By Lisa Arnold
Jan 14, 2021
If you were to survey your team right, would they immediately be able to tell you the major goals for the upcoming year ahead? Better yet, if you were to be quizzed as the manager, would you be able to tell us without asking exactly where your team members are on their own objectives for the year?
Aligning what the team is working on to company goals seems like a no-brainer. However, it’s easier said than done. Even the best companies can fall off track because of the disconnect.
We’ve put together a few ways to help realign your team to your company’s biggest needs below:
Ensure employees know the company’s long-term strategy
It’s easy for employees to create goals that fail to contribute towards a company’s long term strategy. On average, only 7% of employees fully understand what their company’s strategy even is. Employees need to be given a clear strategic vision from the beginning in order to be expected to create goals with meaning for all divisions, not just their own.
If you feel your team doesn’t have a clear vision of the company’s long term strategy, provide a refresher and identify how each goal moves your company closer toward their ultimate vision and what role your team and individuals will play in making it a reality.
You can do this a few ways: one, during weekly check-ins, it’s important to connect how the work the employee is doing is laddering up the big goal. By doing this, you’ll give your employees purpose and value in their work since they’ll better understand why it matters in the big picture.
Quarterly summits are something we do here to keep us all on task. Since we are 100% remote, we spend about 15 minutes each day catching up with each other to understand what we’re working on which helps us stay aligned and on track. In addition to that, we do a quarterly virtual summit where we block off two-hours to discuss our progress as small teams and how it aligns to the whole.
This lets our team see the bigger picture, better understand where their contributions help push us forward, and gives them a clearer vision for what’s up next.
Connect strategic goals to specific tasks
Your team understands the goal, but putting it into practice is a different story. From the moment you introduce a goal and relate it to a long-term strategy, begin connecting it to individual tasks for members of your team to complete. Providing action steps can improve goal alignment and contribute to employee buy-in as they see their tasks integrated into long-term goals.
When employees understand how team goals breakdown into tasks, efficacy increases. In fact, 91% of companies that effective utilize performance management systems report they link specific tasks to overall goals according to a McKinsey report.
Communicate frequently and clearly – but cut back on meetings
Once employees understand company strategy and integrate goals into their daily workflow, be prepared to keep an open line of communication. Answering questions, and providing continuous feedback are all important in making sure employees feel they are both on track to accomplish a goal and unified with the company’s overall strategy.
In addition to participating in a feedback loop with employees actively involved in goal-setting, the appropriate departments and individuals should be kept-up-to date with key information. The initial goal-setting session should develop a communications management plan identifying relevant stakeholders and how and when to provide updates. These additional parties can ensure your goal is aligned with company strategy overtime and increase company-wide cooperation.
Good news: even though more communication is likely needed, frequent meetings are probably unnecessary when there is a clear understanding of the goal. Frequently revisiting individual tasks can distract from the larger goal at hand and lead employees (and supervisors) to miss the bigger picture. Ensuring goals are rooted in company strategy can free up your calendar and valuable time.
Implementing software that can help capture communication in a meaningful way is important. For example, Kin allows employees to list goals and objectives visible to their manager. This streamlines the communication process and leaves the door open for continuous feedback. It’s also helpful when reviews roll around.
Utilize real-time goal tracking
Real-time goal tracking not only keeps employees on task, it indicates progress to all levels of management and allows for quick and clear feedback when an objective strays from the company’s overall strategy. Managers can see exactly how and where their employees’ time and resources are being spent and ensure goal alignment throughout the course of a project. To ensure accurate tracking, goals should be specific, measurable, and time-bound.
Utilizing tools like Monday or Asana show each individual’s progress and can also act as motivators for employees, indicating how completed tasks contribute to larger goals.
By Lisa Arnold
Jan 5, 2021
2020 has been, well, a year. While we don’t know what’s in store for 2021, we do know who got us through this past year: our employees.
Not every small business fared well, but those who did made it through day by day. The people that work for them experienced a global pandemic, social justice movements and more. And yet, they kept us all afloat.
