Date: Friday, May 31, 2024
Time: 1:00 pm Eastern | 10:00 am Pacific
Hosts
Matthew Wride, President
Christian Nielson, Chief Revenue Officer
Transcript
Hello and welcome to this webinar. Uh around 360 feedback for deskless workers.
My name is Christian Nielsen. I’m joined by Matt Ride, uh decision wise president and we are excited for today’s conversation. Well, it looks like we’ll have uh having folks joining us here. We’re trying a different platform for these webinars this time. We’re excited. Hopefully. Um Hopefully, it’s a, it’s a good experience for everyone as we um try to make these better each month.
Um This session, uh a couple of housekeeping items as we get started, this session does qualify for uh one hour of HRCI and SHRM Credit.
Uh That information will be available after, after today’s session.
Uh as well as I believe we will be sharing these slides if, if that’s requested or, or at a minimum, we sharing a video of the uh today’s session. So with that, I think we’ll, we’ll go ahead and get started.
Um We will have some uh time for chat and, and questions from the group. So please, we, we love when these sessions are, are interactive.
So uh a little bit about where we’re headed.
We’re gonna talk about deskless workers. We’re gonna talk about 360 feedback and we’re going to discuss how the two meet and some, some ideas for getting it right. Some of the unique challenges faced by de list workers and some of the um the techniques we found that are, are, are things we need to really consider when we’re working with this important employee population.
Um We did have a session on desk workers last November. And so I thought I’d just start with some basic slides as we talked about, talk about desk workers. What is a desk worker?
Uh They refer the term refers to employees who don’t primarily work at a desk or in a traditional office setting. Often they’re on the move, engaging in tasks that require uh physical presence or mo some kind of mobility and it’s not a small group of the population.
Um This is a group of uh of employees that we all rely on daily. It’s an operational backbone of many businesses, many services. Um We’ll, we’ll look at some specifics in a moment, but it’s also a lot of our front line customer interaction is with desk list workers. Uh There’s a need of flexibility, specialized skills if you kind of get a feel for why these desk list workers are so vital to our, our way of life and to, to just modern business, modern civilization.
Um A couple of good examples just to kind of prime our minds of who we’re talking about. And I know we’ve got a lot of folks on the, on the call that work with different uh segments of desk workers. So love uh any feedback on other categories or groups. But here, I’ve got a few slides to just walk through, you know, in the, in the health care field, service, construction.
Uh certainly a lot of these roles, delivery and logistics, hospital staff, uh manufacturing workers, ag workers, utilities, uh, energy workers. We, we work with a number of organizations in that space and certainly the majority of their employees would fit into this desk list category.
Let’s see, what one thing I was gonna point out too is sometimes we call them desk list workers. They may actually have a desk. It’s more about the nature of what they do. They’re on the go, they’re, um, they’re, uh, uh, you know, moving about, you know, they may have a home base for 10 minutes of the day at a desk somewhere but they’re, you know, they’re out and about. So I just, it’s not like there’s, there’s no desk involved. Like a nurse may sit down and, and do a lot of reporting for a few hours at a station, but generally they don’t just sit all day and kind of work from a single location.
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it’s a good point. We’re not saying that they, these folks never get a chance to sit down.
Uh, but they, they, and they may periodically have a desk. I think a nurse is a good example of that where there’s these, these stations and things, but maybe they either share them with others or they’re only there for a fraction of their work day.
You know, I think through transportation, a lot of folks, you know, check email when they’re at the home base, but they’re out on the road or out in the field the majority of their time. So um some other categories here, but it, there’s so many different roles that fit into this deskless term. This this group of employees.
Uh One stat that I was able to find worldwide 2.7 billion employees would be considered restless workers, 80% of the global workforce. So actually, it’s, it’s most of the uh employees in the world fit into this deskless category. So it’s, it’s an important group to consider and to really think through that this day as desk, as workers, they face some unique work environments with unique challenges.
I wanna list a few of those unique challenges. Um But I also wanna open up to the group if there’s other, if there are other uh categories or, or other challenges that we can think of that are kind of unique to this deskless population. Let’s let’s get them in the chat.
Uh Lauren asks a good question. Remote workers in home offices would not fall into this category, correct.
It’s an interesting thing because I think some of those unique challenges that we’re about to talk about would also apply to remote remote work and some, some are fit into both categories. But a lot of times a, a lot of modern remote workers are kind of tied to a computer, it sitting down and, and wouldn’t necessarily fit the pure definition of de list. But a lot, there’s, I think a, a big overlap in some of the unique challenges that we’ll be chatting about today.
Uh You know, a question I have that I’d love to throw out there to the audience and see what throws in the, into the chat is how many of you, how many of you that manage or have desk workers as part of the organization, how many of them have like email and formal technology that you give them and how many don’t really like?
That’s always a challenge for us as we think about how we interact with them.
I do know that the amount of technology for desk workers is going out, right? I mean, whether that’s mobile, whether those are corporate communication platforms, things like that. But I’m curious if anybody, how many have um, email addresses and kind of fix technology that they’re able to use to communicate with these people looks like we’ve got a couple that, that they, that they’re getting in tech.
I, I think increasingly we’re seeing, we’re seeing more but I think there’s some domains, especially you know, uh hospitality we don’t see as, as often as much tech there, agriculture, some of that, but uh and mobile device are becoming more and more ubiquitous where, you know, 1015 years ago, uh not, not as, not as much.
