Editor’s note: This is a guest post Mike King of Learn This.

Talent is an interesting topic and one that is SO critical in the workforce.  Talent makes the difference between the top performers poor performers.  It can be cultivated and enhanced. Unfortunately the biggest problem is that talent is not always recognized by those who can see a use for it and individuals do not always see or even know how they can use it.  Luckily sometimes talents are obvious and people do utilize them in their life and work, but more often than not, talent is lost because it is difficult to recognize.  Here are 5 specific ways to recognize and utilize talent!

1. Talents Are Often Masked by Imbalance

Talents are not always recognized and one of the reasons for that is because they can be easily masked by imbalance. The imbalance of skills or lack of skills in a person’s life can easily mask talent because of so much disproportionate other ’stuff’.  In the workplace this can be someone in the wrong role and doing things they simply don’t have any talents in and it could be in life, where people are so busy or distracted by circumstances they don’t ever explore and develop their talents so they are never known.  And then even if they are known, often talents are masked away by decisions in life to pursue a different career, live a certain type of lifestyle or hang around with specific friends that can not only draw a person away from their own talents but literally push those talents out of their life so they can’t ever be recognized.

One great example of this is from the book, “Outliers” by Gladwell where he explores research finding how many sports athletes (specifically with hockey in North America) have an advantage if they are in a school year and born early in the year instead of late since this extra months of maturity gives them many advantages.  Since there are specific dates for cutoffs into programs and the older athletes (relative to each other since they are all young athletes) can have a significant advantage.  This advantage to some is exactly what masks out much of the talent in the other athletes born late in each year.  The talents of many of lost or never discovered fairly because of this. (Karl’s note: We must break through these barriers to bring out the talent, happiness, and success for as many people as possible.)

Many people mask their talents in many other ways as well such as lifestyle imbalance or skill imbalance. People with amazing talents might suffer in other fundamental areas such as social skills, or school skills where they are then quickly stereotypes or ‘labeled’ as a slow learner or put into special programs, often focusing on what they don’t have natural skills for and focusing on that imbalance instead of ever really developing the talent hiding behind that mask.  Social imbalance is a classic example as people quickly disregard or ignore socially inept people and their talents don’t get the attention or development as other people’s might, even though the talents can easily be as great or greater in comparison.

Recognizing talent can only be done if it is objective without prejudice or comparison to others.

Managerial Takeaway: Explore your people’s interests and hobbies to discover hidden talent that may not reveal itself in the workplace.  Let people try new things and explore new work so that you may uncover or develop a talent that is masked by the mundane or repetitive tasks.  You can easily be surprised at who or how real talent might be hiding right under your nose!

2. Passion, the Sure Sign?

Passion is another great way to recognize talent as they often go hand in hand.  Having passion for something can quickly expose or develop a talent and often the talent is what creates the passion in the first place.  Another simple test is to look at passion and how long it lasts or in what circumstances it exposes itself?  Is passion present only with certain activities or skills another person is using?  Or is passion on its own and existing regardless of what that person is doing?  Its much more likely a talent being exposed if they are more passionate about a certain activity or skill than on a topic, for instance.  Always look a little deeper into passions to see the root of it and this will hopefully lead you to more easily recognize talents that relate to that passion. (Karl’s note: Passion is one of the core components of a superpower.)

Managerial Takeaway: You need to really enable people to do things they enjoy and get excited about.  It’s often a sure way to discover a person’s superpower ability when you encourage them to act on their passions and apply it in their work!

3. Instinctive Skills – A Sign of Talent

Instinctive skills are something that is often a great sign of talent but that isn’t always easily recognized.  A talent can lay just out of sight yet related to a skill or action that someone takes or does without ever having been trained or prepared for it.  When this occurs, and they can repeat it, it is definitely a sign of a potential talent.  Musical skills, dexterity, sports, math, etc. can all be somewhat ‘natural’ or ‘instinctive’ to people and when it is, look for that as a talent.  Many of these instinctive skills or traits may actually be related to the talent of the individual, not always that direct skill itself.

Instinctive skills are often discussed around leadership as well, where some individuals are quick to recognize the need for teamwork and cooperation in a challenging situation.  That leadership is often instinctive to a person and is quite likely, a talent.  Is it easy to recognize and develop them if you look at instinctive and natural skills?

Managerial Takeaway: Make sure that you develop natural instinct when you have people who have good gut instinct for decisions, leadership and communication.  If you train and further assess areas of instinctive talent, you will discover talent that you’ll otherwise have to live without!

4. Remove Your Selfish Blinders

Recognizing the talents of other people can often be most difficult since we so quickly make comparisons and judgments based on our own wants and desires.  We must learn to remove and disconnect those selfish blinders though and look more objectively for talent in others.  A colleague up for the same promotion as you, or a competitor in a sport or contest often drives us to disregard their talents in order to push our own egotistical minds above them.  It blocks us from seeing talent and creates fears instead of encouragement.  If you want to be successful at recognizing talent, you must learn to be objective and separate talents from your own desires and see everyone equally.  Quite likely, this is the hardest things of all these 5 ways to recognize talent! (Karl’s note: Jealousy creates a lose-lose situation.)

Managerial Takeaway: As a manager, you must rate yourself by what talents you discover and develop in your team.  If you want to be a great manager, you must look at your teams accomplishments and development as the main metric for considering your own success.  This will enable you to bring many talents from your team to the table instead of only the ones you think you may have yourself, but actually don’t!!!