Every small business took a hit – some monetary, some from their colleagues becoming sick, some facing both. Even if your finances are rocky, there are plenty of ways to give thanks to a group of people who saw us through one of the hardest years of our lives.
Here are just a few ways to help:
Offer a company-wide four-day weekend
Taking time off is great, but there’s typically at least one or two emails, Slack messages or iMessages that slip through while you’re away, making it hard to rest when you know your team is working so hard.
By instilling a four-day weekend for the entire team to take off you’re doing a few things:
- You’re not giving much more PTO than normal, but enough to show your gratitude for their efforts in the past year. And when you butt it up against a weekend, you’re extending their rest. For those who don’t use their PTO as often as they should, this mandated vacation can do wonders.
- You’re giving the entire company room to breathe. This way, everyone is off at the same time. No one is dependent on one another to get something done. Everyone can recharge and come back feeling better together.
Take the time to truly assess their careers and give them a plan forward
We so often talk about career pathways and opportunities for advancement, but employees who are in the thick of it rarely have a chance to see the path forward when they’re putting in the hard work.
Investing in deep conversations with one another about what your employee wants to do in the next two or three years, or where they see themselves helping with challenges within the organization will be not only welcomed, but it’ll show your commitment to their success.
Following through with detailed career development plans and checking back monthly on their progress will help build your relationships even more so with your team who has committed so much to you during some of the hardest times.
Use Kin’s objective tracker for monthly, quarterly and annual goals and make sure that you’re both focused on the right things to be successful.
Write an unsolicited LinkedIn recommendation
Yes, this sounds silly. But taking as little as 10-15 minutes to publicly recognize someone in your organization who is still there goes a long way. Especially when it’s unexpected.
Giving an honest, appreciative recommendation can help your team member know how much you value them. It’s a gift that truly can help them the rest of their career, especially if you’re in an industry where LinkedIn can be a de-facto resume for some.
Offer inexpensive perks that make their daily life easier
Maybe you’ve been working remotely now for nine months and employees are realizing that this is at least the norm for the next four to five months. Offering perks like a Netflix subscription, a grocery delivery service or even a small stipend to make their office a bit more comfortable can go a long way.
It’s less about the amount you spend here and more about the thought. When you offer something like this to employees, you’re showing them that you’re mindful of their current situation and want to continue to help where and how you can.
Put in place a monthly recognition program
At Kin, we used to circulate a “torch” each month to the employee who won it for their efforts. The team decided on the employee who would be rewarded, and at the end of the month, they would be surprised with it on a team video chat. We’d read a letter put together by the winner’s manager to explain why they were chosen. Everyone would clap and cheer. The person who won would feel valued and understood. It was spectacular.
The torch itself was a piece of metal that, frankly, I still don’t know what it was to this day. However, that didn’t matter. What I do know is when I won it, I distinctly remember that being one of the highlights of my entire year. And when I write about it now, I still smile thinking back on that day. Since we are 100% remote, we would ship it to each other monthly and that continues to be one of the most favorite packages I’ve ever received.
Little things like this make bonding happen even faster in a team. It’s a type of recognition that only happens within your team. To the outside world it doesn’t seem like much, but internally it’s a really big deal. Something as personal to the company as this can help employees feel on top of the world, even when money is tight.
By Lisa Arnold
Dec 30, 2020
Earlier this year, we did a blog post about the 10 questions every employee should ask during an annual review because for employers, we have our tried and true question routine. For employees, it can be a bit more daunting.
However, there are some out-of-the-box questions that can unlock hidden potential in your employees and give you insight into the way they feel about work, how they could be more productive, and most importantly how their work could be more fulfilling to them while moving the company forward.
Here are ten questions you can incorporate into your annual review to do just that.
Tell me about a point this year when you felt proud of a contribution you made.
Pinpointing moments of pride may be different for everyone. Sometimes, it’s about how the team the person was on was able to get something over the finish line. Other times, it’s about a small contribution you as a manager may not have noticed, but came through in such a way that it set the company up for bigger success.
