Are you valued as an Employee?

The annual appraisal of the team is a daunting task for many a manager. Every employee working under you expects an “Excellent” rating while the company wants you to fit everyone into a bell curve with certain percentage of forced ratings including assessing a certain percentage of employees to be ‘Below Expectations.’ While everyone acknowledges that not all employees can be rated ‘Excellent’, the fact that appraisal ratings are linked to pay rise and promotions cloud such objective assessments. Anyway, that is a different topic altogether.

My simple question to my colleagues during such appraisals was always, “Have you added any value during the course of last year?”. And to be honest, I used to ask myself the very same question during my appraisal as well. Wherever the Key Performance Parameters are quantified, there may not be much of a debate. But when it is not quantified or nebulous, it becomes subjective! While the employee and I knew instinctively what “value” meant in the context of our discussions, I am afraid, I had not detailed it in a clear manner to make an objective assessment realistically. It was fuzzy at best.

Just imagine my pleasant surprise when I got hold of my dear colleague Stuart Drew’s book “The Liberated Manager”. He has devoted the entire first chapter of the Book to the subject of what I called value. He has defined a pragmatic framework that made me write this blog! He calls it “Personal Share Price” – PSP in short.

Stuart makes the following interesting observations as a prelude to defining PSP.

1.    Annual appraisals are a lagging indicator of past performance only and provides little or no guide to the future.

2.    Past performance alone is not the determinant of a corporate share price in financial markets. It is influenced by, among other things, future expectations of business, dividend policy, RoI, market sentiment and host of other factors and not just performance.

He believes that managers should apply similar concepts in assessing employees’ contribution and value in the workplace.

Stuart proposes three components that constitute PSP – Behaviour, Presence and Performance,

Consistent performance according to expectations or better than expectations contribute to a healthy PSP as most of us understand. But behaviour and presence are no less important and should not be subordinated to performance in doing a complete job, is his conviction. This applies particularly to managers, as their performance is generally an aggregation of their teams’ performance. Therefore, it can even be argued that a Managers’ behaviour and presence drives the performance of his team.

While we generally understand the terms behaviour and performance, we tend to misconstrue the term ‘presence’. It is not to be confused with personality. He quotes psychologist Walter Mischel of Stanford University who states that personality explains less than 10% of a person’s behaviour. Personality is a poor predictor of performance because people are highly flexible and far more adaptive than personality tests give them credit for.

If so, how do we recognise someone with presence. Easy says Stuart. They are confident, exude energy, are easily noticed, listened to, trusted, respected and followed. It is not about who is the loudest or who has the biggest ego. It is a state of being that allows one to develop more choices, reduce fears and influence the people around. People with presence also behave in a way that puts others at ease; they listen attentively and invite contributions without fear of reprimand or ridicule. They are measured in what they do. It is a combination of integrity, confidence, self-belief, strong body language, social interaction and a sense of humour. This presence or Gravitas, as he prefers to call it, is clearly evident among strong managers and leaders. And the good news Stuart conveys is personal presence CAN be developed!  

He also talks of the volatility of PSP and gives examples of famous people who have had a very high PSP – like Tiger Woods – but lost it along the way. Hence it must be our constant endeavour to evaluate ourselves and be aware of our PSP. He also goes on to give personal examples from his work life and talks of tools like 360-degree feedback that helped him to get a view about other’s perception about his behaviour and presence. He clearly demonstrates through examples how performance alone is not sufficient for a satisfactory PSP but behaviour and presence are also absolutely necessary and important.  

How do we know that our PSP is in good shape? Stuart gives an illustrative list to demonstrate this. Some of them are:

§  People will seek your advice

§  People will want to join your team

§  People will want to work on your projects

§  People will want you to work on their projects

§  Seniors and peers will seek and value your opinion

§  Your performance will be superior to your peers

§  You will have assumed responsibility disproportionate to your grade

§  People will go the extra mile for you without being asked 

Sounds quite familiar right? We have all come across such colleagues in our careers. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, you get the drift, right? These are some broad indicators of success in a wider sense. He concludes that the concept of PSP is as good as any formal metric based on revenue, profit, growth and the like. While these are acknowledged performance metrics, they need not necessarily be pre-eminent. He also gives a few practical tips to improve PSP like having a sense of humour, thanking people formally, taking an interest in their personal lives etc., and reiterates that it works in all corporate environments!

With PSP as the basic foundation, he goes on to elaborate on other constraints that normally shackle a manager from achieving his potential. Several chapters follow literally liberating you from one constraint after the other including a valuable one on liberating one from constraints imposed by one’s cultural heritage. Unlike a book by an academician, this book is the result of decades of vast experience across continents and therefore the distilled wisdom of a successful practitioner. The nuggets of wisdom are easy to read and follow. Anecdotes shared from his vast experience are fabulous and enriching. I am able to relate to many of the cases being discussed as I was also part of the journey with him in HCL, I am able to relive those wonderful moments. The writing style is simple and lucid. Despite being a native speaker of the language, he has not used a single word for which I had to refer to the dictionary – a trait that I greatly admire in a writer. 

I enjoyed reading the book and would highly recommend the book for all managers – budding ones as well as experienced ones. After all who doesn’t want to be a liberated manager?

I had the privilege of working with Stuart as he was heading our European operations in HCL. I have made presentations to clients along with him and on his request participated in his team’s offsite conferences in London. His disarming smile, calm demenaour, client / employee handling skills were amazing and I am glad that he has shared his experiences in this valuable book. It is sure to enrich the knowledge of current generation of managers and provide tools that can be applied right away. Thanks Stuart!

(Excerpts with the kind permission of Mr. Stuart Drew)