Um but it’s, it’s good to, to get an understanding
for a long time, you know, we had a long standing relationship with the Cheesecake Factory and I remember they had very little tech and over the years they increased the amount of tech that was available to their hospitality workers. So
she makes a good point. Uh Most do not. We’re a factory. They have ipads to complete the work instructions, but not to receive email. Yeah. And so that, that I think is a really good segue into some of these unique challenges uh of this list workers. Uh You know, I think the first one I’ve got listed here is limited access to technology. You know, even when we give them tech, the tech is a little bit differently or it’s, they, they’re not as um completely immersed in it or it’s, you know, periodically checking email versus, you know, Matt. And I can’t seem to get away from email all day long. Um versus, you know, it might be once a week, it might be once a month, it might be once a day.
Uh but there’s different cadence or a different level of frequency that are able to access that um the limited technology. I saw one stat that was interesting, you know, we mentioned that even the 80% of uh the world’s employees uh would be considered desk list, only about 1% of enterprise software investment is focused on desk workers.
So most of the tech investment isn’t geared specifically for this population. I think that’s something to to keep in mind. Um especially as we’re talking about um what we, we like to focus on, which is how do we capture and clarify the voice of the employee, how do we access employee experience and employee feedback to improve and help individuals and teams and groups and organizations improve?
Uh Another challenge which is I think very tied to that would be communication uh barriers that, that it, it does, you know, be because they may not be as, as tied to their technology or just by the nature of that mobility and flexibility we talked about, they may not be as readily available for communication. There are more barriers for us to actually get information to and from our desk list workers.
And that that’s a real challenge, right? As we, our focus on the 360 is to help grow and develop those uh employees. But if, if it’s hard to get them to check email, if it’s hard for them to sort of, you know, catch a vision of what we’re, you know, what we’re trying to do, it can be, it can be a real challenge. So one of the key things is to remember that as you implement three sixties, you’ve got to think about how you’re gonna communicate with these folks.
And, and often again, these kind of all blur into each other a bit. But often because of, you know, the, the nature of their role, it makes it more and more difficult for us to really invest or focus on or, or uh we, we neglect the, the priority of focusing on training and development opportunities for our D list populations.
They’re out and about it’s, they’re not as eee easy to pin down into, you know, classical training environments or they’re just moving around so much that it’s not as much top of mind um for growth and development.
And so some often this group really uh suffers a bit or doesn’t have as many opportunities for growth and development. And that’s, you know, one of the main things we’re, we’re excited to talk about today with, with 360 feedback, but certainly a challenge for this group, physical safety hazards, nature of the role. Obviously, there’s such a wide variety of desk less roles that this is, is differs in different areas, but in general, they’re exposed to a lot more and, and just in terms of slip and falls, uh if they’re working in, you know, factories or manufacturing, agriculture environments, healthcare settings, you know, there’s so many um areas and, and potential risk. And so that those are some unique challenges that our desk list peers uh often face uh work life balance.
Um That that can be true in, in terms of desk list, it depends on roles. I mean, most of us face this, but there’s some unique aspects that a lot, I’m thinking a lot of shift work and changing things and, and just the hours that our desk list populations often work.
Um that is one of those components disconnected for company culture. I think this is an interesting one.
It’s something we’re really passionate about and I’m curious if anyone’s got a take on this in the, in the the comments or the chat, but feeling disconnected from company culture.
You know, if I put myself in the role of someone that’s, you know, in some kind of trucking or transportation, you know, if I the the, if I’m out on the road, how much am I connected to the identity of, of the organization I work for?
I, I think in some cases, there’s some amazing efforts that, that work very well. But a lot of times um our justice population feel a bit less connected to the overall organization just by nature of, of their work and the the level of interaction they may or may not have with company messaging, company vision goals, successes, those type of things.
And that’s why you have to be intentional. I mean, we, we measure company culture right through by measuring employee experience, which is in essence, culture through the eyes of the employee.
Uh We know you’ve got to be intentional. I, I reflect back on some of my desk list jobs. One summer I, I worked construction II, I went to just wherever the job site was. I don’t think there was ever a time that I actually, other than the day I started and the day I turned in my, my stuff at the end of the summer, I don’t know that I ever went to the office at all. And so how do I build a connection to a culture when my, when I was just showing up doing my work and, and getting out of there?
Yeah, I, I think it, it takes really, it takes a deliberate effort to, to help connect those dots and to maintain it, it can’t just be, you know, these one time efforts, there’s gotta be a cadence of, of, of efforts.
Um Yeah, it’s, it’s very interesting, you know, and the, the, the next one on this is um something I think that a lot of us that have been in those de roles. And I like that you brought up your experience because I’ve certainly had those roles in the past limited opportunities for recognition.
Um I, I think through my illustrious career as a forklift driver as I was going through, you know, undergrad and II, I remember thinking, does anyone know if I’m doing a good job? Or does it matter, you know, who sees this work? I certainly took pride in it. But there was that feeling of, you know, in my, in my view as just part of the machinery here. And so that recognition piece I think certainly um applies a lot to, to all humans in a work environment. But our deskless folks, I think there’s a unique lens on it that we, we need to really consider um uh lack of team connection.
I mean, connected to the company. Sometimes our, our teams now in, in some environments, the team is who we connect with because they might be desk close along with us, we, we interact with them and, and that, that might be where we, we feel those connections. But in other instances, it might be you, you’re not working with the same people twice. And so you never really form that same sense of team and that can be a challenging thing and, and makes us disassociate a bit and, and also can lead to less lower levels of engagement because it’s, you know, we, we feel like there’s less to engage with.
And so uh that team aspect as well is very important and limited
while we’re, while we’re here to talk about three sixties, I think most people know that decision wise, we do, we measure organizationally as well.