5. Get Out of the Way of Talent

Recognizing talent goes beyond what you see yourself and more to what others are able to recognize and evaluate as well.  For this to occur, you sometimes have to get out to of the way of talent and let it surface.  This might have its own sacrifices when it comes to competition or even personally in your own lifestyle or relationships, but if you truly want talent recognized, you have to stop holding it back, whether on yourself or others.  Jobs with strict responsibilities and descriptions are often limiting, rules and guidelines in school, tight regulations or policies and even family boundaries about who does what and how you should behave can be incredibly limiting instead of exposing talent.  Talent being exposed and recognized is typically not the normal behaviors of people and so there are almost always things that get in the way.  Talent is unleashed through creativity and people have to be given some creative freedom to expose their talents and it’s the only way to recognize talent in others.

Managerial Takeaway: You have to let go of control and influence as a manager and let your team operate in their own ways if you ever hope to discover the true talent that exists.  Micromanagement and reports that depend on your every approval and decision is like a noose around your talent.  Let it go, support your team to make their own suggestions and decisions and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you see talents that you were constantly in the way of earlier!

Your Turn

How do you leverage other people’s talents to help people become happier and more successful at work?

Mike is the author of Learn This , a productivity blog for self-learning career, leadership and life improvement tips. He’s written many articles about finding your passion in life, goal setting and many other ideas around learning to have a better and more positive life and workplace. Please subscribe to his RSS feed here or by email to read more of his articles!

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Editor’s note: This is a guest from Lisa H. (aka RunningBear) of Getting to Zen

What makes my boss so great is that he treats his employees like human beings and not like resources that are there just to help him achieve his goals. Although he is my manager, everything that I do for him feels collaborative (even my performance reviews).

As I was scouring the internet to increase my understanding of boss-employee relationships, I came across a hypothetical note a boss wrote to his employees. What I liked most about note was that it provided great insight on how to establish a good relationship with your boss from a boss’s perspective. I liked the idea so much that I decided to write one of my own.

To: (insert your name)

From: Your Boss

RE: Welcome

Hello (insert your name),

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the company. I am looking forward to working you. My hope is that this letter will give you a better understanding of who I am, what I need from you and how we both can effectively work together

1. I am under a lot of pressure from upper management, of which most of it you don’t see. Please, don’t hesitate to do or say something that would make my job easier. Most days I am working a minimum of 10 to 14 hours. And although I am compensated for it, it is a lot of hard work with rewards that don’t always pay off quickly.
2. Your work is important to me but so is everyone else’s. Please remember that I also have the concerns and feelings of other employees both inside and outside of our company.
3. I may not have been given the training I needed before being named to this supervisory position. As a result, I have had to learn through trial and error; sometimes at your expense. Please give me the same understanding that you would like from me when you make mistakes.
4. If I am about to do something that could be harmful to my job, please tell me. I may not see an impending disaster that you do. I would rather hear it from you than in the form of a pink slip from the Human Resource department.
5. Tell me what you need to be happy at work. I am not a mind reader. I want to create an environment in which we both can succeed. Let me know what your career goals are and we can work together to create a plan to achieve them.
6. If you don’t know the answer to something, don’t make one up. I use the information you give me to make decisions that impact our business in ways that you may unaware of. I don’t expect you to know everything, but I do expect the truth.
7. If you were a former co-worker of mine, please understand that as your manager I have to evaluate your performance. I hope that my managerial responsibilities will not change our relationship. Sometimes being a manager is lonely.
8. I would appreciate if you would respect my time by not coming to me at 5:30 PM with a critical issue that could have been discussed at any time during that day. I understand that emergencies happen but when they happen every day it’s not an emergency.
9. I expect you to take initiative. If you keep running things by me, I’m going to wonder why I have you around.
10. Let me know when I am doing a good job. I want to be the best manager that I can and feedback is essential for my improvement.
11. Just because I am your manager doesn’t mean that you can’t invite me to lunch. I have other interests besides work and like to talk about them too.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, my door, in-box and instant messenger is always open. Again, I look forward to working with you.

Your Boss

Now wouldn’t a letter like this be a welcomed edition to the hiring packet? What would you have liked to hear from your boss when you started working at your company?

Lisa H. (aka RunningBear) is the founder of Getting to Zen, a personal development blog featuring articles on productivity, motivation, inspiration and organization. You can sign up for her RSS feed or follow her on Twitter.

* New things are happening at Work Happy Now. We are gearing up for some big changes, so stay tuned. We are trying to align your needs with our own. It’s how businesses are built. Too many people keep doing the same thing that made them successful two years ago. We don’t want to be that kind of company. So we are taking a proactive approach to work happiness.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Lisa of Getting to Zen. I want to add that this post can also be used for small business owners who need to improve their relationships with their clients. A happy client is just like a happy boss.

I always knew that having a good relationship with my managers was important, however, I didn’t realize how important it was until four years into my career. Looking back on my working life, I could have had many more opportunities for advancement had I worked on building strong relationships with those I reported to.

You see, just keeping your head down (like I did), staying out of the way and getting your job done is not a relationship. Yes, ultimately you want to complete your job duties, but it is equally important to be seen, especially if you are interested in taking on additional job responsibilities or advancing in the organization.

Having a good relationship with your manager is also key to being happy at work. So let’s look at some ways that you can improve your relationship with your manager and increase your work happiness.

1. Perform the basics

One of the most basic but important things that you can do is to show up for work on time. This action alone can count for a large part of having a good working relationship with not only your manager, but also with your co-workers. Punctuality and dependability show respect and trust. Your manager and your co-workers need to know whether they can count on you.

