um and they might look different than someone who's you know i'm employee number you know 25 but someone else might be employee number you know 4 557. so i'm saying for you as someone who's who's worked at large organizations and small um i don't know any any tips or context around how maybe someone can manage you.
Know being a bigger company versus a larger company what a difference might be there yeah that's a great question um the premise is somewhat the same if your employee number five or employee number 4500 whatever we are coaching people to stay connected with the people that they are accountable for on a regular basis so even um i'll share from my own experience when i ran a kfc canada for uh for western canada i had 84 locations and i had uh 1200 employees.
That you know worked at those 84 locations and uh you know they were spread out literally quite a bit but i had 15 direct reports now that in hindsight 15 was too many um for what i'm talking about and we actually did a reorganization and got it down to about eight direct reports uh in future years but what i would do is i would do ride alongs throughout the year with each of my eight uh district managers and that would be an opportunity for me to visit their 10 or.
13 stores and after each one i'm giving them the feedback i'm giving them a gold star if you will you know we walked into the kitchelano location and i really acknowledge you for the quality service and cleanliness a qsc rating that we had it was marginally different than my last experience here or i want to acknowledge you you know for uh promoting sarah you know at the kensington location you know because i we talked about you developing people as part of your.
Own development growth so the informal part find a way to have ride-alongs or find a way so it's not daunting and especially in large organizations that they only get your feedback in a formal setting is that responsive to what you were asking yeah yeah absolutely and i think that um i think that also speaks to i know we're going to get there but the kind of the challenges of virtual versus not like i remember with with my boss you know if i.
Had a question or struggling with something in the moment he'd be like well let's just go let's take a walk and go get coffee um it was you know there's those nuanced ways we kind of give and receive feedback you know when you're in the office or you're just in person or you're you know you just you know you your your boss or whoever can kind of see you see you struggling or see you frustrated versus like you said we don't we don't have that now so um we can we can save this question for later but um just that around just i think we'll cover tips for.
Kind of how you make up for those nuanced um opportunities for feedback you know and use for performance reviews and tool for that in a virtual setting um would love your thoughts on that as well yeah that i love that let's go for a coffee that's that's great um one practice that i have just so i don't forget to bring it up when we talk about virtual uh which we will but um i have two colleagues that also are consultants and we used to physically be together you know we'd fly to cities and we'd be.
Delivering training sessions for a week at a time and we don't have that uh luxury now but what we do have in place is every saturday morning from nine o'clock to ten o'clock we have our buddy call and that's where the three of us get on on zoom and it's not specifically related to designing or debriefing for a previous client but we're bringing our own lives to it you know so that is a way of us having a virtual connection call and that's a way for me to get some thought partnership conversations.
In hey what do you think about this and you know john will share that and kelly will share this you know and i share and we do that regularly so that's an a tip one can use as well to keep the um no surprise happening you know when you save it up yeah i love that thought partnership you know because you're just kind of brainstorming sharing ideas it's just it's a little less formal so thank you i love that yeah great okay let's move into um what is the.