Watching for Eagles

“Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.” Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (1928)

Although written for comic effect, there is more than a grain of truth in Evelyn Waugh’s proposed classification of the sexes. 

A study, triggered by the UK’s financial services industry’s regulatory body’s requirement to assess risk tolerance in investors, has demonstrated that there is a profound difference in male and female approaches and attitudes to risk. Geoff Trickey and So Yi Yeung, of the Psychological Consultancy Limited, published the research in 2012. They had assessed a group of 2,000 men and women in 20 different fields of work worldwide and found that the gap between men and women when it comes to taking risks, was “unexpected in its magnitude’. They concluded that this difference is genetic in origin and would have been a crucial contributor to the success and survival of our species. Women were found to be more than twice as likely to be cautious and prudent, whilst men are prone to being adventurous and carefree.

I was discussing this very factor with three members of my team earlier this week and both Pav and Alice told me I should blog about it. We were considering the annual performance appraisal process and looking at the variations in ratings. Throughout my career, I have often found that women tend to rate themselves lower than men in their self-appraisals. I admit that this is a sweeping generalisation, but it has seemed to be a common occurrence wherever I have been employed - and I have been a senior HR leader, with access to the data, in Financial Services, Professional Services and Technology organisations. I commented to my colleagues that I suspected this difference comes down to genetics and is deep rooted in hindbrain responses. The hindbrain or rhombencephalon evolved more than 500 million years ago. It resembles the brain of a modern reptile and is responsible for many of our automatic reflexes such as the control of breathing, heart rate, digestion, movement and sense perception. In prehistoric times women were most probably responsible for looking after the children and were based in land close to the home-base, perhaps tending crops and preparing food and necessities for the tribe’s survival – they would have spent much of their time on the look out for danger (“watching for eagles”).

 NB above video is a fake 

In contrast, men in early times were responsible for hunting and feeding the tribe – we know this from numerous cave illustrations from around the world. By necessity men needed a greater appetite for risk and adventure than the women, to help them cope with the dangers and stress of hunting wild animals armed with only sticks and stones. If you are off to get a mammoth or rhino for supper you need a degree of chutzpah.

Mammoth from Rouffignac, France. Painted circa 13,000 years ago

Women remain more cautious than men, or so it appears from a study undertaken by the Pew Research Centre in 2012 that found that, when using social media, women are careful about setting privacy settings (restricting access to their profiles to close circles and deleting people from their networks) whereas over ¼ of the men in the study chose the most public settings for their profiles and also expressed a higher rate of regrets for posts they had made or shared. Similar findings have also been espoused in relation to job applications – most notably the Hewlett Packard report that appeared to indicate that men apply for a job when they meet 60% of the required qualifications and criteria, but women apply only if they meet 100% (as quoted in Lean In, The Confidence Code). Subsequent research has shown that these statistics are misleading, as they are not based on women’s lack of confidence but rather on a desire not to waste anyone’s time and hence perhaps a misconception of the hiring process – most job descriptions are an ideal for the role and allowances are often made for people who need to “grow into the role”. Clearly more women need to become aware of this.

Part of women’s outlook may be historical, based on their experience once large numbers started entering the workforce. Economic necessity, especially during the downturn of the 1970s, often resulted in both husbands and wives taking on employment to cover household expenses. However the work available to women was usually administrative or clerical as few had professional qualifications. I remember in the early 80’s being advised that I should aspire to becoming a secretary, nurse, teacher or shepherdess – all admirable roles but perhaps not ones that would fully utilise my law degree. My paternal grandmother (one of the brightest women I have known) told me that she was “banned from taking a degree” by her family, who saw further education for women as no more than an unnecessary extravagance. It was not until late in the 20^th century that women started breaking into the professional workspace and their jobs were attained through the qualifications that had attained. It is possible that bias still remains in some workplaces and hence women need to meet the criteria for a role more closely than their male counterparts – this was demonstrated in a McKinsey report that concluded that men are often hired or promoted for their potential, whereas women were selected due to their experience and track record.

