Positive annual performance reviews
In my MAPP (Master of Applied Positive Psychology) program at the University of Pennsylvania, we took a course on Positive Psychology and Organizations. The course was largely focused around Appreciative Inquiry, which I use in my consulting practice, but there is so much more to a positive organization.
In my mind, a positive organization should encompass some, if not all, of the following characteristics: positive strategic vision, positive corporate mandate, positive work processes, positive leadership / management, positive teams, positive physical work environment (also sometimes referred to as physical health and safety, but I suggest that a “positive physical work environment” goes much, much further), and positive performance reviews.
Tara Parker-Pope, in a recent New York Times blog, cited authors and researchers who are petitioning to trash the annual performance review.
Thanks to Readers' Digest for this Banana Performance Review comic!
This argument has some merit to it: performance reviews are stressful for both parties (the manager and the employee), and may be completely meaningless with little or no impact on actual job performance.
I’m not entirely sure if we should completely abandon the annual performance review. Perhaps we should look at what works, and enhance it. Here are my two ideas on it:
1. Enhance the current system. Performance reviews, just like any summative evaluation, should not be a surprise. By the time the final test comes in a course, you should know what you are going to be tested on. Similarly, by the time the annual performance review comes about, you should know what is going to be discussed. So instead of abandoning the annual cycle, how about supplementing it with regular, on-going feedback between the manager and the employee, where both parties get to discuss what’s working, what isn’t working, and how both can work together to increase performance according to agreed-upon metrics? The summative performance review may influence bonus payments, promotional opportunities and so on, but the final outcome should not be a surprise.
In order for #1 to work, all employees and managers would need training on giving AND receiving feedback (because there are learnable skills on both sides of that equation). Training on coaching skills would also be helpful, and managers may benefit from on-going coaching circles, for example, to share best feedback practices amongst themselves.
2. Create a deliberate positive component to the performance review. At my son’s school when he was learning to print, he would print an entire page of capital letter As (for example). He could then circle his best A, and submit that for the teacher to review. This allowed him to do several things: he got to practice without penalty, he could critically appraise his own work, and he would then be assessed on his best performance. What would the work world be like if we all got to do that? Can you imagine a performance review where you get to choose your best projects, and discuss those with your supervisor? We know that we get better when we focus on success, and sports psychology and educational psychology researchers have borne this out with many audiences ranging from basketball players to elementary school children. Is it such a stretch to imagine that employees might also do better by focusing on their successes?
In order for #2 to work, we need to abandon, or at least modify, our current deficit-based thinking. We tend to believe that we can correct errors by analyzing them and fixing the problem. What if we could correct errors by focusing on the successes and creating more enabling environments and opportunities for more success?
What is your experience like with performance reviews? Are you aware of any companies using any positive performance review techniques or processes? And if not, would you like to learn more about the possibilities? Please comment and share your ideas. Thank you.
(And a very big THANK YOU to my MAPP classmate Paula Davis-Laack who posted the link to the NYT blog in a LinkedIn group that we both belong to. I’m truly fortunate to have such a great positive community that is always sharing ideas and support!)
MAPP term 2
Celebrating having a few minutes to get back to this blog! Rather than lamenting the time that has passed and the busy-ness that has taken me away from it… I’m going for the positive approach! I find that I spend more time on Twitter (@LVSConsulting) and I enjoy posting snippits of articles that I’m reading, along with the bit.ly link. I’m able to get quite a few click-throughs that way, and I enjoy spreading the work that’s being done in Positive Psychology.
However, my mind right now is on two things: 1. an assignment I will be writing about character strengths in The Wizard of Oz (1939, starring Judy Garland) and 2. all the new books I have for this term on my new bookshelf.
Let me start with #2.
For the Spring MAPP term (for some reason, the University of Pennsylvania optimistically calls the Jan-April term “spring” term, even though it’s predominantly in winter, but perhaps that’s why I’m studying positive psychology there, and not at a “winter term” university?), I had to order quite a few new books – I have probably spent around $300, and that figure is lower than expected because I already owned some of the books. I’m also probably forgetting an online order or two…
Some of the books that I’m looking forward to:
Rath, T. & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths-based leadership. Gallup Press: New York. (ISBN: 978-1595620255) – This aligns very nicely with a course that I’m now teaching to third year college / university students on Organizational Leadership. The course is Wednesday nights for 3 hours at a stretch, and it turns out that while almost all of my students know their weaknesses, almost none of them know their strengths. This week, they are taking the StrengthsFinder assessment and this week’s course will make use of what they’ve discovered. Stay tuned….
Prilleltensky, I. & Prilleltensky, O. (2006). Promoting Well-Being: Linking Personal, Organizational and Community Change. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. (ISBN: 978-0471719267) – I haven’t had the time to really get into this tome yet, but the title is inspirational. Especially when one considered the newly-emerging theories of social contagion. Well, there’s a lot of potential here!