2. Know your manager’s communication style

Some bosses passively sit back and listen while others probe you with one question after another; some want lots of information while others only want the essential details; some bosses relate in a casual relaxed style while others are all business. Part of your job is to figure out how your manager operates and relate to him or her accordingly.

2. Make your manager look good

Your job is to make your manager look good. Avoid falling into the trap of not wanting to perform a particular task because it does not fit your job description. If you are unhappy with the tasks you are performing, set up a meeting and discuss your concerns with your manager. If changes in your job duties cannot be made, you may need to accept that or look for another place of employment. As a side note, I don’t know too many people whose job duties haven’t changed over time.

3. Know your manager’s communication methods

Do you know your bosses favorite communication method? Is it via email, mobile phone or an organized meeting? Find out what works best for him or her and mostly do that. Limit impromptu visits to his or her office. Unannounced visits can take the focus away from what your boss is currently working on. It wastes time as your boss has to then regroup and shift his focus back to his prior engagement after you have left. (Karl’s note: Like Lisa said earlier this also depends on your boss’s needs. She may like that you take time to talk to her. just pick the right moments, not when she is all stressed out over a big project.)

4. Avoid making excuses

Not only does your manager not care about your excuses, he or she doesn’t want to hear them. It is your job to get your tasks done and to meet the deadlines set by him or her. Your manager does not have the time to continue to prod you to do your job—a job that you are being paid for. Managers already have enough to deal with without additional work being created for them.

5. Do more than expected

Just doing what is expected of you does not set you apart from other employees. Managers value employees who not only do their jobs, but look for and carry out new and better ways of accomplishing tasks. Be proactive, come up with solutions and schedule time to present them to your manager. This will reflect wonderfully on you. Also, volunteering yourself for projects can be a great way to show your initiative and interest in going above and beyond.

6. Ask for feedback

Asking for feedback is a big one for me. Because my boss travels so much, we don’t have too many chances to meet face to face. I will often schedule what I call a “catch-up” meeting to inform him about what I have been working on. I also submit bi-monthly status reports which I am happy to do because I want him to know exactly what I am doing.

Avoid waiting for your six month or annual performance appraisal to get feedback on your performance from your manager, actively solicit it throughout the year. It is through feedback that you will get to know how well of a job your manager thinks you are doing. If your manager thinks you are doing well, there is more of a chance of you keeping your job and getting more job responsibility, raises and promotions.

All relationships take work, including the one that you have with your boss. Communicate often, be respectful, ask questions when you are not clear about what is expected of you and you will be well on your way to working happy.

Your Turn

What do you do on a regular basis to improve your relationship with your boss? How do you make her happy when things aren’t going quite right? What tips can you share that will help us improve our relationships and get that raise we need?

Lisa H. (aka RunningBear) is the founder of Getting to Zen – a personal development blog dedicated to those in pursuit of authentic happiness through purposeful living. You can follow her on Twitter.

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* You should probably check out my post over at Super Power Coach – How to Discover Your Superpowers. It explains how you can create more value at work to earn your boss’s respect.

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There are too many iPhone apps to keep track of. There are over 300,000 apps available on iTunes. When you include all the other smart phone apps available it’s head spinning. One of the most popular apps is the game Angry Birds. It’s #1 in many countries.

I recently got a gift of an iTouch (iPod with touch screen) that allows me to mess around with all the apps out there. I’m not cool enough for an iPhone yet. I’ll stick with my Samsung with a keypad thank you very much.

Angry Birds was a big reason I wanted an iTouch. I saw all my co-workers and friends playing the game and I wanted in on the action.

Now I’m hooked. I’ll play it while waiting for my wife to get ready. I’ll play it while waiting for my radiation treatments. I’ll even play it on the toilet.

That’s where the genius behind the game begins.

Simplicity

The game can be played in any language by almost any age group. My 4-year-old nephew loves playing the game. He isn’t very good at it, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s so simple to play it doesn’t take a gaming wizard to have fun.

The difficulty does increase as you go along, but the rules are always the same. Sling a bird at some green pigs and try to kill them. The reason why this doesn’t get boring is because you want to see what the next screen looks like. You want to see how creative the developers can get.

There are hidden little tricks on every level. The fewer birds you need to kill the pigs, the more stars you receive. There is something cool about killing the pigs with one bird and receiving 3 stars instead of just one.

Takeaway:

Too often we get caught up in trying to create an intricate marketing plan or we try to solve a problem with 15 people instead of 3, but we end up getting too confused and we miss the mark. You have to remember when you are creating something that you should make it so simple that anyone can use it for their problem.

Low Cost

The game only costs .99 cents. It’s less than a value menu fries. The barrier to buy it is so low that as soon as someone tells you how awesome the game is, you download it. Why even mess with the free version? Even for those frugal people who download the free version get hooked and don’t mind paying .99 cents to continue playing.

I know that many experts will tell you not to compete on price and this goes for many products and services, but something that can be replicated very easily it’s best to compete on price. If it’s meant for a mass audience, don’t try to charge too much. You’ll end up pissing people off who really wanted the product.

I would not have bought this game for $4.99. I just don’t want to pay $4.99 for a game that just numbs my mind. I can buy a cheap lunch with that kind of money.

Takeaway:

Price is always a factor. If you can keep your costs low and charge less to entice more people to buy your product, then go for it.

Emotional Engagement

Many companies want to develop the emotional engagement that Angry Birds has created. When I first started playing on my brother’s iPhone it was all in fun, but then I watched the back story. The stupid pigs stole the sweet birds’ eggs to fry up in a pan. That’s just wrong. Those dumb pigs deserve to die.

