In this issue: Answers to last week’s Self-reflections. Why honest and straightforward feedback is so important to help the whole team grow. How ‘job descriptions’ are a key framework for delivering that feedback. And why failure is more important than success when it comes to adding value.

Recap of last week’s post:

In my last post I talked about how hard I used to find it giving constructive (often negative) feedback. Yet feedback is the only way the team can learn. And increasingly, immediate feedback is absolutely crucial.

So now I have a personal policy of giving feedback within 24 hours of something good or bad happening.

In public for good feedback.

In private for ‘constructive’ or ‘negative’ feedback.

Wherever possible, I use a team member’s “fire in the belly” (where they are going) or current responsibilities (e.g. job description), to anchor my feedback against. Are the employees’ actions a stepping stone to their next role? vs Are their actions enabling them to succeed in their current role?

That anchoring of feedback to the current or future role, makes it an exercise in helping my report succeed, so they continue to progress.

As a result, I no longer find it (terribly) hard to give feedback. And my team knows exactly where they stand.

What framework am I using to structure my ‘personal 5 cents’, when considering last week’s questions?

Please note: I repeat this framework again and again, in every other episode of this newsletter. The idea of using Return on Marketing Career (RoMC) as a framework for career development is explained in great detail in the first newsletter in this series.

Why? Because this has served me well over the 25 years of my career, and because I find that we are all so distracted today (myself included) that unless we see something multiple times, we forget about it.

If you’re already familiar with this way of thinking, please skip this section and go straight to the next one.

My fundamental belief is that marketers who want to Move Up Faster should treat their marketing career just as we would a marketing campaign. Instead of Return on Advertising Spend (RoAS) we can measure our success by Return on Marketing Career (RoMC).

There are four steps to this RoMC process: 

Step 1. Get out of your Comfort Zone as much as possible, even if that scares you because it’s new.

Step 2. Doing new things will increase your professional skill-set. That’s the only way to learn.

Step 3. A broader or deeper skill-set will increase your Value to your colleagues, your team, your firm and your clients.

Step 4. The higher Value you deliver in your role – now that you have a bigger skill-set – the faster you should move up in your career.

Now that we’ve reminded ourselves about the RoMC framework – here are my ‘personal 5 cents’ on last week’s post.

LEADER (managing Managers)

Step 1, Get out of your Comfort Zone: What if you promised yourself that you will share positive feedback – in the open, 24 hrs after something praiseworthy happened? And if you promised yourself that you will share negative and constructive feedback – in private – also 24 hrs after a situation took place that wasn’t meeting the expectation of the role that your team member is in?

Step 2, Develop a New Skill: Learn how to master the art of sharing instant negative feedback by framing that feedback in the context of the role of the Manager, Director or VP who reports to you. Feedback isn’t meant to be about ‘the person’ – it’s not about who they are as people. Just like a football team, all members of our team have a ‘role’ to play. Share the feedback in the context of their current rule, how their role impacts others, and how this role is a stepping stone on their career journey.

Step 3, Create More New Value in your Role: Create Value for yourself, and each one of your team members, by assessing people on their ‘match’ for the role. Are they are below/at/above for each role dimension? How that assessment impacts their ability to create value for themselves, their team and the customer or client. This is not about them; this is about their ability to fill the shoes.

Step 4, Set Yourself Up for a Bigger Future Role or a Promotion: Leaders who move up faster understand the power of role clarity. They focus on having team members who are good matches for each role that has to get done. Such leaders look at role first, and people in those roles second. The role is fixed, the person is a variable.

MANAGER (managing Talent on the Rise)

Step 1, Get out of your Comfort Zone: What if you treated job descriptions as a critical element of assessing an individual contributor’s performance, and when assessing existing talent or interviewing fresh talent for a role, you took seriously both re-reading and updating job descriptions if necessary, to reflect the true nature of the role that your team members are in?

Step 2, Develop a New Skill: Learn how to identify just one most critical element of the role that each person on your team has to master, this quarter. Just one critical element of the role. Oftentimes we confuse the people who report to us, by asking them to be very good at several elements of their role, all at the same time.

Step 3, Create More New Value in your Role: Create Value through focused impact. Work with your direct report on just one area of their role, this quarter, and no more. Focus on helping them get better at just one ‘bullet point’ in their ‘job description’.

Step 4, Set Yourself Up for a Bigger Future Role or a Promotion: Managers who move up faster can illustrate their ability to lean on ‘role clarity’ (aka job descriptions) as a way to assess performance. Motivated talent appreciates such managers, because they set clear expectations, and create a fixed goal-post that is within reach of the talent.

TALENT ON THE RISE

Step 1, Get out of your Comfort Zone: What if you took the initiative, and actively sought feedback, if you asked for it regularly, instead of waiting for your manager to share it with you first?

Step 2, Develop a New Skill: Learn how to see feedback, defined by the requirements of your role, as a key that unlocks your potential, and creates value for your team. 

Step 3, Create More New Value in your Role: Create value and stand out from others by being the one team member among your peers who is most engaged with their “job description”. Be the person who asks your manager what is most important in your role, how you perform against the most important dimensions of your role, and what behaviours are needed to exceed your manager’s expectations.

Step 4, Set Yourself Up for a Bigger Future Role or a Promotion: Talent that moves up faster wants to exceed the expectations of their role. Such people are hungry for feedback, they see ‘failure’ or ‘criticism’ as an opportunity to learn something new about themselves, and to grow from both good (e.g. a compliment about a job well done) and tough (e.g. a privately shared criticism about a task that should have been done better), experiences.

If you’d like to discuss your career journey with me one-to-one, please feel free to email me at Greg@moveupfaster.me or message me on LinkedIn.

Thank you for reading.

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