Note:  This is just a humorous look on my unscientific approach; however, please take the time to realize that being an effective leader does not mean you follow any set pattern of leadership or some preconceived notion of someone’s notion of being an effective leader.  Effective leaders are found with varying personalities and traits.  They possess a keen sense of who they are and are aware of their strengths and weakness, maximizing the former and supplementing the latter.

Auto-follows on keywords/Auto Tweets:

Strength:  Someone that values automation and one time effort to gain leverage.  Once system in place and/or value discovered, it is likely that you don’t want to reinvent the wheel.  In addition, you are extremely well-organized (there is a word for that), and you are also very methodical.  You will quickly move-on from one project to the next and likely are very good at starting businesses, setting a system, and moving on to the next project/phase.  Likely considered a very efficient leader who makes decisions in an effective manner.

Weakness:  Details make your eyes glaze and sometimes you are too quick to delegate.  Because you often have more than one project/program/concept going, those working on supporting initiatives are often confused as to just what is your priority.

Tweets Less Than Once Per Week:

Strength:  One who focuses on projects and prioritizes based on competing demands.  You can handle multiple tasks; however, those that seem less important to you likely get pushed to the back-burner.  Out of 3-5 competing projects, you will likely pick 1 that is worthy of your time, delegate projects 2-3, sit-on project 4, and dump project 5.

Weakness:  Leaders, co-workers, and subordinates often think you forget about them because they don’t always have your personal attention.  You don’t necessarily announce that you are tracking through delegation, and really feel that your time is to valuable to explain everything that you are doing – or defend your worldview.

Tweets More Than Once Per Week:

Strength:  A quick mind who keeps a “Daily 1-R” log of activities that must be done – in other words: You are viewed as someone who can complete multiple projects and still get the “little things” done.  Your leadership style is one that values details and demands that the perceived minor activities do not get overlooked.  You are likely a leader who has (or prefers) a dashboard view of organization and takes a round-robin approach to ensuring that all bases are covered.  You value input from the quiet person sitting in the back of the room and want to know what she has to say.

Weakness:  You can be perceived as going to deep and if you are a senior leader, often viewed as one “in the weeds.”  When briefed on major issues, subordinates often think that you are focused on strategic-high level information, but you quickly dive into details at a technical-journeyman level.  They adjust and go into detail, and you counter by quickly pulling the stick back to the “big-picture.”

Quick to Un-follow:

Strength:  Aggressive, Alpha-type personality with a “time is money” approach to leadership, projects, and tasks.  Your leadership style invites plenty of people to the table, giving them a chance to show their worth – the bad news for them is that they only have one shot and they may not know it.  You have a knack (and gift) for discovering value quickly.  Likely seen as detached by subordinates, you prefer summarized information, and make decisions based on .5 gut and .5 fact.  Your subordinates and co-workers view you as someone who gets bored easily and you will often pursue several initiatives at once in an effort to see which ones stick (provide value) and which ones can be discarded.  You are also considered a change agent; however, the “change initiative” must be significant and provide early indication worthy of your time and effort.

Weakness:  Because you are quick to move, you often frustrate those that may have received late notice that you were interested in one of their projects/programs, and did not have time to prepare adequately to capture your interest.  You also see no value in incremental changes thus settings in which continuous improvement is the primary culture are not a fit for you – you have no patience for semi-annual updates and prefer results that can be immediately gleaned from quarterly reports.  You often are viewed as a leader that has read one too many “Harvard Business Review” articles yet does not have a defining philosophy that has time to settle and take hold within your organization, project, program, etc.

Slow to Un-follow:

Strength:  A loyal leader that likely delivers bad news slow and utilizes negative counseling/discipline as a last resort.  You are a leader that will be slow to hire and even slower to “fire” giving someone all chances to prove themselves before you “throw them to the wolves.”  You are also empathic and when all subordinates and peers tell you to pull the plug, you will “stay the course” to see when and if value is ahead (this is from a personal and project perspective).  When presenting and the audience is getting frustrated by persistent questions from “that one” who always asks questions – consistently, you will stay with the person until the question is answered, leaving everyone amazed at your patience and concern for others.

Weakness:  You often spend too much time trying to save people or projects that are draining resources (time, money, material, etc.)  You often are criticized for delivering projects in late and/or over-budget and though are very good at what you do (often considered the best), not necessarily the most efficient leader in the area of scheduling. Your saving grace is that you are able to garner large support from the “grass-root” and “deck-plate” levels, and excel on quality and program effectiveness.