According to social-cognitive theory, most performance raters have difficulty overcoming their ingrained stereotypes in relation to how they perceive men and women; it is probable that preconceptions encourage many of us to apply certain behaviours and characteristics to others we work with. For example Del Boca and Ashmore’s research in the1980s demonstrated that (in Western cultures) stereotypical male characteristics include competence, rationality and assertion; whereas female characteristics include warmth and expressiveness – this results in the risk of women being seen as

“Nice but incompetent, the typical man as competent but maybe not so nice.” (Susan Fiske, 1998) 

St George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello
Here is one of my favourite poems inspired by this picture

In their 2002 paper, Cara Bauer and Boris Baltes make some proposals on how best to go about reducing the effects of gender stereotypes on performance evaluations - they propose that although “women who are evaluated by raters with traditional stereotypes may receive less positive outcomes than their true performance dictates” this can be overcome by a “structured free recall” (meaning that “raters are instructed to recall behaviours that they have observed and to rely on these observations when completing the rating”). I must confess to being a bit un-nerved by this. Most employees and managers complain about the annual performance management process – in particular the length and time required to complete an appraisal. A structured approach usually requires formal questions being answered and then the responses being used to support a decision – this can mean adding an extra step to the process. Rather than doing this I would hope that sufficiently informed and trained raters would know to rely on specific evidence and incidents that had occurred during the past year rather than just writing how they feel about a person.

Using evidence based decisions to hit the target

Regrettably, this is not the case in all organisations. According to an article in Fortune published in August 2014 the approach and words used towards men and women in appraisals differs. The research into the words used in the documentation of 248 appraisal reviews (from 180 people, 105 men and 75 women), within a number of technology businesses certainly provides food for thought – women tend to be given critical, personal feedback more often than men (negative personal observations were made in 2 out of 83 critical reviews received by men in the sample, but adverse personal comments were included in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women). The use of particular words seems to be common when criticising women – namely “Abrasive”, “Bossy”, “Strident” and “Aggressive” in relation to their leadership style and “Emotional” and “Irrational” for the manner in which they raise objections. Of these words, only “Aggressive” was applied to men and of the three instances recorded two were seeking to encourage the individual to be more aggressive. This also seems to hark back to stereotypical responses grounded in our hindbrain reaction. 

To create the world of the future, we need to rise above being reptilian. Perhaps that is the most important reminder we need, to help each of us avoid being biased when assessing others.

Right…I’m now off to prepare mammoth steaks for the family’s lunch – can you keep an eye out for the eagles?

Difficult Discussions

I often wonder why people in the corporate environment are so sensitive about feedback.  If we were athletes or sportsmen, we would welcome suggestions as to how we can enhance our performance.  However, many employees find “constructive criticism” difficult – in tough economic times it can make individuals feel that their position is insecure, the resultant worry reducing their contribution further  and potentially having a knock on effect on others.  When the market starts picking up, it is your disengaged employees (good performers as well as bad) who will be the first to take up opportunities elsewhere.

We all know that performance reviews are a crucial part of modern corporate life – if people don’t know how they are doing, how can they improve?  Without effective key performance indicators (KPIs) how can we measure how well employees and the business are doing and ensure that everything is on track?  Data is becoming increasingly important, but it is crucial to remember that the employees who make a business succeed are people and not just numbers in a spreadsheet or a formula.  Even when having “difficult conversations” – such as informing an employee that they have not met required levels of performance or behaviour, you should take care to be calm, professional and informative.  Here are a dozen simple actions and approaches that can make a meeting easier for both parties:

• Don’t delegate the discussion to someone else, if you are nervous or feel that having a witness is necessary, bring a colleague or member of HR but let the employee know that you are doing so;

• Come prepared and hold the meeting in a suitable place with no distractions or interruptions;

• Remain calm – for any professional manager this discussion should be about their team member’s performance and should never disintegrate into a character assassination nor be used as an opportunity to humiliate someone;

