Evaluating the performance of your team members is an effective way to improve the efficiency and morale of your staff, says Sara Gilbert, founder of Strategist in Montreal. Inviting your team members to evaluate you is a way of showing them that you value their opinions and that improving the practice involves everyone.
It may seem strange to have your team telling you how you should improve, Gilbert says. But this process increases communication within your practice and can ultimately improve your business.
Gilbert offers the following advice to guide you through an advisor evaluation:
1. Choose a group setting
Select a time and place that encourages participation. And your team’s evaluations of you should never be done immediately following your annual review of them.
Gilbert suggests taking everyone out to lunch or dinner and having a group conversation about how you and the practice can proceed.
This setting will encourage collaboration, be less intimidating for team members and allow them to build on each other’s feedback.
For example, your receptionist might tell you that he or she would appreciate getting your handwritten notes immediately after a client meeting so they can be typed up right away. Your sales assistant hears this and says that if those notes were processed sooner, he or she would be able to begin researching clients’ questions and provide you with a post-meeting report sooner.
2. Emphasize that you want their feedback
Team members may be hesitant to be completely honest and forthcoming. It is up to you to stress that you want to hear what they think because it will help everyone in continuing to develop the practice.
Break the ice by asking questions about what is working in the practice, what is not working and what changes people might want to see.
“Allow them to challenge the status quo,” Gilbert says.
3. Insist on solutions, not just criticism
“If people just critique and don’t bring solutions,” Gilbert says, “you’re not moving forward.”
The suggestions do not have to be the right answers to the problem. But they do have to be possibilities that can be investigated further.
Gilbert says a common issue for advisors’ teams is that advisors often do not understand how long it takes to prepare documentation for client meetings. If your team has this concern, they should be informing you of the problem while offering a possible solution.
So, they might tell you they want to be able to prepare meeting notes a week in advance. If you have any additional requests for more information for that meeting, team members may require 48 hours notice (not 10 minutes) so they can fit that task into their schedule.
4. Watch your reaction
When your team presents an area for improvement, the last thing you should do is become defensive.
Instead, Gilbert says, acknowledge what has been said and analyze it after the meeting.
If you plan on taking one or more of your team’s suggestions, say so and ask them to remind you of your intention later if it appears nothing has changed.
This is the second instalment in a two-part series on performance evaluation.
For part one, see: Four steps to valuable performance reviews, November 11, 2013.