Radical Candour and moving away from annual appraisals
Over the past few months I’ve been lucky enough to have been undertaking some coaching to help my personal development. There have been lots of interesting and helpful conversations, the most useful being around feedback.
I can see why annual appraisals seem useful if you (or the organisation) are not getting regular feedback. The anonymous 360 feedback process means that organisational power dynamics can be navigated — if you are starting out at an organisation or if you feel vulnerable, you can feed in anonymous comments.
Unfortunately it also means that feedback and learning are one-off, annual activities. And because feedback is anonymous, you’re unable to develop ongoing conversations or a deeper understanding of the issues that are raised and what you do well. It also means that feedback isn’t timely — things that took place months ago are referred to when it’s too late to do anything about them. Lastly, there may be feedback that you disagree with, and there is no way of challenging it.
Developing an alternative
I raised my frustrations with my coach, and we set out a monthly process where I would ask people directly for feedback, and I would meet with them at the end of the month to discuss it.
I asked people to think about:
- What I should stop doing.
- What is working well that I should carry on doing.
- What I should start doing.
This would help me to develop a deeper understanding of what I can improve on. Done well, it should mean that nothing in my annual appraisal is a surprise. And hopefully, it would mean that I play a part in developing a feedback culture in our organisation, where we routinely give feedback, not just when challenging situations arise.
I was worried that even monthly feedback wouldn’t be timely, so after a conversation with Kelly Doonan I added a caveat to the email to suggest that people let me know straight away if they picked up on something instead of saving it until the end of the month.
What happened?
I’ve had some very positive conversations with my colleagues. From my first two conversations I have discovered that I can create much more clarity around what I do and where I can add value in my new role as Head of Learning. Where I was worried I might be stepping on people’s toes, l’m now working on a clear process to identify where I can add value.
For my next couple of conversations I’ll be catching up with people in different roles. I’m hoping that this will enable me to access different feedback on what my work looks and feels like. In time, I’ll also ask for feedback from the colleagues that I first spoke to so that I can see what has changed and what I can develop further.
Radical Candour
Around this time I happened to listen to an edition of Eat, Sleep, Work Repeat hosted by Bruce Daisley. In this episode he spoke withe Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, who wrote ‘You Coach You.’ They also host their own Squiggly Careers podcast, so I delved through their back catalogue and found an episode on Radical Candour, which echoed much of what I was trying to do.
In this episode, Kim Scott and Trier Bryant talk about the importance of asking for feedback and acting on it before you start sharing your own observations. I really like that the manager needs to create the space where people can give feedback, and that it’s not the responsibility of the person being managed to offer feedback. They describe feedback as a gift to help you improve, and they even delve into the role of power. It made me think that although the anonymous feedback process has limitations, it still has a role in toxic situations. However as an alternative, I really like the idea of skip level meetings in this post by Jean-Marie Buchilly, where those who report to you meet with your boss without you in the room.
The model also helps me to negotiate another aspect that I can improve, which is how I challenge people. It helped me to think a bit more about when shying away from conflict is the least kind thing you can do. Their framework is really helpful in understanding what helpful feedback looks like and it reminds me of the Social Discipline Window.
Essentially shying away from challenge can create a situation of ruinous empathy, where the feedback isn’t specific enough to help the person understand what was good or what can be improved. This is their example:
“Ruinous Empathy is seeing somebody with their fly down, but, not wanting to embarrass them, saying nothing, with the result that 15 more people see them with their fly down — more embarrassing for them. So, not so ‘nice’ after all.”
I have uncovered lots more learning and resources from my coaching and the subsequent rabbit hole that I delved down. It will be interesting to see whether the appraisal process feels different this year. I’ve noted in the past that these periodic online reflections inform my appraisal. This year I should have a fuller picture than ever, and all being well, I should have rich feedback from my colleagues too.