Each time I pass a level I want to see how these pigs are protected and how I can destroy them. I’m not a violent person, but come on, you can’t just steal someone’s eggs.

The game is also very entertaining. The colors are well put together. You feel like you are in a loony tunes episode. The back drop is varied with cacti and a desert scene(that’s just the first level). Each main level has a different look.

I have a friend who has played countless hours on the game, trying to unlock 3 stars on every level. He refuses to quit.

People quickly get addicted to the game because it challenges them on different levels. When you can anchor into a wide range of emotions – anger, joy, frustration, and love – you keep people wanting more.

Takeaway:

Whether you have clients, customers or a boss to make happy, you have to find a way to engage them on many levels. If all you do is work really hard and you don’t use these other emotional anchors, you’ll lose out on business and friendships.

Many Rewards

The next most compelling part of this game is the constant wins. Some levels are easy and it seems a waste of time. Then you get stuck on a level and you fail a few times and then bingo – you find the pig’s weak spot. You kill the pig and feel totally awesome.

Zappos does this too. Instead of promoting people on an 18 month scale, they took the same promotion track and broke it into 3 parts. So the person on the track to become call center manager gets 3 promotions along the way. Zappos understands that they need to show their people that they are doing well every step of the way.

Takeaway:

You can create small wins for your clients, employees, and readers (if you are a blogger). You may not be able to give them more money, but recognizing their hard work must become a regular habit.

Your Turn

Have you played Angry Birds?

What is your favorite part of the game?

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Phil LeNir of CoachingOurselves.com. As many of you noticed I’ve been writing more from a personal view of careers and personal development. I published this piece on organizational development because anyone can apply these concepts to their business and life.

There are a lot of management development training programs out there. They help managers and employees to improve their skill sets and become better at what they do.

But what if there was a way to apply self-help concepts to the corporate world? What if managers could train each other, learn through discussions, and be inspired by stimulating material?

Keep reading to find out how we found ourselves doing exactly that.

Let’s go back to the beginning…

We had just hit rock bottom. After three rounds of layoffs, the company off-shored our software development to Eastern Europe, and our competitor acquired us.

That sounds pretty dire doesn’t it? We knew we needed to do something to boost morale and we needed a solution that didn’t cost much. We literally had no time, no money, and we were expected to change quickly.

Luckily when I approached professor Henry Mintzberg, the author of several management development books, he had an idea. He suggested I read his book “Managers not MBAs” and one sentence from this book still sticks with me today:

“Thoughtful reflection on natural experience, in the light of conceptual ideas, is the most powerful tool we have for management learning.”

So instead of having more crisis meetings, planning meetings, and status meetings… my team and I got together for a learning meeting with the goal of making things better.

During that first meeting we made the objective to learn something new about management, and to reflect on our own experience in light of conceptual ideas. If it worked, then we’d do it again.

There was one caveat: I didn’t want people to come to these meetings to talk about grand ideas on how to change things, but leave without intending to put anything into practice.

I didn’t want to fall into the self-help trap of talking about our feelings but not doing anything about them.

During the weekends I worked on the content of the sessions, by editing and crafting the material that Henry Mintzberg and his colleagues had put together for their Masters level management courses. It included lots of provocative questions and exercises to get the meetings to stimulate change.

Amazingly, it worked.

These meetings created a space where our team could come together to make important management decisions, to bond, and to help each other grow.

Suddenly, we weren’t the head of engineering talking to the head of QA anymore. We were simply human beings doing their best to get on with the job of managing, solving problems, and making things happen.

The Result?

We started coming up with new initiatives on both small and large scales that we actually following through on. You can probably relate to meetings where lots of ideas are discussed but nothing ever comes of them.

This was different because we came up with simple changes in a safe environment that fostered collaboration between managers.

Once we started taking action, we saw the time we spent in these meetings differently. This is how I marketed the meetings to my team (because really, who wants to attend more meetings when there is so little time to begin with):

“We all spend some 50+ hours a week running around making things happen, and doing things. Imagine if we spent 1 hour a week talking about what’s going on, reflecting on experiences around our current management challenges, and discussing what we could do to make things better, all stimulated by some really cool management topics developed by some of the best thinkers in the world? Then we could run around making things happen for the other 49 hours. Do you think we might get more done during the 49 hours than the original 50 hours?”

We had stumbled upon management development that really works. And it was just a matter of opening up to each other, putting our heads together, and then taking action. This was like reading a great self-help book, doing all of the exercises, and actually living differently. Wow!

The Three Step Formula

Now it’s time for you to take action with these ideas in your own organization.

Here’s the simple 3-step formula:

Step 1. Schedule a meeting with fellow managers and team members to discuss the issues that are most pressing. If we’re talking about case studies, or potential situations it’s not application and no one will get anything out of it. Make it relevant, make it actionable.

Step 2. Find some materials that relate to the issues at hand: strategic theories, advice for office politics, models of communication between silos and slabs. Once you’ve got some stimulating material, tease some questions out of it to act as starting points during your meeting.

Step 3. During the meeting allow everyone a chance to voice their opinions, and take notes on the interesting ideas that bubble up. Make the meeting a safe place for people to share their experience as managers, to come together to explore new ways of solving problems together. Then after the meeting, follow up by taking action on the new ideas.

What will this three-step process do that a self-help book won’t? It will get you talking to other people who share a similar background; it will boost morale, and make your entire operation run much smoother.