• Have facts to hand to substantiate your comments (such as the mutually agreed objectives and specific examples of where performance and results have fallen short);

• Remember that performance = ability x motivation;

• Determine whether the person is capable of doing what is expected - do they have the aptitude, training and necessary resources?;

• It is easy to ask someone whether they have what they need to do a job;their answer (and the way they say it) will probably tell you much of what you need to know about their approach, frustrations and attitude.  The simple fact that you have asked for their input may go a long way towards resolving a problem, because you have signalled that you are interested and prepared to help;

• Be willing to listen to the other person’s point of view – there may be facts and circumstances that you are unaware of;

• If they cite external factors as the reason for poor performance, look into their claims; sometimes people find it easier to blame others before admitting to their own weaknesses, but if they are correct there may be other issues that also need to be resolved;

• Verify whether they are willing to make the required effort to do the job well and, if not, find out why not;

• Don’t wait until the meeting to inform an employee that you are disappointed with their contribution – a good manager has regular discussions with their team members and both parties should know how things are going at any stage of the year; and

• Remember to comment on the things a person has done well, in addition to discussing the areas for improvement – if you leave some of these points until near the end of the meeting both parties are more likely to leave in a positive frame of mind.

Remember this dozen

People usually respond better to praise than criticism – Aesop’s fable of the Sun and the North Wind competing to get the traveller to remove his cloak has a sound moral message.  Gentle warmth towards others will often achieve results faster than harsh words and hostility. 

Increasingly work is becoming less repetitive task orientated and is requiring individuals to use their initiative and knowledge to achieve complicated and sophisticated outcomes.  Incentivising performance is a conventional way of encouraging people to perform as required.  However, rewards do not have to be financial (indeed, money is often not the most effective motivator 

as demonstrated in Daniel Pink’s excellent talk at the RSA (one of my favourite RSA Animates):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Simple praise, granting autonomy, staying in touch throughout the year, being interested and saying thank you for work well done, can often achieve more, through motivating and engaging an individual, than a manager will ever do through demoralising criticism in the annual review.

So here's to "getting better" at treating people like people and hence getting the best out of them (with thanks to the Beatles).

Dead Ahead

Every person dies twice – once when they draw their final breath and once when their name is spoken for the last time.   A small number of self-sufficient or friendless people die as the person that others talk and think of before they cease to exist in the flesh.  Some people live on long after their deaths – Cleopatra, Pythagoras, Pocahontas, Confucius, Mumtaz Mahal, Sir Isaac Newton, Steve Jobs – just by mentioning them to you I am helping perpetuate their existence.

It is hardly surprising that death and our demise play such prominent parts in human contemplation – death is the one certainty for each of us when we are born.  It is said that on victory parades ancient Roman generals would have their slaves whisper to them the words “Memento mori” (which translates as “Remember you will die”), to prevent them succumbing to “hubris” (i.e. a shameful delusional pride and arrogance based on an over estimation of their worth).  The achievement of an objective (such as the Roman general’s victory in battle) is not the end of the road.  Over the centuries, death has frequently been depicted as a means of encouraging people to live a worthwhile life.  Impact full images are used, contrasting a subject’s worldly status against the equality of all men once in their graves.  From the fifteenth century onwards it was fashionable for wealthy European aristocrats to be depicted in elaborate carvings and/or pictures, including on their tombs, as aged or decaying corpses, surrounded by fine clothes, castles and artefacts, their grim countenances or bones a stark reminder to others of the vanity of earthly riches, with the intention of encouraging people into leaving a positive legacy (and in the hope of the subject earning a place in heaven) through their actions.  Symbolism, such as wilting flowers dropping their petals, hourglasses and distaffs (representing the soon-to-be severed thread of life), is typical as a means of reinforcing the message.

 Both in art and in the human psyche, there is often a linkage between death and time, although few pieces are quite as strikingly macabre as this 19th century watch.

Usually death is used to nudge us into appreciating the need to do the things that we know we should and can do, before it is too late.

