Evaluating is important. It is how we learn. If you follow the 4-Step Performance Cycle I use with my athletes and teams, you know that it starts with our approach, we act, we get a result and then we respond. In that response, we ask questions – “what?” and “how?” questions, not “why?” questions, to help us learn, regardless of how we feel about the result and its alignment with what we wanted or expected.
Evaluating is crucial to growth. You may remember in a recent post I mentioned that by evaluating what went wrong AND what went well we gain a huge competitive advantage and those that do perform 23% better.
How we evaluate what happens to us, around us or because of us determines how we feel about our experiences. We control how we evaluate these things.
We DO NOT control how others evaluate us and as leaders, we are being evaluated every time something goes “right” for those we lead and, even more intensely, when something goes “wrong.” (Right and wrong, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder!)
And guess what time it is! It’s “be evaluated by your players” time! That means it’s time to remember what we can control…and ANONYMOUS EVALUATIONS do not land in that circle. We influence these evaluations, but we do not control them!
And here’s the thing, no matter who you are or what you have done, someone is not going to be happy! And truthfully, we shouldn’t expect them to be, particularly in today’s complaint and blame culture. As legendary coach Nick Saban says, “If you want to make everyone happy, sell ice cream.” Not everyone is happy with their ice cream either 😊, Coach! I once heard a parent say that his daughter “played too much.” Geez. What are we to do?
These stories are far too common. I heard from a coach last week who led her team to the postseason. She received her anonymous athlete evaluations and was CRUSHED and surprised at the reviews. Throughout the season she felt really good about how things were going and how great the team was this year…as a team. Things were going well. She was pumped that they ended up tearing through their conference tournament and made another appearance in the NCAA tournament.
From the sounds of it, the team wasn’t as excited about it all!
All teams, whether you win or lose, have issues. All teams, whether you win or lose, have good things happen, too!
But at the end of the year, the gloves seem to come off behind the guise of anonymity. Happy people are less likely to evaluate, just like you evaluate less after a win than a loss. This is just the way we operate!
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think evaluations are bad. If you read the top of this article, you know why. However, how we are evaluated matters…to our jobs, our relationships, our mentality and our performance. To make them useful, we need to understand the end goal of the evaluation and the process for responding to complaints. And finally, what role do evaluations play in job security?
That was the final question my colleague asked, “Do you think I need to be worried about my job?” “No! I’d hope not!”, I said.
I don’t know what questions are on your evaluations, but according to Frank Bruni, author of Living in an Age of Grievance, the questions asked may be overshadowed by questions that are very prevalent in our culture today, particularly when you are looking at a situation where those who do not play did not get what they wanted AND those who did may not have liked where they played or the suggestions that they needed to make changes to get better.
Bruni says these questions, “How have I been wronged? Who has wronged me? What am I owed? And how do I get back at them?” take center stage and disrupt our ability to look for progress, growth and good.
I have heard of (and witnessed) athletes and employees alike keeping a running list of “wrongs” throughout a season. When something doesn’t go their way or when they feel slighted or disrespected, it goes a note that is then transposed into end-of-the-year reviews. Imagine as a leader if you wrote down every time you were frustrated, disappointed, or disrespected or kept a list of everything your subordinates did “wrong” because they didn’t do things the way you wanted them to.
Constantly looking for what went wrong, and constant monitoring of your feelings related to these things seems counterproductive to contentment and success and it doesn’t give you the competitive advantage of a full eval…let alone a time suck that distracts you from doing your job!
But listen to the rhetoric around you…and in your own head…Bruni’s questions and our tendencies to point out what others are doing to us are everywhere! When things don’t go our way, we are wired to blame. We think we spend more time as targets of blame as leaders but think for just a second how often you start to point a finger.
There are biological explanations for our tendencies, not that they help our responses, but positive events are processed by our prefrontal cortex which takes a bit longer and we take those in stride without much thought about who influenced or what caused them.
Compare that to the liceity split negative event processing of our amygdala (here we go fight or flight!). It happens so fast that we don’t realize we pointed a finger at the person closest to the problem. You don’t blame? Take a second to think about how many times you have been around something that broke or was messed up and you immediately put your hands up in the “it wasn’t me” pose! Guilty as charged, here!
As soon as we are blamed for something, our oh-so-helpful brain then jumps into defense mode and interprets it the same way we would a physical attack. We stop thinking clearly and start defending fervently. This inhibits our ability to look at facts and find solutions to whatever prompted the blame!
We blame and we complain. Now we need to get those who read our evaluations to sort through it and hope they understand human nature!
In the book, No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Workplace Drama, End Entitlement and Drive Big Results, author Cy Wakeman says that the average employee spends almost 2 ½ hours a day in drama and what he calls emotional waste. Wakeman defines emotional waste as “mentally wasteful thought processes or unproductive behavior that keeps leaders or their teams from delivering the highest level of results.” This emotional waste, he says, is created by our ego which he says “delights in the drama it can create.” The 2+ hours of daily emotional waste and drama then leads employees to drive what she calls their BMWs (Bitching – Moaning – Whining) into their HR offices as it drives their interpretation of the environment.