This works because companies are made up of people, not cogs. Unless we take the time to talk about things, we’re going to keep running around inefficiently.

How You Can Apply This to Your Work

It’s simple, put together a few questions to help you and some team members mastermind together.

Then set aside some uninterrupted time to discuss. It might take a few minutes before everyone warms up to each other and begins to share the deep stuff within. The first few meetings might be focused more on surface issues.

Over time you will see that having these types of candid conversations, and knowing that everyone else is in the same boat together, can really transform the way you live your life and lead your team.

So go ahead, I challenge you to give this “self-help for managers” idea a try. It may seem overly simple, but why complicate things when there’s an inexpensive solution at hand that works?

Let us know what you think in the comments! I’d love to see what kinds of results people get from this!

Phil LeNir developed CoachingOurselves following a new approach to management education implemented in the International Masters Program in Practicing Management. As Executive Director at CoachingOurselves, Phil is working to bring this approach to management development to organizations worldwide. Follow Phil and CoachingOurselves on twitter.

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* When we are trying to create a career/business of our dreams we can get lost in the work. Jonathan Fields wrote brilliant piece dissecting why a well known blogger gave up blogging. We have to know our needs so we know how to grow our brand and income.

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Sean Conrad of the Halogen blog

A lot of employees and managers experience performance appraisals as a negative process. This is true even for employees who are generally good performers. At the core, the reason why we experience performance appraisals negatively is because we are being judged and rated by another.

But you could change the whole experience and improve the business value of performance appraisals simply by changing their focus. What if the goal of your performance appraisal process was to find way to encourage and inspire people to be happy at work and to be their best, rather than to critique, rate and rank them?

There are several things an individual manager or better yet an entire organization can do to make performance appraisals a positive experience that encourages and inspires:

Start by Getting Their Perspective

It’s important to begin your performance appraisal process with your employee’s perspective. Invite them to tell you about their accomplishments, performance, successes and challenges. You can do this by getting them to complete a self-appraisal before you write their appraisal.

You can also do this by having them to keep a performance journal year round or by providing you with short weekly or monthly reports. The important thing is to get them to reflect on what they’ve done, how they’ve done, what makes them happy, what inspires their best performance and to share this information with you. This gives them an active and important role in the performance appraisal process and gives you both information for a meaningful dialogue.

Focus on the Positives

Whoever said that performance appraisals had to be about providing negative feedback on areas of low or poor performance? Why not focus on the positive? Use the opportunity to give your employee feedback on all the great things they’ve done. Give them specific examples, touch on the “how” as well as the “what” they did well, and let them know how that impacted the team, department or organization in a positive way. Positive feedback about our successes is a great motivator, and tends to encourage more great performance. This doesn’t mean you don’t take time to discuss areas where performance is lacking; it just means you broaden your focus and give your employee a more balanced perspective.

Of course, you shouldn’t limit your positive feedback to performance appraisal time. Make sure you give your employees positive feedback on good performance on a weekly basis.

Identify the Root Causes of Happiness and High Performance

Invite your employees to reflect on why they excelled in a particular area or at a particular task, as well as the times they were truly happy at work. What were the “conditions” that supported their success or happiness? Did the work ignite their passion? Did it open up new avenues for creativity? Was it the mix of people on a project or team that brought out their best? Did it invite them to learn new skills or apply old ones in a new way?

By identifying and understanding the root causes of happiness and high performance, we can then try to recreate these conditions as much as is possible or practical. You can’t guarantee that you’ll always be able to provide your employee with work that is fun and engaging, but if you don’t know what makes them “sing” how can you ever hope to encourage that?

Take the Focus Off the Ratings

Ever thought of conducting performance appraisals without ratings? When we assign numbers to performance, we judge others. While it might be helpful to ask the employee to rate their performance, if we want the performance appraisal to be a positive experience and help them be happy in their work, the focus should be on helping them improve, succeed and be happy in their work, not on the ratings. Instead of numbers, the focus should be on:

> What successes they had

> What contributed to their success

> Their career interests

> Skills or areas they would like to further develop

> Things they need to support their performance and success

> Things at work that contribute to their happiness

> Things at work that contribute to their unhappiness

The manager’s role should be to coach and support, not judge. To encourage this, you can do away with numerical ratings all together, or move to a simplified 2 or 3 point scale that serves as an indicator.

Foster Personal Development

You can also make performance appraisals a happier, more pleasant experience by making development planning an integral part of your performance appraisal process. Every employee should be encouraged and supported in their development, helping improve their performance and preparing them for career advancement. Development plans shouldn’t just be assigned to address “performance gaps”. They should focus on enhancing or broadening an employee’s skills, experience and expertise. Here again, you should look at the kinds of work that make the employee happiest and where they perform best. How can you help them expand and develop further in these areas?

You should also invite your employee to reflect on and identify their preferred learning style, and look for development activities that suit that style. Think beyond traditional training courses to include a variety of learning activities like job shadowing, reading, podcasts, volunteer activities, mentoring, on the job training given by another employee, webinars, etc. For example, if an employee hates reading, and learns best by doing, don’t assign them books to read; look for on the job training experiences or hands-on learning activities for them. That way you set them up for success.

Conclusion

Employee performance appraisals don’t have to be a dreaded task that creates anxiety and animosity between managers and staff. With the right positive focus and approach, they can be a powerful tool for nurturing happiness and high performance.

Your Turn

Have you ever had or given a performance review that left you more motivated?