By asking this question, you’ll get some insight into what your team member loves to work on the most and where they feel most accomplished. This is the perfect kick-off to finding challenges in your workplace that fit their natural skill sets.
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What skills do you have that you think were not utilized this year?
Blunt questions like this lead to breakthroughs. There have been times in our careers where we’ve all felt underutilized. It may be that we never communicated our full strengths, or it could be that the projects we were on didn’t lend to them. Either way, asking an employee this question gives us as managers the tools we need to help our team move forward.
When I know the strengths my team members didn’t use this year, I also have an idea of where they could be helpful when it comes to achieving our company’s goals for the next year, versus where I assume they would be helpful based on past performance.
What are areas that you think you can grow and improve in throughout next year? Where do you think the company could grow and improve?
This is a different way to ask the generic “what are your weaknesses?” Nobody wants to talk about the negative sides of themselves. Framing the question this way makes that conversation easier and puts a focus on growth.
Plus, when you combine it with the company’s growth and improvement, you’re likely to get answers you’ve never thought of. Often, the best ideas come from those who are in the most tactical positions because they’re so close to the client, the work and the results. When we give them the floor, amazing suggestions could happen that lead to major company growth.
If you could create a role that would bring out your very best contributions, what would that role look like?
At Kin, we believe that every position is merely a suggestion of what that employee’s contributions should be. Of course, there are jobs that need to be done within the role that the person was hired for, but after that’s completed, there is often places that an employee will naturally gravitate towards.
We have folks who really enjoy putting out fires in other disciplines because they’re just far enough removed that the solution comes easier for them than those in the thick of it. We have others that love to walk through problems with others and be a listening ear while they figure it out on their own.
Whatever those talents are, it’s important that we as managers nurture them – even if they aren’t part of that employee’s job description.
What do I do that is most and least helpful for you when it comes to completing your work?
As a manager, you have the power to help your employees do their best work by removing obstacles for them daily. You also, unfortunately, have the power to make their lives harder by not realizing where they do and don’t need help. Questions like this allow you to gain some insight as to where you’re needed and where you’re not.
It’s extremely important to listen well and implement that feedback you hear from this question. Not only will it help your employees produce better work, it’ll grow the relationship between yourself and your team and effectively create more engagement over time.
What do you love most about our culture?
As much as we’d like to say we can create culture at work, it’s ultimately up to the people we curate to truly create it. Small businesses can lay out the groundwork with our values, our mission statements and our visions, but the carry through of it all is what really creates the culture.
Cultural fits are easy to identify, and sometimes finding out what they love about the culture so much helps you better identify future cultural fits when hiring comes around. Keep these answers in your back pocket when you start interviewing again.
Is there a part of your job you would do differently?
Kat Cole, COO of Focus Brands, calls this the “hot shot” rule. Think of something in your job you’d do differently: maybe it’s a 10-minute process, maybe it’s a whole half of your day. Now, think, if someone that was a hot shot got hired into my role tomorrow, how would they do it differently?
Chances are, your employees have mulled this over and over in their heads well before the annual review and will be quick to gives an answer about an inefficiency or issue they see but have yet to address. By setting the stage with this question, you’ll likely find a few ways to make things hum a little better around the office.
What’s one thing you feel like the company’s mission or vision is missing?
As leaders, we build visions and missions that a team can work toward and the company as a whole can prosper from.
However, we aren’t always as keyed into details as those on the front lines are. It’s important to do a check each year (or even more often than that!) as to how the team whose executing the mission and vision are feeling. Is there something glaringly obvious that you aren’t seeing as a leader in charge of the big picture? Is there an exciting new opportunity or challenge that is coming up, and they caught it first?
Staying in tune with your front line is key when it comes to your company being successful, and this question is a great place to start.
How has the feedback you’ve received this year helped you?
Feedback is a tool that we can use to help our employees do their best work. Often though, we don’t provide it fast enough, or often enough, for it to truly be effective. If you’re reading this and your company only does an annual review, check out why we don’t believe that’s a good idea here.
