Current e-Journal

Question 1:
Who will be affected by whatever we are considering? What would it take for them to (at the least) participate in the decision, or (at best) lead the direction we take?

Question 2:
For all those people, what do they aspire to? What strengths do they have to build upon? What do they value – what is important to them?

The reason these two questions come first is rooted in brain science. When we ask folks about the best possible outcome of a situation (Question 3), without first considering all the people who will be affected by that situation, they are more likely to focus solely on their own needs.

While you may wish they were thinking about the organization’s mission or perhaps their teammates, what the employee will likely hear in that question is, “What would be the best possible outcome for you?” That’s our biology, always looking out for our own survival.

That is why it is important to first create the full context of the situation, by asking about all the people who will be affected by the situation.

So let’s now apply that first question to the issue of employee evaluations. Who will be affected by the work the employee is doing?

For the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on three of the most important groups.

• Obviously, there is the employee themself.
• There are also the people that person directly works with.
• And then there is the mission your organization is charged with accomplishing for the people in your community.

By asking the employee about ALL the people whose lives are affected by their work, you are creating the context of how that employee’s performance fits into the whole picture. Here is what that might look like in practice:

• TEAM: When it comes to the work you are doing and the way you perform in your role, what would be the best possible outcome for your team?
• MISSION: What would be the best possible outcome of your work when it comes to our mission? What might your work make possible for furthering our mission?
• EMPLOYEE: And what would be the best possible outcome of your work for you personally?

Notice that we didn’t even ask about the employee themself until last. Again, when we can place the individual within the context of the whole, our answers are sometimes very different than the self-centered answers that come from the biology of our egos.

Here is a question we heard years ago, that we still love to this day. This organization did 360° reviews, where they asked everyone on that person’s team a single question: In what ways did this employee make you more effective at your own work? Imagine turning that into a question for the employee themself to answer:

• In what ways did you make your teammates more effective at their work?
• To what degree would your teammates say you help them be better at their job?

Whether you choose to do annual employee reviews, or you choose instead to have more ongoing, informal conversations to support your employees’ success, these questions can help to create context for your conversations. And creating conditions for the success of everyone whose lives are affected by that employee is the power of Catalytic Thinking!