And that’s why when you do your work surveys, it’s important to think about specific questions that address these unique challenges like where are your pockets of where, where are your managers that do a great job of team recognition? Where, where are their uh silos of dysfunction.
But you need to be, be thoughtful about gathering that information so that you can do something with it. Um because uh you’ve got to uncover it and, and one way to do that is to employees directly.
Yeah. And, and I love that you, you brought up the org side because I, I can’t help but think of that either in terms of having those demographic filters so that you can say you look at a recognition question and see, do your desk list employees feel differently than your, your uh office employees or your folks sitting in cubes and you know, to the comment earlier, your remote employees also, how do they feel and just being able to filter the, the different items through those, those lenses?
All right, let’s um well, as I mentioned, I, I think I’m gonna single one out here, lack of training and development.
You know, in fact, this is a good question for the group. We’re, you know, we’re excited to jump into 360 conversations. But I’m curious, you know, we, we come here to, to learn from each other as well. And so, uh you know, if there’s other things you’re doing, I’m curious, how have you successfully supported the growth and development of des list workers? Any if there’s any insights from the groups in terms of specific techniques or, or programs that have, have helped these folks grow. We, we’d love to, to clean some of those, all
those answers come in and you’re, and you’re monitoring the chat. I just want to frame why we believe three sixties are, are, are important to growth and development.
It’s, it’s a way that the individual could be part of the process, right? They can understand their own blind spots and they can begin to sort of take control over their growth. You know, that’s the advantage of the 360. We’ll talk about it later as a disrupting event or a disruptive event.
Um because so much of what we, what we think of is it happens to me.
But when we, when we use the 360 they become part of the part of the equation. And they’re saying, OK, I, I’ve received this feedback now, what do I need to do to sort of uh leverage my strengths or fix a few key areas? So that’s, that’s why it’s important. It’s a 36 are important to growth and development,
right?
Really good points.
Um uh You know, I like Emily’s Point here around uh using HTHCM system on, on phones.
That’s such an interesting journey we’ve seen, you know, early when, when I started in this, this space side of, you know, employee voice and employee feedback.
People were a little bit nervous about using their phones, this is my phone, you know, if it was a personal phone and people would be resistant and so texting and some of those things, we are seeing more and more willingness especially to just to, to take a survey or to take a complete a 360 assessment on a mobile device. If it’s a personal mobile device, we, we are seeing a much more openness to that. But in the past it was, I don’t, you know, want my company using my personal phone number for these type of things, but you know, generational expectations change pretty, pretty quick around technology. And we, we are seeing certainly um folks being more open to that.
Although the texting thing I think we’ll, we’ll talk about in a bit. Not as much of uh a preferred channel is you, you might think so.
Matt at the stage. Yes. Why we, we, we, we believe very strongly in the power of 360 feedback. But one thing that I take from our, our friends in the health care space is do no harm.
We don’t want um to punish people with feedback. We don’t want things to get worse in an organization or worse for an individual uh because we engaged in, in, in a 360 feedback process. And I say that because you can do some damage if you don’t do this, the right that way if you don’t do it ethically and responsibly and, and work, uh you know, follow some best practices. So 360 can be very powerful if it’s, if it’s done very well. So, but just to get us all on the same page very quick, let’s talk about a 360 is 360 is an assessment where someone takes, uh fills out response to some items about themselves, some survey or assessment items about themselves.
They also get to compare uh their self perceptions with perceptions from their supervisor.
Typically. Um if they’ve got a direct reports, they would be included peers, others will talk about different radar groups. But really, it’s the same view. How does my view of myself and how I’m doing in different leadership competencies or behavioral competencies? How does that compare to how other people are experiencing me and how, where are their gaps and where can I uh potentially close some blind spots?
Um
I would point out we um one of our clients over the years was a large industrial supply company and we were uh doing three sixties even for 1st and 2nd year associates in that organization because they, they wanted to begin to uh create a culture of feedback and um to realize that progress, uh self-awareness may be the single most important characteristic you develop as a leader or as, as an effective employee. So it doesn’t have to be three sixties only for those that are approaching manager or something like that. You can deploy three sixties across the entire uh organization.
There are so many uh places where 360 can help strengthen and employee experience uh improve L and D efforts. I think it’s a really good point.
What’s interesting is a lot of organizations that we work with.
We find that they had one view of 360 in their mind. Oh, it’s only for underperformers or it’s only for our executives or, you know, they, they think they, they have kind of view of, it only fits a certain category. Uh But I believe I’ve even got a resource here in here in a moment to kind of walk through some of the, the various ways. But there’s so many use cases. They do offer so many areas of value. In fact, um let’s look at the, you know, just some quick things and I threw a couple of these on here. But my, my goal is really, we’ve got a ton of free resources at decision wise.com/resources.
Um And they’re not behind a uh you don’t have to give us your information to get that. It’s just you can download it. We put a ton of stuff there. Infographics are, are great quick. It’s like this, but there’s a lot of wonderful value in 360 feedback around self-awareness clarifies behavior measures how things get done.
You know, there’s so many great things about doing it. For example, you know, one of the channels you see with a lot of managers, especially new managers is we promote people and we don’t tell them. Oh, by the way, we now expect these different behaviors from you as a manager.
And so, you know, 360 can help not only measure behavior but communicate expectations. So there’s, there’s a lot that can be done.