The feedback being effective also hinges on the ability to take it and do something that creates better work from it. Giving employees a chance to provide feedback on their feedback will help you hone in on giving it better.
If you feel a bit uncomfortable asking this, you’re not alone. In fact, nearly 79% of managers are uncomfortable giving feedback.
What’s one thing you wished I asked you during this annual review, but didn’t?
We’ve covered a lot of ground through these ten questions for an annual review, but there’s always something an employee is waiting to be asked that may unlock a ton of productivity, growth and happiness in the workplace. The key is giving them the opportunity to say it.
By Lisa Arnold
Dec 22, 2020
Creating a great onboarding experience for an employee is crucial to their long-term success at your company. From the interview process, to the first day, to the first three months, there are factors in each step that help your new colleague determine how long they’d like to stay, how committed they are to the work and how much of a cultural fit they’ll be as they become comfortable with the team. That’s a big reason why we created Kin.
Before Kin, whenever we would hire our own team members, we would create a personalized one-page website, called Starting Point, to welcome them onto the team and deliver information prior to their first day. It contained email addresses, phone numbers, short bios of our team members, links to the tools we used most frequently and other facts, such as a great place to get some lunch in the neighborhood.
The goal? Get new hires feeling like they’re part of the team before they were actually, well, part of the team. That way on the first day, they felt like they were already in it all along. They knew names, they knew the tools they’d be introduced to, and of course, they knew where to grab a great bite come noon.
Little things like this led to big results. In fact, we have some of the longest tenures in our industry, with many people that we’ve hired as we’ve grown still being at Kin. The folks that have left still stay in touch for the most part. We even work with a few of them as they’ve gone on to create their own companies.
These types of great relationships amongst the team don’t happen overnight. They start well, they’re nurtured throughout the time people spend at Kin, and then, they’re often expressed in the software we create.
Here are a few examples of the way our tool has evolved to create a better employee onboarding experience – both at Kin and in your organization, too.
Create a personalized onboarding page to welcome new hires
Just like Starting Point, Kin has the ability to create a quick and easy onboarding page that gives new hires the exact information they need to succeed and be comfortable on their first day. It includes a quick welcome note, tasks they need to accomplish before and on the first day, an overview of the tools they will be using, a quick look at the teammates they’ll be working most closely with, and the ability to ask any questions they may have directly on the page to their HR Manager.
In our welcome note, we typically give a brief outline of what their first week will look like, helping them ease any fears that may come with not knowing what’s next. Overall, this sets the tone of transparency throughout the organization because the employee knows exactly what is expected of them over the next few days.
Make paperwork the easiest part of getting hired
The feeling of coming in on the first day to a pile of benefit forms, direct deposit forms, handbooks, policies and more doesn’t make for a great first impression. With Kin, you can send these forms out ahead of time so the new employee can have them completed prior to the first day and be ready to roll when they get there.
Everything through Kin’s HRIS is digital. You can add as many forms, booklets, handbooks and policies as you’d like. The new hire and the HR manager can sign and fill out forms right within our tool. We also have areas where you can collect information like emergency contacts, addresses, frequent flyer numbers and more to create a profile that has all employee data in one place. The employee can also edit this at any time, keeping everything up to date.
We typically send these out at least one week in advance. This gives the new hire plenty of time to get everything set. When they start on the first day, after we’ve made sure their technology works and they can access the tools they need, we do a quick run through of the paperwork. There, we make sure there are no questions, sign off on what we need to on our end and turn them loose on their next onboarding task.
Behind the scenes, our people operations director, Dee, begins filing the paperwork and getting them all set. It’s important to us that they immediately are paid on the pay cycle we’re on so getting the direct deposit and tax paperwork set needs to happen fast.
Make requesting PTO easy-peasy
One of our most “sticky” features about Kin is its PTO tool. Our team doesn’t email their manager to request time off, nor is it a Slack conversation. The entire workflow happens in Kin.
An employee can easily request time off with just a few clicks and it goes directly to their manager. Their manager can approve or deny the request right within their email, or go into the tool if they’d like to see more information.