As it is with people, and their reputation, so it is with concepts and ideas – if they are not discussed and considered on a regular basis they become moribund.  I have in the past used this blog as a platform from which to raise my concerns about the manner in which performance is managed in many organisations.  Performance management and appraisals must not sink to being seen as a chore, with a manager’s observations reluctantly recorded once a year.  Objectives and responsibilities need to be real; a lioness on the savannah does not require a piece of paper to remind her, when she spots a wildebeest, that she is hunting to feed the pride, so it is with us, we should appreciate throughout the year what is expected of us, what we and others need to do, by when and what good looks like.  A performance discussion, whether for good or poor performance, should never come as a surprise, neither to the manager nor the employee.

Total surprises are seldom a good thing in business.  What leading CFO would ever say to the shareholders at an AGM “we had a record breaking year” without being able to justify the figures and explain what occurred to make the year so good?  It is always sensible to analyse performance and build on strengths.  I am often amazed at how difficult people in the commercial environment find performance discussions.  Professional athletes and sports players always want to assess how they have performed, to determine what they can do to improve.  They are not insulted when their coach proposes ways in which they might be able to shave a millisecond off their time or increase their ability to catch, throw, run, pull or hit.  So why at work are people so reticent to give or receive feedback?

I suspect that there are two main reasons:

1. one is the unwillingness of an individual to be seen as falling short of what is required (in these challenging economic times, when many organisations are looking to reduce costs - which could result in redundancies - people are loathe to stand out as “being seen to be lacking”;
2. the second is closely linked to the first, if an employee works in an environment where they feel under threat, or where there is a “blame culture”, the prospect of being told that “you could do better” makes people feel very exposed; they believe for example that they might suffer diminished rewards, peer pressure, victimisation and bullying, in addition to potentially losing their job.

 What a sad reflection on many employers that their members of staff are made to feel this way.  In life we improve by practicing and experimenting.  Businesses need to grow and develop as the world in which they operate changes, if the people within them are not encouraged to learn and transform the organisation’s long term success will be limited.

I have immense respect for Danny Kalman at Panasonic – I remember when we first met he was in mainstream HR as the Director for Europe, responsible for determining strategy and enabling required change (he is now the Director of Global Talent Management).  He was always mindful of Panasonic’s long term vision.  Listening to Danny talk it was (and still is) impossible not to be struck by his description of the vision and values of Panasonic, what is written on the website today echoes his comments of over a decade ago http://panasonic.net/corporate/philosophy/code/04.html
he and all other management view themselves as custodians for the generations to come and hence there is fervent desire to do the right thing for the future – to have a sustainable business that endeavours to enhance the world and the experiences of people in it.  Panasonic has a number of businesses within the highly competitive field of consumer electronics – it is crucial for the on-going success of the corporation that it is seen to be at the forefront of innovative design and technology.  Its envisaged future relies on having people now who can enable that onward drive.

There is a quote doing the rounds on the Internet at the moment that has struck a chord with me:

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, the man who never reads lives only one.”

It comes from the fantasy novel “A Dance with Dragons” written by George R. R. Martin.  I have always enjoyed reading and have lived others’ lives vicariously through good novels.  I have also learned new commercial approaches and discovered what competitors are doing by perusing the press and business publications.  The better informed we are the better equipped we become to cope with the challenges and changes that confront us.

Without even trying, each of us starts life as a record breaker.  Even if only for a fraction of a second, we each have been the youngest human on earth.  During our lives we have the opportunity to do amazing things and to influence and help others to achieve even greater heights.  To do so we need to be:

• tuned to what is needed;
• appropriately informed; and
• aware of what we can and must learn to do.

All of us need honest and supportive feedback to help us become better at what we do and we owe it to others to care for them in the way in which we ourselves would like to be treated.  The space to experiment and propose new ideas and ways of doing things is the area in which our world can be transformed.  Those of us who succeed in changing people’s lives (ideally for the better), creating a legacy (preferably a positive one) and making an impact on those around them, are the ones who will continue to break records and live on long after final breaths have been exhaled.