And we, I hope one thing, one point we can get across in this, in this conversation today is we don’t have to three sixties aren’t some long 50 question survey that or, or assessment that’s, you know, well defined. They can be as simple as 15 questions. So in your example, Christian, where you’re running a forklift, we might want a behavior that listens to instru instructions, right? Listens carefully to instructions.
You can have 15 question three sixties and still get a lot of value out of them. And, and our technology has come a long way that instead of it just being sort of this standardized process, you can adapt it and it can be short and quick but still be meaningful.
Uh That was such a good point, you know, in the comments. Um It may have been Emily or they mentioned it before, but they, you know, mentioned that people are, aren’t likely to take to check their email, they don’t want to do it on their time. So time is of the essence with a lot of these deskless populations. And so to your point being really uh deliberate in terms of the assessment design, the instrument, you know, this is a population that we need it to be able to be completed in five minutes or you know, what, what have you or it’s not the same as the assessment we give our C suite uh but getting it dialed in for that, that audience
and, and we just, that’s one of the great things about our, what we do. And I just point out is that we have 80 competencies built in so that you can mix and match and find if the competency is about responsiveness versus decision making, right? And you can, and you can build the right assessment for the right group.
I love that.
I love that. And, and I’m just looking also at our, you know, we asked a minute for, for call outs on how we, we develop and, you know, Lauren mentioned monthly syncs uh to talk about trends and share group training efforts really great. I and I, I like that it’s on a uh a monthly cadence like that because this is these are populations that if we don’t schedule it a lot of times it it doesn’t happen.
Um But it sounds like you’ve got some, some really good things dialed in there.
Um One of the my favorite things, you know, you just before we get into some specifics for how to dial these in, for deskless workers, you know, one of the things we talk about quite a bit and this is I I pulled from uh this life specifically from our, our 360 coaching certification. But the Johari window, a lot of us might be familiar with this.
Um But if you’ve ever met a consultant, you know, they love two by two frameworks and I am no different.
Uh But this kind of illustrates the power of where the problems that three sixties help us solve. There are things that are known to, to ourselves and not known to ourselves.
There are things that are known to others about us and not known to others. And a 360 helps us in some really specific ways. So things that are known to ourselves and known to others that’s in the public arena, everyone knows that I like XY or Z. Um and it’s not a surprise to either of us. And so that those are in the public arena, it might be, might be strength, might be areas of opportunity for me. I might uh be um um really volatile. Hopefully, that’s not the case, but, you know, or I might be a really good public speaker and, you know, as the, basically, this is illustrating, there’s things that we, we might all know.
Um There are also things that are known to myself but not known to others and that could be a facade that, you know, uh either it hasn’t come out, my volatility hasn’t come out. Those situations haven’t arisen where that would would happen. Or perhaps I’ve got a real strength that just, it hasn’t had been on display at, at work. But there are things in that facade, things that I know that others don’t know. Sometimes the 360 will highlight some of those areas, those facade areas. Uh But there’s a real, this, this next area is kind of the sweet spot for a 360 where the value can really come in where it’s something that others know, or at least that’s how they’re, what they’re experiencing.
But it’s not known to me and a report can, you can give me that information and I can at least have the opportunity to decide.
Is this something for me to take action on or to uh to, to is this gonna be something that it would be worth making an adjustment in my behavior and my approach, my attitude?
And then there are there this category that’s not known to self, not known to others. Usually three sixties have a harder time surfacing that although sometimes coaching conversations can surface some of these things, but the Johari window and by the way, it’s called that because it was created by Joseph Loft and Harry and um and they just merged their, their two names. It sounds more mystical than that. But uh it is a useful framework and, and by the way, this is something I I often recommend in a pre webinar um whether it’s deskless workers or not as you’re talking about, hey, why would we do it? 360. Here’s why, because there are things you don’t know about yourself that other people are experiencing and that’s powerful information for you to have.
So we talked a little bit about what, what a 360 is mechanically. We talked about this, the, these value, the, the value that comes here. But there’s uh also that, you know, this, this question or I, I like to think of it this way.
Um What experience are you creating for others? A 360 helps us answer that and especially in the coaching conversations that accompany it, we often see this. Um It, it’s, is it the right experience? How are other people experiencing you? And are, is that the right experience? It’s the right experience if it’s gonna lead to outcomes that you’re comfortable with or outcomes that are good for the organization and the individual.
Um But these are powerful questions. I I often use the analogy of hearing your voice played back on a recording. You’re like, oh, do I really sound like that? Well, for, let’s say a manager, oh, do I really lead like that or an individual contributor? Do I really show up that way at work? Is that how other people experience me? Because, you know, that’s not my heart, that’s not my intent or that’s not gonna lead to the outcomes that I’m comfortable with.
But a 360 help us answer these important questions at an individual level.
Um We’ll jump right into the deli side really quick, but I, I do wanna share this quick definition. A 360 is also a purposefully designed disruption which creates the opportunity for increased self awareness and change.
This idea of a disruption is really powerful.
We don’t often stop and look at how other people are experiencing us in such a structured way to get feedback in an actual report. Uh With very specifics, here’s what I thought. Here’s, here’s what they thought, what’s the delta or, or the gap there? Um And that creates this moment where energy goes up where, oh I didn’t realize that.
And if it’s handled correctly, that moment can lead to some really powerful change.
And so thinking about three sixties as a disruption is something that creates the possibility for change is a really great way to look at them. You know, if you pair them with an uh uh uh another leadership and development program, um suddenly, it creates an openness for, for learning and growth because there’s, there’s a self-awareness used at the beginning,
Christian. There was just a, a thread in the chat. Highlight was about question about reverse mentoring, which is this notion where older workers actually are paired with younger workers in order to do a knowledge exchange and mentoring from, from newer, newer perspectives, new insights.