Paid time off is crucial to a good working relationship with any employee at any stage of their tenure. By showing new hires how easy we’ve made it to request the time, we’re removing any trepidation they may have about approaching their manager for the time they need down the line. Just a few clicks, and you’re done!
Setting expectations upfront
After a few weeks of getting settled into the role, we work with our new hire to give them some concrete objectives that they can actively work towards. These objectives are loaded into Kin as part of Kin’s employee feedback tool. Employees can update them regularly with what they’ve accomplished toward the objective so far.
This part of the tool keeps the “eye on the prize.” It allows for our employees to know their main focuses, and to continuously work towards them while informing their managers of how they’re doing. It by no means removes the need for manager-employee conversations to be regularly taking place, but it does provide a great location for team members to keep track of their progress, and a good outline for those conversations.
By Lisa Arnold
Nov 30, 2020
Employee turnover has always been a big concern for businesses. Hiring great employees and retaining them is vital for success in any organization, and they all hinge on one thing: employee satisfaction.
Employee satisfaction can come from a multitude of things: challenging and fulfilling workloads, a great company culture, meaningful interpersonal relationships at work and, of course, compensation. When these elements combine, they create a loyalty that is hard to shake. It all merges into a rock solid team that can move mountains together.
While many of these factors can be addressed and shifted over time, compensation seems to be one that is more cut and dry. It’s based on the company’s performance, therefore the level of the role and its value to the company should technically dictate the amount.
And as easy as that is to write, it’s not necessarily that simple.
Compensation is key to employees feeling valued. It’s critical that you not only get it right, but evolve it as the employee’s role evolves at your company. Here are a few ways you can check in on your salary levels and keep a pulse on the fairness of it all.
Keep communication line opens
Communication starts during the interview process. It’s important to have open and honest communication about the individual’s salary expectations and your company’s ability to fall in line with those expectations. This will help set the tone for the entire relationship as far as transparency in pay goes, so it’s vital to get it right the first time.
Asking about salary expectations shouldn’t just be a form field on your application. It should be an active, engaged conversation between the potential employee and employer as the interview progresses.
This is a time where you can discuss the different ways that compensation is given, such as salary, paid time off, bonuses, benefits, equity, retreats, stipends, equipment, etc. The person who is handling this conversation should not only be well versed in what your company offers, but they should be able to talk about how it has benefitted them personally so that the potential employee can understand how they’ll be affected by the compensation.
Stay on top of the market
A great way to keep on top of the salary game is to take the time to review different salary surveys and benchmarking semi-annually. Of course, every industry and geographic location is different, but this gives you a pulse across the nation as to how trends are running, and if your company is aligning with them or not.
Lindsay Putzer from Curology, an online dermatologist solution, says that they check benchmarking twice per year as an indicator of whether they are paying more or less as similar organizations for the same role. This helps her see if her valued employees might see earning potential be higher elsewhere, and solve the problem before it starts.
Tools like GlassDoor.com, Salary.com and PayScale.com can help you narrow in on this research.
Take each individual into account, not just the role they’re in
Have you ever hired someone for a specific role in your company, and as your relationship grew with them, you realized exactly how valuable they were both in that role and outside it?
This is where compensation levels per role start to get fuzzy. A valuable employee shouldn’t be subjected to compensation that only relates to the exact role they were hired for when they do so much more for your organization.
Providing additional compensation levels in relation to the value the team member brings to the organization is key and will ultimately attract more high-value employees. It doesn’t have to be a “gut” thing, but can be “boosted levels” when additional contributions that are consistent are identified.
Clearly outline your compensation strategy
There is no doubt about it: even in 2020, fair compensation is still an issue throughout every industry’s workforce.
Benchmarking your salary against your industry helps, but so does benchmarking individual’s salaries across your company. Just because someone was hired into a role a long time ago when you weren’t looking at salary levels as closely doesn’t mean that they are being paid fairly now that your focus is on doing better in the future.