Reivich, K. & Shatte, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles. New York: Broadway Books (ISBN: 978-0767911900) – Dr. Karen Reivich is one of our professors this term, and she’s also leading the US Army resilience training program. A highly impressive individual, as well as a ground-breaking movement into resilience research and application. I do hope to become certified in the Penn Resiliency Program after my MAPP work is done. Great implications for children, families, parents, and, of course, in organizational life with leaders and employees.
Cooperrider, D. & Whitney, D. (2007). Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, 2nd Edition. Crown Custom Publishing. (ISBN: 978-1933403199) – As I’ve already mentioned, David Cooperrider came to lecture in our first MAPP class and it was amazing. I have some familiarity with Appreciative Inquiry, and I’m looking forward to deepening my understanding. This topic is of special interest because my service learning project involved helping to create (and possibly run) an AI Summit for organizational and community change. Completely thrilling and meaningful.
There are also several books that I bought “just because” – usually because a professor or classmate highly recommended it. I figure this puts my entire book-buying total for the MAPP program well over $1000, but it’s been well-spent! Although it might be 2011 before I get to read all of them…
As to #1 above, I’m writing a paper about character strengths as demonstrated in the movie The Wizard of Oz.
We know, for example, that the cowardly lion isn’t really cowardly, and that the TinMan really has a heart, and the Scarecrow is really quite intelligent – but what does this indicate for positive psychology? I’ll leave you to reflect on that yourself, or else here’s a list of PPND articles that might get your grey stuff going. PPND is the Positive Psychology News Daily, and if you’re at all interested in what’s on the cutting edge of Positive Psychology, I highly recommend an email subscription! I read every single one each day.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to ease on down the road (remember The Wiz? with Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow?) and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and ponder character strengths and the Yellow Brick Road… Hope I don’t fall into the poppies!
2010 starts – and it’s back to the blog
Well I ended up taking quite a bit of a pause from this blog. The last time I wrote was about three weeks ago, and in that time I finished the final assignments of the Fall term of my MAPP (Masters in Applied Positive Psychology) program – which is both good and bad. Good to have assignments done (and my final grades are looking quite good, thank you very much!) and good to have one term done, but bad because it means I only have four months of this amazing experience left!
However, these four months are going to be great and this first class weekend back was a great start with David Cooperrider’s course on Positive Organizations.
If you follow me on Twitter (@LVSConsulting) then today you would have read a series of tweets of David Cooperrider quotes. Here’s a selection of some of my favourites:
All change begins in the imagination.
Simple face to face conversations can change the world.
Changing the envisioned image of the future can change the future.
What a gift it is to be around someone who sees you with an appreciative eye.
The vision of the future of an organization resides in its inner dialogue.
Positive change is in the art of the question. Unconditional positive questions.
when you focus on the good, a new richness of vocabulary emerges.
through an assumption of deficit-based change, we have created the model of organizations as problems to be solved. // but deficit-based change is exhausting, results in more hierarchy, fewer images of possibility, breakdowns in relations.
Why not study what you really want to see created in the organization? // study moments of great engagement instead of moments of low morale.
Human systems move in the direction of their inquiry.
Ask positive questions that SOAR: strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results.
Overall, it was a fabulous day and a half with an amazing man. The way he talks is inspirational, and although he can run Appreciative Inquiry summit with hundreds or thousands of people, he has a dynamically personal touch as he lectured to our class of 45.
The recent holidays were relaxing, and I was happy not to set an alarm for two weeks, but now I’m all positively energized again about my consulting and coaching work – and the positive change that can be created in the organizations around us.
first day of MAPP
Today was the first day of my Master in Applied Positive Psychology program and it was everything I was hoping for and more. MUCH more!!
First of all, we got an introduction to Positive Psychology by Dr. Martin Seligman who called upon people in the class to talk about why they are there – what brought them to the MAPP program. It is important to note here that he called on the students cold – no one knew they were going to have to speak.
The first student that Dr. Seligman called on spoke eloquently about her role in health care – and Marty (can I call him Marty?) talked about the relationship between Positive Psychology and health care – how in pos psych, “mental health” is more than just the absence of “mental illness” and how he hopes to develop a similar model for physical health. There is work happening right now in this exciting area.
The second student is finishing his Masters in Organizational Dynamics (which also sounds like a great program!) and is doing Appreciative Inquiry work in an industrial supplies company. Marty used this story to talk about the bridge between positive psychology and corporations – how the University of Michigan has developed a positive-oriented 360 evaluation (which I’d like to investigate further), and what is money really for anyhow?
The third student talked about her role in education, and how she wants to enrich students’ lives through positive education. We had a great class discussion (one of many) about teaching positive emotions in school, and how this can accompany “traditional” curricula, such as math, languages, and so on.
