If you’re a leader or an HR professional, one of your jobs is to help others grow, whether through developing new skills or encouraging them to take the leap to new responsibilities. But just because you’re confident the person’s ready for the next step, it doesn’t mean the employee is. Even an employee who’s been asking for the promotion or appealing to get involved with high-profile projects can suddenly get cold feet when that dream turns into a reality.

It’s not all that surprising when you think about it, though. Change, even welcome change, can be scary. You’re entering the unknown, the expectations are high and you have a lot to learn. And we know that learning is uncomfortable. So, when you’re working with someone who seems reluctant to take a big step, or maybe they’re struggling in a new role, the culprit might be something very simple and primal: fear.

Is it time to hop off the performance review train?

More and more companies are moving away from the traditional approach to performance management to one of continuous feedback. It’s partly a response to a growing desire among employees, particularly Millennials, for regular feedback and check-ins about performance. But it’s also due to the general consensus of managers and employees alike that the tried-and-true performance review process hasn’t really done the job it was intended to do.

Along with this shift, a whole host of new tools and systems for managing the feedback process has been introduced. In fact, we’ve been working with North Highland on integrating the HBDI® into a feedback app called Culr, which brings feedback and thinking styles together for an all-in-one approach to real-time development and performance management. 

As helpful as these new tools are, though, technology can’t do all the work for you. Effective feedback and performance review discussions still require the human-to-human connection of manager and employee. Regardless of what else changes, you can’t take the people out of the process.

So what has changed? In many ways, this is a move from performance management as an event and a “verdict” to continuous coaching, which is less about the past and more focused on the future and the necessary adjustments that need to be made along the way.

Sales leaders often tell us that coaching is one of the most important developmental tools they have for helping sales reps improve performance. Good sales coaching can have a direct impact on motivation, commitment and goal attainment. But many organizations aren’t realizing those benefits.

One reason? Too many sales managers are being put into coaching roles without a workable game plan.

In the sales world, coaching and development strategies often focus on behaviors, specifically, changing behavior. And behaviors are important. But the problem is, this approach tends to ignore the thinking that drives behavior. How someone behaves is situational and can be affected by many external factors—just consider all the variables and external pressures a salesperson can have to deal with on a daily basis.

When it comes to bridging the engagement gap, are your managers part of the problem or part of the solution?

If you weren’t able to attend Ann Herrmann-Nehdi’s recent HRDQ-U webinar, “Developing ‘Thinking Managers’ to Bridge the Engagement Gap,” here’s a taste of what you missed:

• Survey after survey shows that a large portion of the workforce is either only partially engaged or totally disengaged.
• US businesses lose $11 billion annually as a result of employee turnover.
• Managers account for as much as 70% of variance in employee engagement scores.
• Everyone processes information differently based on how they prefer to think, and these preferences affect what will engage them, what will frustrate them, how they prefer to get work done, and what kinds of work will inspire them to give it their all.

When we talk to people about the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®), a few questions invariably come up:

• Does the HBDI® measure the same thing as [XYZ] assessment?
• How is the HBDI® profile different from [XYZ] profile?
• Can the HBDI® be used along with [XYZ]?
• If we use an additional assessment, will it confuse people?

Understanding the premises of different assessments can help a

One of the traps of our technology-enabled, overloaded world is that we often default to a one-size-fits-all approach when dealing with others. When you’re expected to “do more with less” and shift your priorities and attentions on a dime, template-izing repeated tasks or common responses seems like a good way to shortcut the process.

“Thinking? Why focus on thinking? I am interested in changing behavior!”

- A frustrated sales leader discussing how to address the organization’s challenges of improving top-line revenue growth, conversion rates and forecasting accuracy

In the sales world, we often focus on behavior and not the thinking that drives it, and as a result we often fail to get any kind of long-term change. Behaviors are situational and can be affected by many external factors, but thinking is at the heart of who we are, impacting how we process information, make decisions and learn.