This “cacophony of competing complaints”, as Bruni puts it and BMW driving sets things in stone. When our initial complaints or thoughts of being wronged get added to our “when I get to evaluate you” list, it stakes our claim on the issue. We cling to it. We defend it. We talk about it and get others on board. And, as discussed in past Tips, our Reticular Activating System begins to filter information that makes our claim true. So even if someone tries to help us get past it, assuming we have brought it up to someone who can help us understand and address the issue with the ability to make it “better” when we read our position, the same feelings come to the surface and it is real again!
According to Bruni and research on complaining, the act of negative grievances ignites the same areas of the brain that are fueled when stimulating drugs are ingested. Complaining makes us feel better!
So, what do we do when we are unjustly blamed or things are brought up that we thought we satisfactorily rectified (aside from the hopes that our admin understands our tendencies)?
First, our first question cannot be “Who’s at fault?” Jumping on the blame train makes us no better than those we feel we are defending against. We must remember that we do not control what others think or say, but we do control how we respond and our response will either add to their complaints or help our cause!
Yes, it can be painful. But instead of listing all the mistakes our accusers have made and falling into the complaint and blame culture, it will be more helpful to ask questions that keep you in your circle of influence and control. “What may have contributed to these statements/feelings?” “What, if any, adjustments need to be made to get where we want to go?” “What hurts the most and why?” “Is there a grain of truth in any of this that can help me grow, not to make others happy, but to make myself better?”
It would be helpful to get a full understanding of what the complaints are about, but since they are often (mostly) anonymous, that can be difficult. Even so, if we can get a clearer picture of the complexity of the complaint, we can avoid assumptions which help us address them. Unfortunately, the typical evaluation processes do not allow for this since there is normally no discussion involved.
Finally, when you go there…to the uncomfortable thoughts of how others view you and your work, use a refocusing tool, just like your athletes do when they have non-productive thoughts. You can use Dr. Becky Kennedy’s AVP process.
First, ACKNOWLEDGE that you feel frustrated, hurt, disappointed, worried.
Then VALIDATE those feelings. This sounds very “kumbaya”, but this step makes so much sense. She suggests that we say “It makes sense that I feel this way because….” I talked with an athlete this morning about her anxiousness at the plate deep in a count. It makes sense at this point of the recruiting season that she is nervous. New eyes are watching. She has a reputation to live up to. She wants to be her best. Feeling a bit tense is a normal reaction to these situations. IT MAKES SENSE.
It makes sense that my colleague would be disappointed to read unflattering evaluations after a great season. She gave her all. She took time away from her family to dedicate it to her team. She thought things were going well. They won. It makes sense. She cares.
The final step is PERMITTING these feelings. This felt uncomfortable to me for some reason when I first heard it. Permit them? But remembering that we will be disappointed, sad, or any other emotion because we are human is important. Even so, these feelings do not need to dictate our behaviors. We can still coach. We can still communicate. We can still perform, regardless of how we feel. We are not sad. We feel sad. We are not hungry. We feel hungry. We are who we are and we can feel a certain way and still do what we need to do.
I love Dr. Kennedy’s analogy of a car. The feelings of disappointment, anger, worry, etc. can be in your car. Just realize that they are constantly wrangling to get a hold of the steering wheel. You decide who is driving! An evaluation does not get to drive your car. YOU DO!
You can stay in control of your car by doing your own evaluation (instead of judging). Use the same questions the Navy Seals use after an excursion. What was my intended result? What was my actual result? What caused or contributed to my result? What do I need to do differently? What do I need to do the same? How will I do this? What did I learn? These questions are void of emotion and full of information. Hard to do, I know, but it may be helpful!
The bottom line is this. If we go into defensive mode and stay there, we only hurt ourselves. As the old saying goes, holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies. We all complain. Our culture has given complainers an outlet and many take full advantage. Just remember, happy people say less. They are out there, and you know it!
As I told my teams many times, 40% of people are with you…really with you! 40% are there and will do what you ask. 20% will NEVER be on board. If you can keep the 40% that are with you moving forward and work to keep the other 40% going in the same direction, you have 80% working together. 80% is HUGE. That 20…that take most of our focus and energy will never be with you. That is life. You can either make them your focus or you can make the 80% your focus.
When you put it that way, it seems like such an easy decision, doesn’t it?
Manage the moments and your response!!
Julie
P.S. Is it time to change your approach to training the mental game? I can help! Shoot me a text at 234-206-0946 or an email at juliej@ssbperformance.com and get scheduled today!
Julie Jones
Mental Performance Coach
SSB Performance
juliej@ssbperformance.com • 234-206-0946
Comments