The fourth student is a retired Army officer, and we learned how the US Army is working on “comprehensive soldier fitness” in domains such as social, emotional, spiritual and family, in addition to physical. Marty shared with us his view that the Army may provide the tipping point for positive psychology, bringing this new movement into popular use and truly demonstrating the empirical benefits.
At this point, I was completely in awe at my fellow students. Each of the students who had spoken was so deep into their fields and their passion for positive psychology – they are here to make positive changes in the world through their areas – be it through education, military, corporations or health care. I consider them to be “specialists” and extremely knowledgeable.
Imagine then my surprise when I was called as the next speaker! I talked (not as eloquently as I might have liked!) about who I am and what I do and why I am in the MAPP program. I shared that I am an independent consultant, owning my own business, working with a variety of clients and teams, and doing coaching as an ACC certified coach – and then Marty made the links between positive psychology and consulting, but notably coaching, which he called “the Wild West”.
Coaching, as you may know, is an unregulated profession that has grown exponentially in the past decade and Marty sincerely feels that positive psychology and its scientific rigour have a great deal to offer coaching – and I completely agree. Already, I have proposals submitted to speak at two upcoming conferences on this very topic. I will keep you posted! And I am glad and grateful to have been called upon – it was a fantastic opportunity for me to really step into “owning” my role as an independent consultant, coach and positive psychology practitioner – my first chance to be “out loud” about this new blend that I am creating.
After I spoke, another student who is an accomplished journalist shared her journey to MAPP, and Marty used her experience to talk about how we can get the positive psychology message “out there”, and what the long-term goal of pos psych is. And I will write more on that later!
Other highlights from today: sitting at lunch with Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, hearing about Dr. Seligman’s new theories on “happiness” (a departure from his book Authentic Happiness – a refining of the theoretical model), a lecture / class discussion with Barbara Fredrickson about positive emotions, and a philosophical discussion with James Pawelski about positive interventions – what they are and how we categorize them.
I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be here. I am deeply impressed with the calibre of my fellow students (who come from all over the world), and every professor has been openly approachable – you would not believe the quality of our dinner-time conversation tonight in a noisy pub. I think I could have stayed all night.
But instead, I will get my rest for tomorrow – another fun day of learning ahead no doubt!
This has been a very long blog, so please let me know your comments – what, of my MAPP journey, is of most interest to you? Email me, write a comment on my blog, or connect with me via Facebook or Linked In – however you are receiving this. I do appreciate it!
David Cooperrider on the Discovery and Design of Positive Institutions
I am an unabashed David Cooperrider fan. I was first exposed to Appreciative Inquiry several years ago and loved it at first sight – how uplifting! how positive! And why wouldn’t you consider what works within an organization as well as looking for areas to improve? It just made a lot of sense to me.
So I was thrilled to make it into the room to hear David speak at the WCPP. He talked about how the research behind positive organizations (one of the pillars of Positive Psychology) is growing and the business case is solidifying. He shared with us work that he has done with some amazing organizations, including the US Navy and the United Nations. So if you think that your organization is too hierarchical or too bureaucratic to use Appreciative Inquiry, then think again!
Like many other areas of Pos Psych, AI (Appreciative Inquiry) is moving into sustainability – how can AI work with organizations, internationally, to solve the world’s climate issues, to solve grinding poverty, to solve conflicts? The answers are not easy, but the discovery process is fascinating and elevating.
David commented that most of the world, including most of the organizations, are locked into a “deficit” mode, functioning on an unwritten rule: “let’s fix what’s wrong and let the good stuff look after itself”. This has resulted in an unrealized metaphor: organizations are problems to be solved, instead of believing that organizations have problems. A fine and incredibly important distinction.
The shift to Appreciative Inquiry (appreciate the best of what is, imagine what might be, design what should be, create what will be) is suggesting a new metaphor: organizations are alive “appreciative systems”, universes of strengths via relationship with others. How powerful and moving. So now, we are looking at how to use strengths positively and transformationally.
David shared a new notion of “pro-fusion” (positive fusion) with stages around the idea of transformational positivity. What happens when strength connects with strength? When hope connects with hope? He proposes:
- elevate and extend: the elevation of inquiry into the appreciable world, the extension of relatedness and the awe of gratitude
- broaden and build: the profusion of strengths (see the work done by Barbara Fredrickson)
- establish and eclipse: the activation of energy, the creation and installation of the new positive organizational reality
David concluded by indicating that what matters most is our relationships with others – we need a radical reorientation from “self” to “other” as no one can live in isolation.
I certainly agree with him. It’s interesting to see, over the past three or four generations, how our family units have changed and the parallel shift from having a career for life to transitory jobs, from villages raising children to parents (sometimes alone) raising children in detached living residences… Organizations have become the place where we get much of our social and interpersonal interactions these days. Don’t we want them to be places of strength and positivity where we can be at our best and contribute to a greater societal whole?
What do you think?