It may not be a pleasant financial experience to adequately adjust pay across the board, but it’s a necessary one. It’ll show how much you value equitable pay across the organization. Put your money where your mouth is, and where your values are.
React to employees’ needs
Money isn’t everything. While compensation is often based heavily on salary, there are other levers you can pull to adequately take care of your people.
Flexibility in hours, benefits such as a gym membership or a stipend for their home office, growth opportunities, education reimbursements and more can make it understood that you care about your team and want to help them succeed both inside and outside the office.
Make sure you’re aligned to begin with
Your organization has goals and values that aren’t up for negotiation. It’s important to first ensure that the candidates you hire align with those. This makes compensation decisions easier to work through from there.
Individuals who match the values of your company are worth figuring out the right compensation mix. Some may want steady compensation, while others may be excited about performance-based compensation. It’ll all create a harmonious mix of salaries that show the loyalty and trust you place in your team.
By Lisa Arnold
Nov 24, 2020
Annual review season is just around the corner, and if you’ve been following our series of posts about reviews, you should be feeling ready to go. There are a few things that are important to keep in mind as you get ready to complete those performance reviews.
We preach about it often, but an annual review should not be an interview. It should be a conversation between the employee and their manager that is productive, efficient, and geared toward helping the employee succeed in the next period.
For employees, that means coming prepared to ask questions that will help you not only gauge your performance, but better understand where your value is felt at work and where you can feel even more fulfilled in the new year.
We’ve put together a simple guide of 10 questions that will help employees get more out of their annual review. Mold these questions to your relationship with your manager, the work you do, and where you are in your career.
From your perspective, what were some of the highlights across the company this year?
Often, a relationship between a manager and an employee becomes a very intimate thing. You talk about your work to your manager, and they respond to that. However, managers are often higher-up and have access to see more of what’s happening across the company. When you break them out of the one-on-one relationship that you have with them, you’re better able to understand what they deem as important.
It’s vital to understand what your manager sees as successful. What you believe may be important, your manager may not. Level-setting expectations during an annual review is extremely important to your future at the company. By understanding what they saw as the main achievements across the company in the past year, you are able to better understand what a job well done looks like at the organization moving forward.
How do you see our business changing in the next 12 months? How, ideally, would you like to see my role adapt to help that vision come to fruition?
While managers do not hold crystal balls they can peer into the future with, they do have Insight across multiple disciplines in your organization. They’re able to better predict changes and trends that are upcoming because they’re not as close to the work.
An annual review is a perfect opportunity to learn a little bit more about the company as a whole. If you don’t ask questions about the company during this time, you may feel a little bit left in the dark. Ideally, you want to ask questions about what’s going to happen in the future. This gives you good insight and shows you where your role needs to be in order to help the company move forward. If you can align your role with your manager’s vision, you’re more likely to receive challenging and fulfilling work, and also have a sense of control over your success.
Of course, managers should be working hard to provide you with vision each step of the way. But as we know humans are humans, and mistakes are often made. Especially if you are in a small company, it’s likely that conversations and communication can occasionally be siloed or have a delayed effect in getting back to you. It’s vitally important that you are proactive with the questions you asked so that you can get the information you need to succeed. In fact, studies show proactive employees often have better relationships with their managers.
The bottom line is expectation setting is the key to success. Not only asking how they’ll see the business change over the next 12 months, but how you can be part of that vision leaves no guesswork when it comes to where you fit in and how you can drive progress.
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What’s the biggest challenge we currently face as an organization?
Challenges are everywhere no matter the size of your business. In your discipline within your organization, you could probably rattle off the challenges that your team faces quite easily. However, challenges across the organization can be harder to pinpoint when you are heads-down on very specific projects.
Take the time that you have with your manager to truly understand the big picture and the challenges it takes to get there. This will help you feel more fulfilled with the work you’re doing, as there should be a direct line between the tasks that you accomplish each day and how it’s moving the organization forward (and over those obstacles).
