It is still surprising to hear about a company that does annual performance reviews – annually. I worked for such a company a little while back. We had a small dedicated HR department and a CEO that stressed the annual performance review each year. The problem was they were only once a year.
manager
I was in the office of a manger of a fairly large company not too long ago. In this office the manager proudly displayed the certificates of achievement his department’s employees had earned. He was a senior leader and very proud of the things employees had accomplished even two or three levels down the hierarchy.
In other words you can occasionally drop one and it will almost always bounce back, but drop the other four and they will suffer damage, possibly shatter.
Not too long ago my 12 year old son decided that he would go out and practice basketball a lot more. I watched him for a little while. He would shoot and he would dribble a little. There wasn’t much effort in what he was doing. He did whatever was comfortable, whatever he enjoyed the most. After awhile I went out and gave him a little coaching.
The other day I wrote a post on how distractions (particularly those dealing with technology) can erode the trust of leaders. Why? Because we send clear messages that we don’t care to those we are speaking to when we aren’t focused on listening.
