Advice for Happier Performance Appraisals

This is a busy season for Performance Appraisal (PA) discussions, and this topic’s come up with several clients recently.  Anxiety seems to be the most common emotion associated with PAs, both on the part of the receiver and the writer/manager.

A little anxiety running up to the conversation can be helpful  — it will keep you alert and engaged during all the discussions.  Once the conversation starts, however, you don’t want to be trying to speak and listen from a body of anxiety.  Your primary filter in anxiety (a low grade version of fear) is, “This person may be wanting to do me harm, so I must be vigilant.”  How can anyone be a good listener when THAT conversation is going on inside one’s head, and the body is sitting on the edge of a fight/flight/freeze response?

So I offer two pieces of advice, one for you if you are a manager/writer of the review, and one for if you are the subject of a PA (and many of you find yourself in both roles, I’m sure!).   This comes out of my personal experience — 20 years of leading over 400 performance review conversations, during which time I made my share of mistakes and learned a whole heck of a lot of great ways to create a positive conversation even when the news is difficult:

For the manager/writer

Whether you are delivering good or bad news, praise or corrective steering advice, always respect the PERSON.  You may disagree w/ their opinion; don’t be disagreeable.  You may think your assessment is superior to theirs; don’t forget to listen, hear them out, even as you choose to disagree with their assessment. In every way possible, seek to make it a a conversation/dialogue rather than a monologue.

When you find your emotions rising up (anger, anxiety, irritation) remember to sit back, take a deep breathe, and let your body settle down before you continue.  As the saying goes, “People will forget what you say but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

For the receiver of feedback

Remember that you are human, and that you are not perfect.  No, your boss is not perfect, either, but that’s not point.  The business purpose of Performance Appraisal is to assess contribution to the business and to grow capacity for the future.  It’s a business tool, not a massage.

If you arrive in a PA conversation believing that the purpose of the exercise is to feed your ego, you will be disappointed.  If, however, you arrive with an eagerness to talk about what more you can do to learn, improve, grow, and otherwise increase your value to the company, you’re far more likely to “hear” any critical feedback as a GIFT to you.  After all, if all anyone shares with you is praise, you’ll miss the opportunity to grow!

Even if your manager does a clumsy job of delivering feedback (and a lot of them do), try to get past their delivery to the nuggets of helpful information.   It’s YOUR responsibility, after all, to build your skills and your career.

OH, and the same advice to you about breathing:  When you find your emotions rising up (anger, anxiety, defensiveness) remember to sit back, take a deep breathe, and let your body settle down before you continue.  And remember:  It may be personal, but that doesn’t mean you have to take it personally. 

I hope this is helpful for your discussions!

Happiness and the Economy

In early December, the American Psychological Association reported that 80% of Americans feel stressed by the economy, 60% feel angry about it, and 52% are having trouble sleeping (see CNN article, here).

Yikes! Sleep-deprived, angry, stressed out… these are not descriptors normally associated with happiness, are they?!  The sad thing about this reality is how many people believe they can’t do anything about their mood.  They truly believe that the current chaos is MAKING them crazy.  They say, “I can’t sleep at night because I’m too worried,” without understanding that worry is a choice.  They are choosing to spend all their energy focused on what could/might go wrong, and they find evidence to support their belief every time they open the paper or turn on the news.

You don’t have to be a victim.

You can handle a lot, when you’re not stretched so thin you’re about to break.  Take action to reduce your normal stressors as much as possible so that you have the capacity to deal with the ocean of negative emotion that seems to washing up to your doorstep.

To Reduce Stress:

Take care of yourself, which includes healthy eating, sleeping, exercising, and maintaining structure in your daily activities.

Connect with friends and other people who you enjoy and who understand you. Getting together with others doesn’t make troubles disappear, but you’ll be surprised how much easier they are to live with when you know everyone is dealing with the same stuff. You are not alone.

Focus on what you CAN do now to make life better, rather than on what’s not possible right now.

Reach out to other people in need; it’s satisfying and puts your own problems in perspective.

Take a break. Most of us can juggle a lot of balls… but not all the time!  Don’t deceive yourself into putting in more hours at work or believing that you can’t enjoy your weekend time.  Even the lightest burden feels like a ton when you carry it 24 hours a day.

Count your blessings: find one thing every day — no matter how small — for which you are grateful.

Just as you can make yourself crazy… you can also make yourself calm and enjoy moments of happiness in the midst of a crazy time.