Sean Conrad is a happy employee at Halogen Software, a market leading vendor of performance appraisal software. His passion is helping managers adopt talent management best practices. You can read more of his posts on the Halogen blog.

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* Staying focused on one task at a time is not easy. Especially if you are like me and like to hop all around. Stacey over at Mom Renewal has a great guest post on single tasking that most of you need to read.

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Almost Everything I Know about Performance Evaluations I learned in the School of Life

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Susan C.

Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, performance evaluations seem to be a fact of working life for employees of most companies or organizations.  I don’t think I’ve ever actually met anyone who claims to love performance evaluations.  I would guess that most people, including myself, have mixed feelings about the ordeal—an observation that seems to be borne out in the research literature on the subject. I have a friend who seems to loathe them and is convinced that not only are performance evaluations a waste of time, but they actually train people to be less–rather than more–creative, innovative, independent and productive.  He’s not alone in his thinking. An increasing number of HR specialists are beginning to reach a similar conclusion.  They argue that in its current format, the practice is more destructive than constructive, and is a holdover from earlier paternalistic ideologies about the relationship between employer and employee.

My perspective on performance evaluations and my suggestions on how to deal with negative performance evaluations are grounded in my 20+ years in the workforce and some little gems of wisdom from friends and colleagues over the years.   Most of my evaluations have been fair to good, but I’ve experienced a couple of truly hellish evaluations, courtesy of bully bosses. Since I’m not an HR specialist, I thought it might be useful to supplement my personal observations with some research into what HR specialists and management consultants have to say about why performance evaluations go wrong.

The Ideal Evaluation

Ideally, performance evaluations should be little more than a “mere formality” to keep the HR department happy by completing and returning their beloved evaluation forms. In the best case scenario, your manager checks in with you informally on a regular basis and is aware of your workload, your strengths and challenges, achievements over the last year, professional development activities, and career goals.  Better yet, your supervisor has excellent leadership skills, cares about his or her staff, and has learned how to give timely, appropriate, and genuinely constructive feedback when an issue first arises so you can actually respond at the point in time when it still matters.

The Reality

It would be fabulous if the above scenario was the reality for most of us, but unfortunately that probably isn’t the case. We may currently have an excellent boss who thinks we’re equally as wonderful, but life isn’t static.  Circumstances change and the fates might well conspire to give us a mediocre boss and a crummy performance evaluation at some point in time, whether we asked for it or not. Indeed, a close friend of mine figures that you should go into any job with the understanding that at some point in your career, you will most likely be given a negative performance evaluation—no matter how hard you work or how well you perform.  My friend is neither pessimistic nor paranoid.  But he has many years of experience in the workforce and understands that the longer you’ve been in the work force and the more jobs you’ve worked at, the greater are your chances of having a bad year or encountering a bad boss.

My bad evaluation cropped up a few years ago, 20+ years into my working life.  Given that I’d already seen some bullying behaviour from this boss, I kind of expected that my evaluation that year wasn’t exactly going to be a walk in the park.  Actually it was a walk in the park (albeit a rather unpleasant park)– compared to the events that followed.  That was the year that confirmed for me the value of good record keeping and detailed documentation.  It can be a bit tedious at times, but one day you may be very glad you had the foresight to maintain certain kinds of records.  I recommend keeping the following information from day one at any job you start:

1. A system for tracking your workload and project list. Make sure you update it on a regular basis and include information about start and end dates, delays (causes and how you dealt with them, any other important information about the project status).

2. A system for tracking vacation days, sick days and appointments.

3. Email follow-ups of any conversations about work assignments and projects. Keep hard copies in the relevant file folders.

4. Email follow-ups of any important conversations or meetings with your boss.  Outline the main points of the discussion, conclusions, decisions and any action items with their due dates.  Keep hard copies of these emails—computers have an annoying habit of crashing or vaporizing important information.

5. Print and file hard copies of any and all written praise you receive about your work or work habits. (Among other things, it’s a good mood lifter when you’re feeling blah.)

When Bad Evaluations Happen to Good Employees

Some of the  variables that contribute to a bad evaluation are clearly under our own control (life intervened and we had an off year, we overestimated our performance so we’re inevitably disappointed with the feedback we’re given, something about our job situation has changed and we’re not sure how we feel about it anymore, and so on). In these situations we need to accept responsibility for what we did or didn’t do, and start figuring out how to turn the situation around.

Your manager also has a huge role in affecting the quality of the evaluation process.  The effectiveness of the performance evaluation is going to be strongly influenced by her leadership skills, people skills and training, as well as her temperament and preferred work style (her personal work style and other styles that she’s most comfortable dealing with).

Most bosses don’t deliberately set out to conduct bad or unfair evaluations.  According to Susan Heathfield, many bosses would be much happier if they didn’t have to do performance evaluations at all: For the most part, managers apparently don’t like having to judge their staff any more than the employees appreciate feeling attacked and put on the defensive by the process. If this is so, why does this scenario happen often enough to give performance evaluations a bad name?

More often than not, managers conduct bad evaluations either because they have not been trained how to give employees constructive feedback, or their people skills leave much to be desired.  But, you ask, “Why would a company hire someone as a manager if that individual has no people skills and no idea how to give feedback?” It turns that often managers aren’t hired for their leadership abilities or people skills at all—they might get hired because of their technical expertise, or a myriad other reasons that have nothing to do with managing people. Furthermore, many companies don’t offer even basic training in leadership or constructive feedback skills to new management level appointees, so new managers are left to stumble along and figure out as best they can how to motivate and develop the members of their teams, provide timely and constructive feedback and conduct effective performance evaluations.   If managers are not given the training or feedback they need to improve their people skills, then it’s probably reasonable to expect that they will make mistakes when it’s time to do your performance evaluation.  Unfortunately, their mistakes can translate as nightmarish evaluations from your perspective.