Um And it looks like one of our uh our participants has some information about it that, but, you know, years ago, I wrote an article on it as well, having been the recipient of reverse mentoring, uh sat down and asked someone to, to mentor me in some technology issues. And it was a really great experience, but it goes to this, this question and, and how I’m gonna tie it back to the slide that you have is all of these, all of these tools are designed to facilitate great conversations.
That’s ultimately what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to use this as an opportunity to gather feedback. But if we just gather feedback and it sits there, it’s not great. But if it becomes a conversation and it becomes a dialogue, um then it, then we, then we’re, we’re making headway, we’re, we’re doing something that’s gonna be productive.
Yeah.
Uh Really great, really great points and I appreciate that conversation in the chat.
All right. So let’s talk about some specifics and a lot, some of these are universal, but I wanna talk through the, the eyes of what we need for our, our deskless population.
I’ve got six kind of tip areas to find the purpose. Choose the right tech train participants, ensure confidentiality. Some of these seem a little bit straightforward, but I wanna look at it through the desk list uh lens, choose the right Raiders and incorporate coaching.
So let’s let’s talk about each of these a bit.
All right, define the purpose.
Um You know, I, I had a mentor here at decision wise, uh years ago that mentioned, he used to use the line what’s obvious to you that’s not obvious to them.
Um, y you know, in terms of communication for a lot of us in hr we, you know, some of us are really bought into feedback and 360 feedback. We, we see all the power that doesn’t mean everyone else sees it.
And so when, whenever we want, we roll out a program, especially with our guest list, workers, if they’re not as accustomed to this type of exercise, we want to be very deliberate. Why are we doing this? What is the benefit for the, what is the benefit for the organization? What are we hoping to accomplish?
And this is where I just put AAA thumbnail of, of a resource I like it’s on our, our website, the 12 ways to use 360 feedback. And there’s some good things in there. Uh you know, around developing senior leaders team building, enhancing L and D, all these good things. But my point on this is really, we’ve got to be very clear. Um It is, it is, it can be very, um uh people can feel very vulnerable when they’re told they’re, they’re gonna receive feedback.
And so we wanna make sure there’s a very clear why, why are we doing this? Especially if it’s, if it’s an opportunity to pair this with recognition, hey, we believe in you and we want to invest in your development. Therefore, we’re, we’re doing this. And so we, we mentioned that recognition is often a challenge for this de population. This could be really paired with um really paired with this idea of we see your potential and we want to invest in your, your growth.
I want to also take a moment though and frame it that a lot of times our, we communicate the why to the individual employee that’s taking the 360.
But there’s an other why. And that is um rather than this being viewed as an hr program or something like that, it’s actually a tool for managers.
In other words, the why is, hey, hey, leaders, we’re giving you a way to help gather some feedback about your employees and then for you to step in and have conversations.
So this isn’t just something that we do because it’s a nice thing that hr wants us to do. We need to frame it as, hey, leaders, we’re giving you a tool that’s gonna help you build the teams and future leaders in this organization.
So that’s another component of the defining the purpose.
Yeah, a really good call out.
Uh and, and just to paint the picture of where there’s real value and you know, and we do that in our coaching sessions too that we try to make sure that this isn’t something being done to them, it’s done for them. And uh, and, and help them, that really
changes
it
and done with them, right? That’s the point of the coaching is we’re gonna, we’re gonna do this together.
Yeah, really, really great uh, distinction there.
Um, choose the right technology.
Now you wanna chat about this one and, and why tech matters more than anything for the desk list folks.
And I don’t wanna make this an advertisement and, and, and so, but the, the point is this um when we sit down to gather feedback in the context of multi radar, right? We’re trying to get perspectives from various people.
We need to make sure that the technology can uh accurately gather the feedback and can sort of um invite the right people to participate in the process.
Um And uh the only thing I will say is standard survey software. While you can sort of make it work, there’s a lot of chewing gum, duct tape needed.
Technically speaking, that’s a technical term, I guess to make it work. And so uh a purpose built tool is always better because it, it allows you the ability to uh prove Raiders, it allows you the ability for someone to self select Raiders to add vendors and and outside participants to the process, right? So with some desk with workers, we may have more feedback coming from customers and uh brand ambassadors than we may have coming from team members. And so we need a tool that allows us to gather those perspectives.
Uh And so you just need to be thinking about that and realize it’s probably worth uh looking at a specific 360 tool rather than trying to uh get a survey, a survey monkey to do it for you because it’s a pretty big challenge.
And also, I think hr is, is important to bring up here. We’re seeing more and more hr S systems that have some limited functionality for 360. And um you know, the the the functionality is a consideration but also the perceived confidentiality, uh which we’ll talk about later too, I think, especially for our desk population.
The the trust is so, so key and there’s also maybe some suspicion.
How have we solved it? Yeah, you get all the access to the tech, but we’ve designed it. So there are certain areas that we’re not gonna let you in in the tech so that you can’t break confidentiality, right? As a, as the hr leader who’s got access and you’ve got to log in, you can’t just see every everything. Well, you can if that’s what you communicate to your employees.
But if you want to preserve confidentiality, you can say we have a third party and they don’t even let us into certain areas of this tech in order to preserve that confidentiality,
right? Versus the experience. If I’m a, an employee that is suddenly has to provide feedback in the same system I request PTO, then I’m like, well, this hr e everybody’s gonna see this. So I’m not, I’m either not gonna respond or I’m not gonna respond honestly. So uh choosing the right tech is, is super important for accessibility and trust um as well as ease of use on, on your, on your part, uh training participants.
