English: Apprentice. Man and boy making shoes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One could argue that the apprentice makes great television, it is always fascinating to watch young hopefuls applying their craft in a competitive environment across a range of eliminative tasks to identify the best candidate for the job. With a swift point of the finger, Lord Sugar‘s “your fired!” has now become a well known demonstration of what happens when the candidate does not match up to expectations. Usually, this is accompanied by the exclamation “…and for this reason, your fired.” So- all is well, the decision has been made following observation of candidates’ performance and lets face it- they did deserve to go, didn’t they?
If you pardon the pun, what’s wrong with this picture of candidate assessment from the talent management perspective? The answer is, feedback. More specifically, when candidates are observed on tasks a boardroom visit ensues which seeks to disentangle individual accountability for success and failure during the challenge. Who did what? Who didn’t? Who did it best? Who did it least well? Who accepted responsibility for the failure? Who repelled the panels observations? Usually this leads to a free-for-all where candidates seek to explain their actions, or lack thereof, apportioning blame in the direction of colleagues to identify the ’cause’ of their performance outcomes. Clearly the cycle of blame comes into being because the candidates’ are desperate to find favour with the panel relative to their peers in their attempt to claim the ultimate reward and become the ‘apprentice’. While one must concede all of this makes for engrossing television, it should be consumed with a rather large pinch of salt as the content does not correspond with effective talent management.
So how could the ingredients be improved? With a healthy dose of continuous formative feedback. Rather a mouthful, I agree, but much simpler to apply in practice. The basic principle is one of providing feedback to candidates’ or in this case employees’, on how well they are doing. In an organisational context, this would mean that performance is measured against a communicated outcome(s), monitored and reviewed in concert with the individual, and built upon through an agreed series of next steps. Here the focus is on partnership, learning and improving performance continually for the mutual benefit of the individual, their colleagues and the organisation as a whole. It would also be useful for the individual employee to maintain a reflective diary that can be shared, demonstrating their actions and reflections in meeting the communicated outcomes, a potent formula for improvement. We must come to appreciate that individuals‘ are never a finished product, neither are we, there is always something to learn, something to improve upon.
Effective talent management must not only recognise the importance of people, it must also take the necessary steps to align with the individual, their performance and empower more fruitful outcomes. In essence, this is the investment that will act as a catalyst for your employees’, heightening a sense of autonomy and ownership over performance, motivating a culture of continual improvement. Perhaps an individual will under-perform in these circumstance, but the culture will be one of collaboration and the individual will certainly have received targeted feedback and therein the means to own their performance irrespective or whether or not they have done well. Moreover, the individual will know what is expected of them as well as knowing what you are looking for on the performance front.
I must admit, my interpretation of the apprentice on the talent management front is guided by what I have observed to-date. That is not to say that feedback on performance and the means to improve is not being provided in abundance behind the lens. Nonetheless, constructive criticism is a misnomer in the sense that we cannot expect talent to improve unless we provide a foundation of feedback, charting the way to excellence and scaffolding improvement. Furthermore, we should not assume that individuals’ will automatically and accurately reflect upon their experience. These are the authentic ingredients that combine to produce outstanding employees’.
So how can we put continuous formative feedback into operation?
- Write and share task, project or output objectives with employees;
- Create a reflective journal space onto which employees’ can map progress, successes and failures;
- Continually monitor performance against agreed objectives, before, during & after the task;
- Using performance information matched to the criteria, obtain feedback from employee’s, discuss & plan next steps;
- Include the feedback process information as part of the appraisal process;
- Obtain a counter signature to confirm that agreement on all aspects of the process has been accepted by the employee.
