Comments

YES!

Posted by Judith Ellis at June 15, 2009 2:01 PM

Why not have the suggested 'developed' person on the interview panel when the leader applies for his/her new promotion?

Posted by Trevor Gay at June 15, 2009 3:34 PM

Trevor, I hear you, my good fellow! Flashback to my other post a moment ago about 360 Degree Feedback. I have used it (formally and informally) and I can attest to the fact that when people in leadership positions know that the people they are supposed to be developing will be providing an equally critical part of their evaluation some dramatic and interesting things can happen. They quit acting so much like a "boss" (remember, "BOSS" is double-S.O.B. spelled backwards) and more like a teammate, cheerleader, coach, and facilitator. Sure, you see little bit of fake politeness now and then, but to overcome some of that, we made sure that evaluations were not just periodic -- they were relatively random in timing and whenever possible the person being evaluated had no clue which of their charges would be called upon to evaluate them (or we had ALL of them do it, if that was within reason.) As far as evaluations for specific promotions, we did do interviews, per se'; however, we did evaluations on everyone frequently enough that we didn't end up doing them specifically for a given promotion. Again, the theory was to have sort of a collection of snapshots in hand that painted a picture of what the normal way of doing things was for an individual. If someone knows that they are about to be considered for a promotion or apply for one, political games playing sets in and suddenly what you see ain't what you get after they are wrongly promoted. That's EXACTLY why we instituted the above ideas.

Sort of like the little saying "Be kind to your kids. They pick your nursing home." LOL. Seriously, even I was a bit skeptical to begin with, suspicious that we'd see a lot of non-genuine niceties going on in the name of trying to get good evaluations, but I admittedly overestimated it. Thank goodness. I guess it helped that before we started doing it, we explained the "WHY" of it. We let them know that we weren't trying to get them to just be nice to their subordinates, we were interested in their development. By and large, they got it.

Posted by Dan Gunter at June 15, 2009 5:04 PM

I was thinking after the previous post of several occasions where I was being interviewed for a position where the reputation of a previous leader I worked for and the performance appraisal they wrote on me were cited as the reason I got the job. Guess it's like sports coaches...how many folks got head coaching jobs because they were Bill Belichick's assistants with the Patriots?

Posted by Dave Wheeler at June 15, 2009 11:19 PM

Exactly! Developing talent is the one thing that actually stays with your company when you are gone. Passing down the skills to be effective and execute is an employers main legacy. If this process is repeated throughout the company you will always have productive workers.

Posted by Ryan Freed at June 16, 2009 3:34 PM

So true, Ryan! Thanks!

Posted by Judith Ellis at June 16, 2009 4:03 PM

Good Tom!
Success tips for someone are not always success tips for anyone.

Bob Julius Onggo
-- http://www.daxell.com

Posted by Bob Julius Onggo at June 16, 2009 7:30 PM