Tweets Both Business/Professional Updates:

Strength:  You are likely a leader that can build relationships across the organization, maintaining a human quality, yet gaining the necessary respect and fellowship when required.  You seek to balance morale with organizational objectives and make it point to see that your subordinates/employees have fun at work.  You are also one that given a microphone (or maybe without one) and a PowerPoint presentation can make even the dullest presentations come alive with both empirical data and strong anecdotes to tell a story that would be boring presented by someone with a different personality.  Personal and professional relationships are important to you and you are a master networker.

Weakness:  Data oriented-peers, co-workers, and subordinates often feel your “personal touch” is intrusive or unnecessary.  Your style may unknowingly make subordinates uncomfortable with peers seeing your style as going into irrelevant areas, having nothing to do with the business at hand.  You are also often viewed as someone who could obtain the same results in a more compressed time-frame.  You do possess a high-sense of self-awareness and realize this perceived weakness, but you accept the trade-off much to the chagrin of your peers, co-workers, and subordinates.

Tweets Only Business Updates:

Strength:  You are a no-nonsense leader that believes in focusing on critical activities.  Someone that could hold marathon brain-storming sessions on critical business proposals and activities.  You also enjoy what you do and are the type of leader in which subordinates often say to themselves: “He lives here.”  You  associate yourself (and often your ego) with your work and have large amounts of concentration/focus.  People like you often fill the ranks of senior business leaders within an organization and you advance quickly on a given career-path.  You also know the “nuts-and-bolts” of the business and how it relates to delivery on business objectives and meeting business goals.

Weakness:  You may be seen as dull and calculating.  Meetings and projects that you chair and/or are a critical team member are often seen as “no flash” ordeals.  Though you are a great leader within an established framework, you may resist entrepreneurship/business opportunities, perceiving them as reap with unnecessary and avoidable risk with no defined “systems” in place (however, if teamed with business-personal tweeter that can be remedied – of course, they have to get to you.)

Tweets Only Personal (with a Professional Profile):

Strength:  You are a social butterfly.  The one that when approached by subordinates with situations they view as serious or emergent, quickly put them at ease.  Leadership style makes nervous subordinates feel comfortable. Though you are very social, you do know your business and your work, but it does not define you.  Also one to ensure that others participate in hobbies and recreational activities.  Strong believer in re-charging the batteries.

Weakness:  May be viewed as the popular leader and may need a strong “second” to offset open-leadership style.  You sometimes upset others within your organization because you may be distracted easily and may be perceived to lack focus.  You may get away with more than many other peers because of your ability to search out and find common bonds – your peers often view this as relationship management taking precedence over results-oriented and documented performance.

Followers Greater Than Those Following (by a significant margin):

Strength:  You are the type of leader that everyone talks about and gathers around when walking the “deck-plate” and”front-lines.”  Extremely poplar, you may have large groups of people clamoring for your time, because you are seen as invaluable or a star-performer among your peers.  Even seniors view you with admiration at what appears to be a natural ability within you to motivate others with relatively ease.

Weakness:  Though you are very poplar (and appreciate the fact that people gravitate toward you), you also consult with a small group of advisers and peers when making key decisions.  Because you possess such a strong following of peers and subordinates, you will often have others give bad news, maintaining your personal reputation and brand, even if it means damaging someone else.  Also there is a false sense that you have an open-door policy, when in fact, there is a considerable bureaucratic process that one has to go through to often get to your level.

Following Greater Than Followers (delta of 20% or more):

Strength:  You are a great entrepreneur and will not take “no” for an answer.  You are the type of person who writes down his or her goals, which appear to be dreams to observers (i.e., meet consult with world leaders or sit on prestigious boards).  You have an ability to come up with innovative concepts or work proven models to perfection.  If your concepts come into reality, you are likely to progress to the aforementioned stage.

Weakness:  Many may perceive you as annoying, or as a dreamer, or as someone to avoid.  Others may see you as a threat and protect information from you and/or see you as an outcast with no room for your concepts or ideas.  Because you are persistent, you may also be viewed as someone to avoid.

Considering all the factors above, my argument-opinion is simple: Performance Reviews-Appraisals are not your enemy.  The performance review-appraisal process cannot and should not become the scapegoat reason for delaying performance feedback nor management’s resistance to utilizing it as a legitimate performance management tool.

Having read opinions that stretch across the spectrum on this issue, the point is that the primary issue with performance reviews/appraisals is the planning that goes behind the process.  The performance review-performance appraisal process, as a component of performance management, should be an essential ingredient in setting and managing expectations within your organization; and, if we, as HR-Business leaders, think that condemning the process is “an out” then my message is ” that dog won’t hunt.”  Such protests are merely excuses to not fully develop and refine the process, so the easy out becomes to blame the tools utilized versus the more accurate inability to employ a robust and effective performance management system.