This is, this is uh you know, as proud as we are of our tech and as proud as we are of our report and R IP and all our competency library, all those things, there’s no substitute for helping people get through a very human experience that, hey, I’m gonna get feedback. I’m scared, how do we train people to, to overcome that? But also, uh it’s not just the the participant, the person receiving the report, there could be efforts made to help train your organization on, on healthy attitudes towards feedback and providing feedback as a raider in these, these sessions as well. Um One thing I’ll refer back to a few times is our, our 360 certification that we, we train people on, on uh coaching.
And, but one thing I recommend in a lot of pre webinars, you know, I love that Johari window, we spoke earlier, but I also love the, the Sarah model.
Um The S A model is, is something that is gonna look familiar to the stages of grief, which is actually makes sense because when we receive feedback in this way, we’re almost losing AAA bit of our sense of self or we’re at least challenging how we see ourselves and trying to reconcile how others see. And so there are some interesting kind of similarities but uh you’ll see the se a model stands for surprise, anger, resistance, acceptance.
And occasionally we use Sarah with an H where we’re trying to not only get to acceptance, but we’re trying to get to a place of hope that h at the end would be around hope where we want people to actually leave the experience with optimism and excitement that I’ve got this information. I I can use this going forward. But this model is useful because I like to introduce it before we go through the feedback, ex experience and say, hey, it’s a natural thing when we receive feedback to go through some of some or all of these, these stages, it might be a surprise that might actually hit our ego a bit.
We might be a little bit angry or feel some emotions when, when we see something that we disagree with or if it is such a surprise and then we might have a tendency or natural inclination to resist that, that doesn’t help us get better.
It’s only when we get to a place of acceptance. And I hope and ideally hope that we can actually move forward. And so by introducing this model early by training participants and say, hey, it’s OK to feel this um to, to, to experience this to feel some of these things, but let’s recognize it and deal with it when it, when it emerges. If you do introduce that early, then you can use that language later in the sessions. So then, you know, a a as the feedback comes in, if I’m coaching somebody and they’re obviously in one of these stages, I can see, remember that Sarah model we talked about, you know, and, and it could be a really great tool. So there’s, this is one of my favorite models for training.
But there are, there’s so many other things you can do to, to help train, not only the participant, but also the Raiders to make sure that they have uh productive feedback to provide and,
and just the CE M model is great because it helps the fee, the person going through the process kind of process, uh you know, understand the feedback and kind of go through it. But it’s also great for managers because they can understand and help guide someone through it. So it, it’s, it’s both recognizing someone going through it as well as understanding it ourselves if we’re experiencing those emotions.
Yeah.
And a lot of times, uh and I’m generalizing there’s so many versions of what a desk worker is, but a lot of times our desk workers are in populations where there, there are more front line employees, they are less familiar with formal feedback and so their guards are up and understandably so and so helping to kind of set the tone with this group. It’s OK to feel these things, but it’s gonna be important for us to get past it.
Just remember the first time you get yelled at by a customer, you go through this,
right.
That’s right.
That is right. That is a difficult feedback to receive.
Uh keep it confidential. This seems pretty straightforward for any time we’re capturing employee input in, in this kind of structured approach, but it can’t be stated enough. And as I mentioned, you’re gonna have some potential conspiracy theorists with industrious populations. You have them in every employee population, but especially industrious populations where they’re less familiar with it. They may be uh uh further down the organization.
And so conditions are right for them to be a little bit suspicious about how this information is being used, what it is, what it is, we want to make sure, um you know, kind of going back to selecting the right tool for this that you’re able to communicate confidentiality. Now, we always use confidentiality as a term instead of anonymity because we don’t keep it anonymous. We, we in most cases, they’re picking their Raiders. So it’s not anonymous, who’s at least invited.
So we’re keeping it confidential who actually participated. We’re certainly not tying results back to individual we have in place except
for the supervisor, often that’s when that person is known. But the rest we try to bucket together.
Exactly. Supervisor itself would be the exceptions. But for direct reports, for peers, for people willing to invest in feedback, uh, they, you know, we’re able to manage personal risk and keep confidentiality intact. And, you know, we get phone calls all the time where people are saying, hey, I got an email from this company. Tell me about confidentiality and we’ll walk them through it.
Um, but, you know, having that third party is, is helpful, especially for this group.
All right, choose the right Raiders.
Uh involve a diverse group of Raiders include peers, direct support, supervisors and subordinates. Now, this is an interesting one for this group because a lot of times, uh justice workers don’t necessarily have uh direct reports sometimes o often they do as well, but uh many cases we’ll see the des population where they are individual contributors and they don’t have reports. And so you want to make sure you’re thinking a little bit more broadly, especially if they’re c customer client service, you might include some of those populations as a radar group. You might use internal customers. Um You know, I’m thinking of, you might go bigger in, in peers.
I’m thinking in healthcare settings span of control for nurses. Uh you know, it’s, those can be pretty big teams. And so you have to really think through what shifts look like and who to include. But with our de population, sometimes there’s a, a few other areas of complexity, but thinking through who should be involved in this, who can provide feedback.
Um We wanna make sure that there’s enough you get critical mass. So there’s, there’s value in the exercise.
All right.
And now something I’m very passionate about um incorporate coaching as again, as much as we love and believe in, in computers and technology and our software product, especially our respective platform that we love.
