Think of a leader who you really admire.I would be willing to bet you a cup of coffee that person was emotionally smart. 

One day as I was working in my role as chief financial officer of a national nonprofit, my deputy director blurted out, “Well… we know you don’t like to receive feedback.”   I was shocked. I thought I was just fine with feedback.   I gave her an uncomfortable laugh and asked, “Really? I come across that way?”

Are you managing a team where only a few dominate and others seem to be just watching the clock?  Or is your team just a collection of individuals who report to the same manager?

In emergent landscapes we can’t rely on usual ways of planning. Uncertainty, change, and unpredictability all abound. Making it hard, and ineffective, to focus on planning. But we do have other tools at our disposal.

Emergent landscapes are, to say the least, tricky.It can be hard to even see you are in one!It can be so uncomfortable to stay in the uncertainty and just pay attention.

There are some clues that tell us we are in an emergent landscape. For example, the tools we are used to using just aren’t working. Things feel uncertain. Even uncomfortable. We can’t quite see what we need to do next.

Emergent landscapes are spaces where we can sense the old pattern needs changing. Something new is emerging but we don’t quite know what it is yet. Emergent landscapes often require new ways of thinking and adapting.

We now know that coaching can have a profound impact on organizational culture. We also know that coaching is different from when we act as a boss, mentor, or teacher.

Think of a time you really learned something … Was someone coaching you?

What do you think of when you hear the term "coach"? Maybe you think of coaching an employee with a problem. Maybe you think of a life coach or an executive coach. Maybe you think of Ted Lasso.

A Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is a document and process to help an employee clearly understand the expectations they need to meet to perform their job satisfactorily.

I think it’s time to get real about where one-on-one conversations can go wrong. We’re going to explore two scenarios that are all too common. Ready to play along?

We’ve covered what can go right and wrong with a one-on-one conversation. And we’ve taken care of the nuts of bolts of what a one-on-one conversation is and why it’s important.
Now we’re going to talk about how to prepare for your conversation.

One-on-one conversations are a dedicated and focused time to hold a private meeting between a supervisor and supervisee.

One-on-one conversations between a supervisor and supervisee are an important part of building a strong, working relationship based in trust and communication. They are your best opportunity for guidance, support, providing/receiving feedback, collaborating, listening, problem solving and going deeper.

Turnover rates are high. In fact, in the nonprofit sector the voluntary turnover rate is nineteen percent. This is higher than the labor market as a whole, which has a turnover rate of twelve percent. This is alarming for a few reasons.

As Adam Grant so wisely puts it, “The core of burnout is emotional exhaustion – feeling so depleted and drained, you just don’t have anything left to give your job.” I’m guessing many, if not most of us, have been there at some point in our lives, if not in the last few years.

Whether you are an employee or a supervisor, you might be rolling your eyes when I mention employee self-evaluations. Fifteen to twenty years ago, when self-evaluations were all the rage and being added to performance evaluations, they often missed the mark.

Chances are, you, like me and most people I know, struggle at times to give and/or receive feedback. I’ve been there when receiving hard feedback. The shock. The uncomfortable laugh. The defensiveness. Recovering from the hurt. Taking it all too personally.

There are a lot of reasons to make the shift from an annual performance evaluation to Performance Learning. But here’s the real heart of the matter: Annual performance evaluations are a static tool.