- Once you've established your adaptive performance goals
you're ready to craft an adaptive performance agreement.
An adaptive performance agreement is an agreement
first, with yourself.
Most valuable commitments are those
that you make to yourself and that you keep.
The more self-driven you can be in the agreements you make
the better you'll be able to achieve your goals.
Now, some people set pretty low bars
within their self-agreements.
If their most basic goal is to simply
show up at work, do repetitive work,
and then go home, that's obviously their choice.
I'm hoping that's not true for you.
And in fact, if you've done as I've suggested,
and you've performed your own self-inventory
so you know your best-loved skills
and other work attributes,
then it won't even be an option to simply show up.
You'll be driven to use your best-loved skills.
And to continually set new goals for yourself.
So,
what should that agreement look like?
As much as possible, it has to be anchored
in a set of metrics.
Some organizations call these KPIs
or key performance indicators.
It's important to use numeric goals whenever possible.
And make sure you're tracking the things
that matter the most
to determine if you've met those goals.
The question that I tell people to ask themselves
whether they're setting performance goals,
starting a company,
or trying to solve a world problem
is to ask yourself, if you were successful,
how would you know?
It's critical to write down your self-agreements.
Putting them in writing legitimizes
your personal commitments.
And it gives you a record
of what you're trying to accomplish.
Now, since I've called these adaptive performance goals,
you've probably already guessed
that the adaptive part
means you're going to have to continually update your goals.
So, one of your self-agreements needs to be
a commitment to when you'll update your commitment.
I'm thinking monthly's a pretty good rhythm.
Now the typical approach would be to have
a performance conversation, first, with your manager.
And that may be your managers or someone else's preference.
But I'm going to suggest that you talk first
with some of your coworkers.
In many work environments,
your work is highly dependent
on the work of others.
And vice versa.
By sharing your goals and your commitments with your team,
you'll be showing a level of transparency
that can encourage others to be more forthcoming
and collaborative with you.
You may actually adjust some of your goals
and deliverables after talking with them.
And ideally, you'll find out that some of your teammates
will have one or more of the same goals that you do.
Which means a greater opportunity to collaborate.
Once you've talked with one or more of your teammates
now you're ready to have the conversation
with your manager.
So the traditional approach to performance management
dialogs is for the manager to be in the driver's seat.
That makes no sense at all.
Why should your manager be the one
who has to initiate and drive that agreement?
It doesn't give you much incentive
to increase your own performance.
And it may actually disempower you.
No, you need to be the one
who's guiding the conversation.
You have to be the one
who shows your adaptive performance agreement
to your manager, and who asks them
what needs to be modified
to meet the needs of your team
and your organization.
It's absolutely critical to know what you're doing well.
To have someone else reinforce what you've accomplished,
and to encourage you by supporting your greatest skills.
That's why your manager is your most
important source of unvarnished feedback.
To help you to understand how you can be continually
improving your performance.
But don't wait to be told what to do.
Part of the process of developing
your adaptive performance agreements
is asking pointed questions
for ways that you can improve.
You need to practice what I call compassionate honesty.
That means first being honest with yourself
about your strengths and your development areas.
And then being open and transparent with your manager
about where you know you need to improve.
Now, let's go back to the adaptive part
of our performance agreement.
Does it make sense to revisit your agreement
once a year, as many organizations do
with performance reviews?
In a constantly changing world, that makes zero sense.
If your organization only conducts annual reviews
you should be requesting monthly check-ins.
Yes, monthly, at the least.
Even quarterly reviews aren't enough.
Work situations can change dramatically
even in a single quarter.
If you calendar a 15 minute performance check-in
once a month with your manager,
you'll not only be making regular smaller adjustments
to keep yourself on track,
you'll find that when your annual review rolls around
there won't be any surprises for anybody.
And do the same thing with your coworkers.
An informal conversation that covers your current goals,
and how you're doing on achieving them
gives you the chance to get more feedback.
And most important, to get help
whenever you're running short of reaching
any particular goal.