Next week Susan will talk about how to deal with a bad performance evaluation.

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* Stacey Shipman wrote about the value that food brings to our lives. It’s called So Much More than Food. It’s about her experience with a food cleanse.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Evita of Evolving Beings

It seems that as technology expands forward, it is allowing more and more people the freedom to not be tied to a desk at their office any longer.

More and more people are either being approached by their company with an option to work remotely, such as from home, or are themselves suggesting the option to their company.

4 Hour Work Week

“It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.”
- Tim Ferriss author of 4 Hour Work Week

Working from home definitely takes a certain kind of discipline, but I always had this theory that it would make one more productive. Well, after having read “The 4-Hour WorkWeek (Expanded and Updated)” by Timothy Ferriss, and seeing my husband do it, I am even more convinced. In the book Timothy explains how, just because you are at work, does not mean you are actually working and how much more productive one can actually be through telecommuting.

It is actually too bad that more companies are not open to embracing this approach because it could prove very beneficial for both the employers and the employees.

Cost Savings

For starters, it can greatly cut down on costs. Less employees in the office equals less desks, which equals less space needed. This in turn tremendously lowers rent costs.

Overall facility costs can also be significantly decreased. These take into account various bills for the company like electrical, heating, and air conditioning. Some companies also provide small treats or stationary items for their employees, and even those may be small expenses, in the end it all adds up.

As for benefiting from decreased costs, it is not just for the employers. Employees who work from home normally save on the transit they would be paying for, work attire and food on the go. These costs quickly accumulate for an employee, to the point that working from home can translate to an immediate pay raise, based on all the money the employee is saving. And of course a happier employee, results normally in a more productive employee.

Proof

On the topic of happiness, studies have also found that employees who work from home are actually happier, healthier and more productive.

A 2007 study by the American Psychological Association, found favorable effects on perceived autonomy, work–family conflict, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent, and stress. Another study in 2008 by CompTIA Research found that 67% of companies polled said employees were more productive, just from cutting back on the commute to and from work.

Where health and happiness is concerned, not going into the office protects and benefits the employee in many ways. First off they most likely get to avoid a normally stressful morning routine, commute to and from work, and work environment. Secondly, working from home normally increases the amount of home cooked meals or just more balanced meals eaten. Most employees will be able to get more sleep as well. This all, as well as decreased exposure to others, decreases chances of infections and sick days, while increasing the general level of happiness. In the end, it results in a win-win situation for both employee and employer.

At a time where our awareness for being environmentally conscious is growing, our discussion would not be complete without also considering the environmental benefits from telecommuting. Less people traveling on the roads naturally decreases the greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation that would be used. On a national or global scale, this can quickly add up and make a huge difference where the state of our climate is concerned.

Why More Companies don’t Offer Tele-commuting

So by now you may be wondering – “if it is so good, why don’t more companies go that route?”

For starters, not all jobs can be done remotely. Some obviously require the employee to be physically present.

However for those who can work remotely, the biggest road block why more companies don’t take advantage of this type of work environment, seems to be the old stereotype that still hinders many companies. And that is, that their employees will slack off at home or need to be monitored. The truth is normally very different.

Most people who work from home actually feel more compelled to prove themselves in that they do not need to be monitored, and thus deliver better results, not to mention how much wasted time they avoid. This alongside the mentioned benefits above, can mean a very logical decision in the end for a company who wants to increase its own, and its employees happiness.

Evita’s next post will explain how to apply 5 important rules when telecommuting.

Do you work from home?

What are the advantages and disadvantages when telecommuting?

Evita Ochel, B.Sc., B.Ed., CHN – is the main author of EvolvingBeings.com where she writes about spiritual and personal development. She hopes to inspire people, to truly live out the life of their dreams and awaken the highest version of themselves. She is also the main author of EvolvingWellness.com where she writes about nutritional science and holistic health for optimal health and longevity. Learn more about Evita Ochel or Follow Evita Ochel on Twitter.

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When a business stops trying to control their employees, the employees begin to feel free at work. This freedom will allow them to feel more comfortable and happy.

Let’s say you have 50 employees who each have 100 Facebook and 100 Twitter friends. That’s 10,000 people that your employees are interacting with. They are talking about you to their friends.

What are they really saying?

Employee Outreach

You should be encouraging your employees to talk about their company, but never force them to use social media. Your employees will share the company’s story with their friends when you treat your employees like the superstars that they are.

This is where freedom comes in. If your people feel that they are free to do what is best for them and the company, they will use this freedom to make both themselves and the company happy.

It’s this happiness that flows into the rest of their conversations.

Some employees will always rebel against their employer. They will feel stifled working for someone else. This is a small percentage. The majority of the people will compare their freedoms with their friends. If they can leave work to watch their daughter in a school play on a Wednesday afternoon, they will feel lucky. If they don’t have to ask the boss for permission to do so, they will feel trusted.

They will also be more willing to think about work while in the shower. This after hours thinking is when the big ideas manifest themselves. When at work people are distracted by the small tasks.  When away from work (i.e. taking a shower) their mind is free to expand into creative solutions.

It’s About the Results

A person who is engaged in their work and who cares about what they do will be working at all times of the day. They will feel free to do this because they were free on a Wednesday afternoon when they wanted to watch their daughter in her play.