Now, take a deep breathe.  Ahhhhh.  Feels good, right?  Do it again, then go back to work with a teensy bit of calm…

Happiness and the Stock Market

There’s been very little happiness in the financial world.  In order to keep from slipping into the black hole of depression about our financial situation, I’ve withdrawn a bit.  Do I really need to know what is happening in the market on an hour to hour basis?  No.  Day to day?  Hmm.  One day it’s down 700 points (sadness) and the next day it is up 600 (yay!). Up, down; up, down. So much drama!

I’m only reading news about the market once a week.  I can’t control anything, so I’ve stopped pretending that I can.  I’m observing the activity from a distance.  And I focus on what Good News I can create:

• I’m happy that last year our broker convinced us to diversify our retirement savings, reducing our mix of domestic stocks.  We’ve still lost value, but a lot less than we might have otherwise.
• I’m happy that we converted half my 401(k) into a life insurance annuity.  We were nervous at the time about locking in the money for ten years, but were convinced to make the shift because the tradeoff was a guaranteed minimum balance.  With the market tanking we are now grateful for the lower floor on our dollars — we may not be making any money on that part, but we aren’t losing any, either.
• I’m happy that we are more than ten years away from retirement.  Ten years is a long time for things to recover.  And if they don’t recover, ten years is a long time to come up with a Plan B.
• I’m actually happy that the turmoil is causing everyone to look at “how the system works.”  We are pretty creative as a society, but we tend not to change things that aren’t broken.  The beauty of this crisis is that all the best creative minds are rising to the occasion and asking, “how can we change the system so that this never happens again?!”  Even if they don’t create the perfect solution, what shakes out of this crisis is likely to be better than what was.
• On that note, it’s actually kind of cool to be present at the birth/rebirth of something this big.  (and yes, I am an incurable optimist who believes that crisis can be a good thing)

So, what’s your take on the financial crisis?  Are you focusing only on the worst possible news?  Are you monitoring the market more than you ever did before?  STOP!  You ignored things before, and they went up and down, and you were fine.  Unless you are planning to retire this year, you’re probably going to be in better shape by then, so who cares what the value of your retirement plan is today?

Put down the statement.  Back away from your computer.  Take a deep breath.  Pay attention to the basics you should have been practicing all along:  live your life with joy, don’t buy what you can’t afford, save something out of every paycheck, eat healthy food, exercise your body, breathe deeply when you find yourself stressed.

Oh — did you notice that I mentioned breathing two times in the same paragraph?  Intentional.  Breathing always helps.  The financial crisis will not kill anyone — but the stress of it might.  Don’t make yourself a victim.

We Gotta Make Our Own Happiness

I got up this morning feeling very unsettled. My week has been busy. I was a bit short on sleep and when my alarm went off all I could feel was bone-tiredness. So I turned off my alarm and skipped my workout (this is a big deal for me — I live in the assessment that I MUST exercise six days a week…).

Even with the catchup sleep, however, I still felt ‘on edge’ once I got up and functioning. I went in to my office to start work, and could not focus or sit still. I kept wandering around inside and outside the house, and eventually found myself out on my deck.

It took a while for me to realize that I’d been standing there — just standing in place — for a couple of minutes, just listening to the wind chimes.

That’s when I noticed that, for the first time in several hours, I felt calm. So, I sat down in a spot of sun on my deck and let go of needing to do anything else.

I sat there for… Oh, I don’t know; maybe ten minutes?

For ten minutes I sat in just that moment. I savored the symphony of wind chimes. I felt the cool breeze on my body. I drifted with the songs of chirping crickets as they waxed and waned. I reveled in the brilliant blue sky, cloudless and crystal clear. I watched two squirrels chasing each other up and down a fence and across the neighbor’s yard. I wondered at the beauty of the shasta daisies, crisply white and yellow against a sea of green, as they bobbed and swayed in the breeze (I even took this picture!)

And I breathed. Just breathed it all in. I sat in the middle of an absolutely spectacular moment on a perfect late summer day and… and nothing. I just sat and enjoyed being fully present.

My tank felt fully recharged after that.

Confession: I experienced a moment of guilt as I gathered my thoughts and came inside to my office. I’ve got so much to do, so many things on my desk. What was I doing?

I wasn’t Doing. I was Being. We gotta make our own happiness. This was one of my moments.

You can manage your stress

While researching stress management I came across a lovely little online, self-study course on stress. The class consists of ~20 short lessons linked sequentially. Some of the topics are: What is stress?, good and bad stress, tools for relieving stress, and long-term stress strategies.

You’ll find the course at http://www.mtstcil.org/skills/stress-intro.html. It appears to have been written by a West Virginia-based advocacy group for the disabled. Nice work!

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