There’s no substitute for the human element in this, this process, uh a skilled coach and it doesn’t have to be a completely dedicated coach, but someone employing some best practices from the coaching mindset or some coaching methodology. And in the, the approach to help someone to help shepherd them through the feedback experience is the biggest differentiator in a successful program.
And when we use the term coach Christian, I think we’re not saying someone that’s like a certified coach or it’s a profession, we’re talking about a role. So a manager can, can serve the role as a coach if, if they’re set up for success. And our point is they need to be set up for success, but, but anybody can be a coach, right?
E exactly there, you know, there’s, there’s a continuum, right? So we have our internal coaches here that coach uh for our clients all the time. We also build internal capability for coaches within hr teams. And that’s a great model. That’s probably my favorite model. Let’s build internal capacity. So we do these certifications every month.
But to your point, it’s not always uh feasible to have the, you know, that done built either to use our coaches or to have hr coach everybody just because we, we know you’re working with lean teams, but you can borrow just some good best practices and help managers be be coaches or help, you know, set up some other kind of system, even doing some group coaching work as well.
But, you know, I thought it might be interesting to borrow a couple slides from, from our 360 cert, in fact, one of my favorites is this, this next slide and this is, this is, you know, we in our coaching certification when it’s a two day session and we go through a lot of great content, but we kind of set up this backstop early on and we say, look, we’ll, we’ll give you a lot of great tools to use.
But if you do these three things successfully in a, in a coaching session, it’ll, it’ll really make a big difference. So just to give you kind of a simple foundation for that, if you do these three things create safety, be present and be curious as a coach, if you’re helping someone through, um, uh the, the feedback experience and helping shepherd them through that.
Um If you do these three things create safety, uh, um, you know, as I mentioned, people feel vulnerable, what is this experience, how is this information being used? So in a coaching session, if I’m helping someone either form or informally with their feedback, one of the first things I do is say, ok, you, you know, I’m part of the hr team, but in this session, I’m just your thought partner. This information is your report. This is for your growth and development, you get to choose who you share it with. Now, I only say that if that’s all true, you know, there’s different ways of setting up programs, but they’re looking for that early in the conversation.
I need to feel safe so I can engage in it. So I do that early and I’ll repeat that if I feel like they’re still not feeling comfortable, be present.
We talk a lot about the difference of a coach and a consultant, a consultant has to have all the answers. A coach is there with good questions and I can’t ask good questions. If I’m not present, you have to be in the moment.
And this is something I’ve learned. It’s taken me a while, but that presence is one of the most meaningful aspects of the 360. I uh in our cert, I often talk about, you know, I asked the question, when was the last time? Someone said, hey, for the next 90 minutes, let’s talk about you.
It doesn’t happen to most of us most of the time.
At least it doesn’t happen to me, maybe I’m super dull. But uh to, to have someone say, hey, we’re gonna sit down and I’m investing, I’m gonna be completely present with you because I’m, I’m invested in your growth and development. That means a lot to them. You know, that we talked about the, the challenge of recognition, feeling seen as a justice worker is a big part of this and, and that can be very meaningful. And then this last piece be curious if I show up as a, as a, as the consultant and try to tell them what to do, even if I’m objectively, right?
Um It’s not the right experience, it’s gonna minimize what’s possible versus if I’m there and I asked thoughtful questions and help them surface what they need to do, they’re gonna own that outcome to a greater extent. They’re gonna, by the way, surface things that I had no, I had no idea about and they’re gonna come to a better, a better action plan or better, better path for action. If I’m able to help strengthen uh just their own discovery and help them surface the, the areas of opportunity versus if I coach and I, I wish I could say I learned that day one, but it’s taken me a while to get there.
The, the key about the coaching mindset is that it’s something you can teach to managers, right? And if you think about, think about a manager sitting down, walking through some feedback and there’s a piece of feedback that’s not really great.
A good question from a manager is why do you think they felt that way? Or has anyone else ever expressed that to you or, you know, so the power of questions and operating from a coaching mindset is a really great concept, Christian. And, and, but it is something we can empower managers. We can’t teach every manager to be the world’s best consultant, but we can teach hr teams internal consult, uh coaches as well as managers how to have a coaching mindset
and, and going earlier to your your conversation around. Well, we’re here to make sure people are having better conversations.
This can really strengthen that coach uh or that manager and employee relationship if it’s done well.
Um I also love the, the comment there, Emily had a really great comment, comment about creating safety, you know, it’s emphasizing that my role is to support them and the conversation is not part of their employee file to separate from.
Yeah, I if, if these are kept purely in that development space, that’s such a powerful thing to state. Say, you know, one of the things I say is if I take notes, it’s just to be a better thought partner or I will say I’m not gonna take notes here. This is it. And I always encourage them to go and have further discussion.
I’m gonna police myself because otherwise I’ll just, I’ll just get into our, our, our coaching certification, which is great content. But, uh I think it’s some really great language Emily’s using to, to help build that safety
Christian. Um There was a question, um Let me just see if I can put it into the stream.
This was the, we struggled to balance the time and cost for follow up coaching to a 360. Can you suggest how to think about setting a minimum number of hours to require for coaching of a 360? Um uh I popped away but essentially ho how do you, how do you give some guidance around that? So it’s not a one and done process.
Um One thing I will say is the expectations. If managers are involved with this, you, it can’t be just added on to a regular one on one, it needs to be a separate 90 minute sessions. A good is a good number to think about where the purpose is to have a coaching mindset and to help this person process and understand the feedback. It’s a disruptive event.
There’s as, as you said, Christian, they’re seeing themselves differently.