“It’s a two way street,” as my father always told me. The more freedom and trust you give your employees, the more energy they will give back to you.

Is this a perfect method? No. But the alternative is watching employees like a hawk, restricting their creativity until you piss off most of your employees, then they feel forced to leave or stay under the radar. We know how both of these options work out.

We have to adapt and treat people the way they want to be treated, so they will be happy and create results that will make both employer and employee proud.

A New Direction

We must rehumanize business for the sake of our health (economy and individual).

It’s also the best way we can reduce stress. People don’t stress out because the work is too hard. People stress out because they feel forced to do work that they don’t like.

70% of people go to the hospital because of stress-related symptoms. It’s funny that 70% of white collar workers are unhappy at work. Coincidence, hmmm I think not.

When people believe that they are making choices instead of being told what to do, then they will feel like they are creating their own destiny.

Rehumanizing business will improve most companies’ bottom line (more creativity, increased engagement and less absenteeism) as well as individual employee’s happiness and job enjoyment.

My Own Rebuttal

If this is such a great idea, then why don’t all companies give more freedom to their employees?

Old Habits Die Hard

We are so used to the old way of doing business. We are afraid to try something that might not work. We don’t want to risk the whole company crumbling because everyone is off watching their daughter in her school play or hanging out in coffee shops.

We need to crush this fear and replace it with fear of falling behind. We all know that when we are happy and free, we do great work.

We should give employees more freedom to connect with the customer (improve marketing), take off when they want without fear of big brother keeping track (improve trust), and develop projects that will improve the company (improve creativity).

Let’s rehumanize business together.

Link to this post or tweet about rehumanizing business and let’s get more people talking about this concept. You could also send this series of posts to a friend who owns a business. Hopefully they see the value in letting their employees have the freedom to create amazing work.

Want to catch up in this 3 part series? Then check out:

- Part 1 – Rehumanize Business

- Part 2 – Unleash Your Employee’s Creative Marketing Beast

* Join over 600 people who have already subscribed to the FREE Happy at Work 10 Week eCourse. It will arrive in your inbox every Monday morning, when you need it the most. (Sign up is in the top left corner)

* I love an article from Office Arrow. It’s called Challenge Your Potential: Competent Leadership.

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Download the Free eBook Work Happy the Google Way * Post from: Work Happy Now!

You may have read that title and thought, “What does my company’s marketing have to do with work happiness?”

A lot.

70% of business is transacted because your friend told you about a product or service. You probably own an iPod because your friends wouldn’t stop raving about their iPod. You trust your friends to recommend good stuff.

Zappos let’s their employees Twitter on the job. They trust their people to connect with the customer.

I love Zappos, not because they have every kind of shoe on the planet, but because they ship for free, have a 360 day return policy and pay for shipping back to the company if you want to return a purchase. Now that’s worth spreading.

People want to share stuff that makes them happy. It’s up to companies to encourage their people to share their story.

Your Marketing Team

When a company thinks of everyone as a part of their marketing team, they become more humane to their employees. For example, an employee can now blog or Twitter about an event that happened at work and there is potential for millions of people to hear about it.

Southwest Airlines has the rapping flight attendant. Over 100 thousand people have viewed videos of the flight attendant rapping the rules of the flight. It makes me wish that some day I will have him on one of my flights. This is more valuable than a Super Bowl ad (2 million dollars for 30 seconds). This YouTube video is being passed around by friends, making people talk about it. Because our friends like it, we trust it.

Friends encourage one another to watch the video, which makes people more likely to try the product.

We are living in a day and age when employers can encourage employees to take a larger role in a company’s success. Why aren’t we jumping all over this?

Fear.

- Companies are afraid that their employees may do something to embarrass the company.

- Companies are afraid that their employees will take advantage of these new tools.

- Companies are afraid that…

And on and on. The fear rolls on.

Your fear should not determine the happiness of your employees. After all, your employees who are taking advantage of you are doing it right now and will continue do it because they feel they are justified.

You can’t stop this.

It Comes Back to Trust

What you can do is give your trust, and when your trust is broken you can create a warning system (3 strikes you are out) then pull that trust from that one employee. Don’t take it out on everyone else.

Most of your employees will be more loyal when they know that they have your trust and respect.

If you allow your employees to Twitter, blog, and Facebook while at work then it’s up to you to create some guidelines.

The idea is to create an open community of thoughts and ideas. When you allow your employees to share their thoughts with the world about your business, you will get honest feedback and a chance to reach out to the world with your people’s ideas.

Company Culture

Zappos encourages a fun, interactive, and creative culture. They want to develop relationships that stick. Read my interview with the CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh right here. Zappos has some of the stickiest relationships with their customers.

I admit that tweeting and blogging isn’t for every company, but I do believe that every company should implement some kind of open forum for their employees to reach out to the community. We need to create a culture that allows people to let their personalities out.

Let’s stop hiding our people away form the public. Let everyone have a chance to influence the customer. The freedom to make connections that will build loyalty. It’s this marketing that pays forward in many directions. The employees feel trusted. The customer doesn’t feel abused (they opted in to the message). The company makes both employees and customers happy.

In the next post we will talk about freedom at work.

Want to catch up? Check out Part 1:

- Rehumanize Business

* Don’t miss out on any more great articles. Sign up for my RSS feed or email feed and you’ll stay updated on the latest tips and ideas to bring more happiness to your working life.

* Tony the CEO of Zappos wrote an enlightening piece called Your Culture Is Your Brand. It’s a must read for all business owners.

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