So the question becomes, “How can we make it better?”  How can we employ our organization’s performance review-performance appraisal process in a method that works consistently and receives the creditability needed to contribute to individual development and delivery of organizational goals and objectives.  Here are some quick – very quick – ways to make it work:

1) Know the desired outcome of the incumbent position.  When we think of performance appraisals,  many managers quickly think, “How will my employees stack against each other?”  However, you must remember that the role of the performance appraisal is to measure the incumbent’s performance against defined outcomes measured carefully against developed performance standards,  position objectives, and the job analysis product the job description, captured by senior managers/leaders and job analysis functional specialists – clinical psychologists, during the workforce planning process.  The standards set forth in performance reviews-appraisals are, but should not be measured against a nominal employee that exceeds the standard(s) – at least, arguably, initially.  In essence: Performance standards are initially defined during the larger strategic planning-mapping process (again, workforce planning) and/or doing scheduled reviews – ideally.

2) Capture concrete performance objectives and consistently communicate these objectives to employees.  One of the (justified) continued complaints against HR is lack of concrete measurements and performance objectives despite all the evidence that demonstrates increased value creation when concrete performance and properly aligned objectives are defined and executed upon. The lack of clearly defined performance objectives are not confined to HR.  Line managers, senior leadership and HR must share in the responsibility and work in answering the question, “Just what constitutes non-satisfactory, satisfactory, and superior performance?”  Capturing specific job performance measurements within the performance appraisal itself may work; however, it is not necessary and may make your forms dated.  Instead, ensure that job incumbents know the definition of performance success (or failure) and when objectives are considered met in quantifiable language supplemented by specific work instances ((I personally recommend that time consistent job performance measurements be captured and supplemented by current (and flexible) positional performance objective criteria defined during through the workforce planning and/or workforce review processes) .  However captured, ensure that objective measures are communicated consistently to your workforce down to the individual level with formal-informal milestones suggested below.

3) Offset compensation performance measures with ethical performance measures.  The most common example of this is of course the banking and financial industries and how conflict often occurs when up-sales are not being made, loans are not being processed, or insurance products are not being sold.  However, to blame this on performance measures is not taking responsibility for adequately developing the very thing being complained about.  Performance measures tied to compensation such as merit or incentive pay, should have an ethical dimension to the performance factor, reminding employees that their ability to meet or exceed performance goals is not to be done at the expense of legal requirements and ethical considerations.  Though some advocate that incentive pay, merit pay, gain-sharing, etc.  should not be attached to performance standards, this misses the point that the linkage of the two are often necessary to adequately measure performance. The decision rests with senior leadership; the context through with such goals are interpreted are translated via the organization’s culture.  In other words: If your organization makes the decision to include monetary product-service levels within performance standards, your cultural tone will define at what lengths employees will take to achieve those standards, ethically and legally.

4) Remember that performance-appraisal reviews are a part of the process and not the process.  Here is where many managers lose sight of knowing the purpose of performance appraisals.  Performance appraisals are one of the tools at management disposal within the larger (and hopefully well defined) performance management process.  If you’re waiting until the six- and twelve month points to let employees know where they stand in meeting performance objectives then the performance appraisal nor the employee are your enemy – you are.  It is your role as an HR-Business leader to ensure that your professional peers and subordinates understand that High Performance Work Systems – in which HR processes play a critical role – includes a well-executed performance management process that is  consistently communicated, and that employee performance management is an on-going process. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is to provide performance feedback that exceeds organizational requirements.  Thus if there is an annual/semi-annual formal performance review process, you should look and consider a quarterly feedback process that not only comments on performance, but shows how the job incumbent-employee can improve or sustain required performance.

5) Shared goal-setting – the often forgotten, proven benchmark. As professionals we read and may even directly observe-participate in effective goal setting against developed performance objectives; however, we often forget the effectiveness of accomplishing this in a systematic way – perhaps it is missing within the guidelines of managing the performance management process. However, when employees are empowered to help shape the goals that contribute directly to job requirements and performance objectives, the increased acceptance and legitimacy of the performance review process is increase.

There are supplementary measures and techniques individual to organizations that have proven effective.  Just remember what works for one organization, may not work for your organization.  The debate continues and will continue on the most effective among these techniques, which include separating salary discussion from performance reviews, providing peer-incumbent input “accomplishments” to formal performance reviews, and validating performance reviews through a two-party formal review process that often includes the direct supervisor and work-team-functional supervisor (as one example).  In  the end, it is my belief that all these may prove effective to a specific organization; however, are not effective for all organizations.  And that’s my key point: Your performance review-appraisal process must be consistent with your organizational culture.  If you have an open culture with free-flowing communication and a team-based atmosphere then peer validation and accomplishments may be warranted.  In contrast, matrix organizations and/or organizations where direct reports are separated geographically and/or direct observation is limited by the direct supervisor then the two-party review process may be warranted.  Is it fair to rank?  The answer to that question resides within your organization, your organizational culture, your performance criteria, and your process in which you promote and retain employees.

