I am not the biggest fan of Shark Week. This could be because I live in a town on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where water sports are all the rage and the water provides a way of life for thousands of people. Infrequent reports of bull shark spottings are punctuated yearly by Discovery’s summer phenomenon—which often scares me out of the water. I usually avoid shark programming, but this year—due to a freak cable outage that allows us only Discovery, Spanish channels, and ABC—I have lounged around in the evenings watching Great Whites breech the ocean to devour unsuspecting seals.
This got me thinking about the element of surprise a Great White, such a seemingly huge and obvious (not to mention extremely scary) creature, uses while catching these seals. How can the seals not sense the monster careening towards them from the bottom of the ocean? Shouldn’t this threat be obvious?
This idea mirrors the way some employees function in the workplace. They often go about their daily business, oblivious of their weaknesses and inadequacies in the organization. Others may sense these weaknesses—we’ll call them the “shark in the room” instead of the elephant in the room. But if they don’t tell their peer/direct report/supervisor, who is unaware of the danger of their behavior, how will that person change to avoid chastising or firing by upper management? How can that person avoid being taken completely by surprised at performance reviews or when they are “let go”?
The answer is by providing feedback at regular intervals, and providing concrete examples of positive and negative behavior. Feedback should be constant, so that there is never a huge shock about the results of a 360 Feedback; If there is a great difference between the way the employee perceives themselves verses the way they are seen by others in the organization, clearly some sort of coaching solution and plan for consistent feedback is needed. With the help of a coach, peer/supervisor feedback, and a lot of personal effort, employees can save themselves from a sudden “attack” of negative evaluations.
Now if only there was a 360 survey to save the seals from becoming shark munchies. So goes the circle of life.