This also sends a clear message that you are concerned about the company as a whole. It’s important that we know our employees are committed to the success of the organization. It’s just as important that managers are committed to the employees’ success. When you level-set with questions like this you’re able to be on the same page.
How could I be more helpful to other people on the team?
No matter how great of a job you are doing, you will always have blind spots. It’s up to our managers to help us find those blind spots and turn them into opportunities where we can feel fulfilled and engaged in our work.
Asking simple questions like how you can be more helpful to others on the team shows that you not only care about your organization, but you care about the people that you’re working with. Managers often have more keen insight into where you can fit in on the team and how your valuable skills are needed. By asking direct questions, you will receive more direct answers. Your goal after this is to follow through with them. You want to make sure that when your next review comes around you can talk about how you took your manager’s advice, implemented it and got the results.
What is the next step in my career at this organization, and what are two to three things you’d like to see me do now to achieve it?
You cannot be what you cannot see. It’s up to the manager to help you create a path to the highest level of success that you can achieve as an organization. But, it’s not up to you to be passive about this. You should play an active role in your career growth at any organization. If you see a fire or a way to make things better, you should be able to go ahead and do so. This shows initiative of course, but it also shows that you are committed to the organization.
When you ask blunt questions like this it helps you understand where your next move is. This can be extremely helpful because there is no ambiguity left once you get the answer.
The key to success here will be the follow-up. Make sure once these two to three steps have been laid out that you begin to work on them. You may even want to send weekly or bi-weekly emails to your manager letting them know how you are achieving these goals. You can also spend time in Kin updating your objectives which will help you chronical your success.
What is one skill that you believe I need to develop?
If you’re looking for an opportunity to grow, this is the ideal question to ask. Work ethic and attitude are 90% of success in any organization, but the skills to achieve specific tasks and goals are a big part of how successful we can be.
Being a lifelong learner should be a major value to any organization. By understanding the skills that need to be nurtured in order to do well at your job and to feel engaged and fulfilled with your work, you’re setting yourself up for a smooth road ahead.
What are some things that are always on your to-do list that you never can get to?
Very rarely do we ask a boss about their own workload. We assume that it’s been distributed amongst their team. We couldn’t be more wrong. There may even be some things on your manager’s plate that should be on yours.
In fact if you took on that work a project might go more smoothly, or a deadline might be met sooner. At least keep tabs on what your manager is working on to have a better relationship, avoid bottleneck situations with your own workload, and find opportunities to merge certain tasks or items together to get better, more effective results.
If you had the chance to change anything in this organization, what would it be and why?
This could potentially prove to be a million-dollar question. Understanding your manager’s personal frustrations could be great because to them it may seem like a big deal, but for you it may seem like nothing.
We are all wired differently. Some tasks to certain individuals seem very heavy while to others, it’s a walk in the park. Understanding what your boss might change within the organization gives you insight into what they find frustrating. It may be a lack of resources, and too many great ideas but no ability to actually do them. It might be a slow-moving timeline for one reason or another.
Either way this question gives you a good understanding as to how the organization is ticking, and what might not be going according to plan.
If you had the chance to keep anything in this organization the same, what would it be and why?
On the flip side of the last question is the ability to see what is working well with this one.
Your manager is going to answer this with insight into what he or she believes is working great within your company. It may be your work ethic, or it may be the way that a certain team is producing results.
By asking questions like this, you’re seeing what’s going well and how you can help keep it running smoothly.
What are three takeaways that you want me to walk out of this meeting with?
When it comes to the end of the annual review, you likely have discussed a lot of things. You’re covering the ground of 12 months worth of work in progress, of course.
The worst part is it’s easy for us as humans to only remember the negative, even if a ton of positive comments were said throughout the meeting. A great way to combat this is to ask this question.
This gives your manager an opportunity to summarize everything that they want you to know from the annual review. It also gives you an opportunity to absorb what truly matters.
Once you have these three key takeaways from the meeting, make sure that you put them into your Kin account as your new objectives or goals in one way or another. This will help you understand where you’ve progressed so far, where you need to go, and how you’re going to get there.