In conclusion, remember know this: The performance-appraisal review is not the problem (nor your enemy or scapegoat).  The problem is in the proper and relevant design, delivery, management, and execution within the larger context of your organizational performance management process that is the problem and that’ something and that’s something you can control.

Of course I laughed it off and just thought that his analytical skill set and thought process just wanted black-and-white and binary rule set data that made it all digestible and easy for decision-making.  However, as I progress through subsequent assignments and conduct interviews and conversations with other business professionals and HR leaders, I have come to realize that he had a point.  Specifically, during one meeting, I sat and listened to a senior HR leader explain to me that the company’s goal was to “align the workforce to meet the strategic initiatives of strategic planning so that they could deliver on organizational objectives.”  I thought to myself – huh?  Are you not the face of senior leadership representing the most valued asset of the organization and that’s the answer you are providing?

Now don’t get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with being able to communicate in contemporary, relevant, common language that can be shared with other professionals internal and external to the organization.  However, to explain to someone who is trying to get to ground truth (with concurrence) in such abstract terms leads to one conclusion: You have no idea what you are talking about.

Do you know what you are talking about?  Can you state in concrete terms what your organizational strategic goals are where it makes sense to anyone listing.  If you communicate like the example I just gave above, I will answer that question for you: You may know, but only you know that you may know.

Allow me to provide an example of concrete strategic objectives in plain language: “Our goal is to reduce involuntary turnover by 30% over the course of the next five years by improving our sourcing-recruiting functions, improve our talent management processes by leveraging our existing succession-replacement planning and improving our knowledge management capturing through the use of HRIM/S technology currently deployed to support the organization’s goal of shaping a workforce to sustain attrition due to retirement eligibility and improve time-to-market for emerging new product lines.”

So if it’s that easy, why don’t more HR professionals communicate in concrete terms?  Because in truth, it is not easy.  It requires us to get our hands dirty and plan the process at the strategic level, while ensuring that we “roll-up sleeves” directly or indirectly at the operational-tactical levels.  Furthermore, we often want to encompass as much as possible thinking that being too specific shows a lack of organizational depth.  Of course mind-mapping, project planning, and cause-and-effect diagramming is fun as we work in a conference room with plenty of water and coffee to keep us awake.  However, to go out and link into our organization’s line functions and know about front-line processes that impact our ability to deliver requires work (of a different sort).  This work is not as “glamorous” or may seem contradictory as we throw elbows at the oft-used phrase “seat at the table.”  As for trying to encompass everything you can to prevent from leaving anything out, here is the rule of any business initiative or goal in execution: If you cannot succinctly define it – it is not defined.

Is there any wonder why heads tilt to the side as you talk to mid-level management about the dashboard view of their divisions and departments when they can’t even get a quiet place to on-board and train their employees?  Is there any wonder why faces bleed with anger as you talk about ERP back-end migration strategies and incremental roll outs when they can’t even get the existing Passport inventory system to properly load data and ensure that accurate inventory arrives JIT?

So in the midst of all our “high level” talk and good intentions, our professional colleagues just want a system that works.  They want enabling technologies to settle, so that they can properly train their employees to use the system without having to worry about an upgrade that is looming around the corner.  Yeah, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) sounds good in strategic planning sessions, but employees want to know, where is the custom data that they have grown accustomed too.  You are talking hibba-hobba.

It’s important when wearing your change management-change agent hat that you communicate to employees (to include managers and front-line personnel) in terms they understand, value, and relate.  For if you don’t, buy-in is not only hard, it may be a serious barrier to success for successful implementation.  Having worked on my share of change management initiatives, it is not an easy task to incorporate strategic level goals and objectives into concrete language that ties in relevant process; however, our creditability often rests on our ability to do just that.

Many professional may think that “it’s not that serious.”  But if you have been around a while, I want you to think about a couple of questions: How many change management initiatives, goals, processes, policies, etc. have you seen fail?  Now, out of the ones that failed, how many were due to a lack of enabling technology not being able to deliver and/or financial resources-resource allocation not being provided COMPARED TO employees not only not willing understanding, but able to understand (thus execute) and/or the lack of organizational buy-in.

It’s a costly mistake to understate the power of language and communication.