And so with the coaching mindset, we sort of let we let them experience that and you can, you can’t do that in 15 minutes, you need to go through the report and give it and, and spend some time with the person. Be present as you said, but be present for long enough for it to really become a meaningful conversation.
Yeah, really great, really great.
And a lot of, a lot of our work is, you know, especially since we’re external coaches.
Uh uh uh that, that question really resonates with me because we’re, we’re always trying to say, look, I only have this one session with you. How can I set you up for additional follow up? And a lot of times it is marrying or trying to pair them with, uh, a, a healthy dialogue with their manager. Hey, can you go talk to your manager? I also, I’m really trying to drive action with action planning convers like all time, I’ll, I’ll time stamp everything.
What can you do by the end of this week to get 5% better at this? You know, once we pick a goal area anyway, I, I’m getting into coaching
or also what can you do to leverage the strength you have? Right? We don’t want to turn this into just always a session of here are your gaps, you know, what are you gonna go fix them? It can also be a strength based approach of, hey, how are you gonna do more of that to really support the team? And I know you know that, but I just want to throw that in there. So
it’s such a good point. And, uh, you know, one of the most powerful things we do in, in the 360 is we tie it, attack it or attach it, rather attach it to a larger goal that they have something they’re trying to accomplish 6 to 12 months out and then to your point.
Well, let’s look at the strengths you have that are, you know, how do you use those to get to that point? And also where do we see some of these opportunities in there? So there’s a lot that, that coach can do to unlock this and make this. And again, that coach is just whoever’s helping them, we just recommend they have some support as they get through this, this feedback.
And
so if I’m sitting down thinking about doing a program of three sixties for desk list workers, I hope a takeaway that you, that you’re getting from this webinar is I need to think about this support process.
How do I build the internal capability that these conversations can be meaningful and that they can take place?
That’s, that’s a key component. It’s not just selecting the right instrument, the right questions, the right radars or the right technology.
I think maybe more importantly, it’s do we have what it takes institutionally to have great conversations?
Yeah.
Yes, I agree.
Uh Just, just one more thought on Kevin’s question. One thing I have seen done, although uh I don’t know that it works everywhere.
But when you run a cohort of people through all, at the same time, I have seen people go through an initial coaching and then be paired with other members of that cohort as accountability pro you know, partner. So if they’re not working with their manager, they’ve got a peer that they’re checking in and working on goals with. But um again, every, every approach has some tradeoffs but manager probably the go to that. We, so though those are, there’s so many other things, simplicity was something we could talk a lot about. There’s other things to, to do to try to optimize this for the death of population. But I think those six stood out as, as some quick hits.
I I just, I do want to emphasize that a 360 is a powerful component of an overall structured listening approach that we’re doing these regularly.
Um And have some there, there is AAA strategic place for 360 feedback assessment in our, in our overall strategy.
Um There’s a,
a study by Harvard Business Review found we we like to spend a lot of time on traits, leadership, traits, characteristics, competencies.
And this study concluded probably the most important is self-awareness, right?
And that’s what. And so we’re passionate about that, obviously, that’s gonna ring true to us as a feedback company.
But um it’s foundational, if people are not self aware, they really can’t grow in the other areas.
This is the beginning and this is a great tool to create self-awareness to have that event where you really step back and say, what is it like to work with me around me, for me below me, you know it, what is the experience I’m creating for others? And is it the experience I want?
Am I showing up the way I wanna show up? Do I have a personal brand that I’m proud of? And that is, is known for value.
You can’t know that really unless you get this feedback and that’s what we’re, I mean to put it in modern Tik Tok parlance, this is about a personal brand. And so if someone’s been with the company for three years, like, well, why do I need a 360?
So you know how you show up, right? So you know what your brand is
uh very well said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna follow you on tiktok after this.
They, they uh but it’s, I, I love that conversation.
That’s one of my favorite coaching con questions, which is if we continue on this path that you’re on, are you gonna end up somewhere you’re happy or, or, or where would you make an adjustment? How can we get there quicker where you wanna go?
Um It’s so powerful and, and I love that you came back to this question. I modified it a bit because, you know, as we zoom out and think through this desk population, we can ask this, what experience are we creating for our desk employees, especially on growth and development? And is it the right experience? And so we would suggest that we um, you incorporate 360 feedback effectively for the, the these um uh populations and we’d love to chat with you about other, how we, we’ve seen that done. Well, I, I also just wanted to put in a plug here. You know, we do these webinars every month and, and I’ll, I’ll set this up for you. If there’s any questions, please feel free to put them in the, the chat.
We’re getting close on time, but we also welcome any other ideas for topics we live in the world of employee feedback. We work with organizations across every industry, uh you know, from 50 employees to 100,000 plus employees uh organizations. We, we would love some feedback from the group in terms of what are uh if there’s any topics you’d be dying to hear from and again, you don’t have to. If we don’t get catching the chat, hit us up at info at Decision wise.com. We’d love to hear from you. And also please take advantage of, of any of those resources on our, on our website. We love uh just being part of this community.
This, there’s an email ready to go afterwards. It’ll come out to you shortly with information about your continuing credit as well as the slides.
So I wanted to let you know that that’ll be coming.
Excellent.
Any if there aren’t any uh any questions here, I think we can, we can wrap up but um such a, uh, a fun topic. Very kind of a little more niche than we normally go. But, uh, dela workers such a big, uh, part of the world’s workforce. Uh, and so some, uh, a population we all rely heavily on. So, uh, we think there’s certainly a place for effective three sixties for this group. So, thank you all and I appreciate your engagement and conversation and we’ll look forward to having you on the next one.
