Special Edition – Leadership Feedback Survey Discussion
This podcast is a conversation with the YET team. Please listen through with the confidence that we’re not going to give up on creating our culture of real-time and constructive feedback. Through YET and YAC I have heard your voices. We are committed to improving our culture. I invite your ideas on how to move forward.
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Transcript
[00:00:05]
Denny: Good morning, CLA. This is Denny Schleper. I’m actually in Milwaukee today, sitting with the entire YET group, the Young Executive Team, and I wanted to come to all of you today in response to the feedback and coaching survey that was conducted over the last month or so.
[00:00:25]
We accumulated all of the results, and we’d like to share some of the feedback and some of the thoughts around that survey, but before we do that, I do want to come back to the real driver of that survey was the YET group. The initiative around more proper and timely feedback for all of our people to support the career building firm. So I thought it would be appropriate to pull the YET group back together after the results and really have a discussion regarding some of those reactions, and also to get back to all of you regarding the results.
[00:01:06]
Many of you have spent many time filling out the feedback and the questionnaire, and we just thought it was appropriate to share with you some of these thoughts. I will start off and really indicate that my initial reaction was positive, in that many of you shared, really from a scale of one to six from the survey, very high scores.
[00:01:32]
In fact, it was hard to find an average score anyplace in the firm, be it for an individual, an office, an industry, or a service area that wasn’t either a five or even as high as a six average score, but the more I thought about it, I realized that there was probably a disappointment–not a disappointment in any of our people within CLA, but probably a disappointment in the process itself, that–were we really able to identify the weak areas in the firm?
[00:02:07]
The areas in the firm where we’re not providing the right feedback and the right coaching. My sense is that the process that we used was not successful in identifying that, and therefore, we’re left in a position of, “What do we exactly do with the information that we have?”
[00:02:29]
Clearly, we want to glean as much information as we can, but it probably was not successful in one of my goals, and that was–and I know it was one of the YET’s goals–is to make sure we could identify, in the firm, where management really needed to spend more time identifying, why is the proper coaching not happening? Why is the immediate feedback not happening? And I think with some of the results to date, we’re gonna have a difficult time identifying that.
[00:03:02]
So with that said, I thought I would just kick it off for any of the YET members on maybe some of their reactions to the results. Why do they perhaps feel that the average score was probably unrealistically high? Maybe why we did not garnish more of the–which we all know are weak spots within the firm.
[00:03:31]
Could it have been the process itself? Could it have been the technology? What was it, maybe, that prevented some of that feedback that we were looking for? Any thoughts from the YET members?
[00:03:44]
Sahan: One of the things that I’ve thought about is, would it be a process issue in how this was administered? Because the way I understood it, the folks that were asking for feedback went to specific people or sent a blanket email out to a certain group to say, “Please provide me some feedback.” And human nature to me is that there would be somewhat of a self-fulfilling bias in that, because if you are a high performer, and you want more of the positive feedback, and you know you’ve been performing well, you would go to many, many people and ask for their feedback.
[00:04:24]
If you were a low-performing person, your bias would be to limit the amount of negative feedback and therefore go to a fewer number of people, so the law of averages means you like having a weighted average higher towards the folks that ask for more feedback, which would be the positives, the fives and the sixes, versus the twos and threes, and therefore, I feel that the data has a weighting towards that higher end because of that self-fulfilling bias.
[00:04:56]
Denny: Sahan, am I right, though–and I do understand your point, and I think it’s valid–but there was nothing to prevent any of our people from doing an evaluation or giving feedback on anyone in the firm, be it if they were asked or not asked. I believe that was part of the process as well. But your point is still valid as far as those that we’re asking. It appears to me that maybe without being asked, for some reason, our people did not go out and take the fortitude of filling one out because they felt it was the right thing to do.
[00:05:34]
Katie: I think that trust played a big factor in this. Talking to quite a few of the YETs across the country, the thing I hear quite a bit is, “How do I know that my boss is not gonna see what I write? How do I know that my performance, my raise, my continuation with CLA won’t be affected if I am honest?” So it comes down to trust, I think, and how do we let our people know, other than just saying, which we’ve always been saying, that it is anonymous for them to trust and believe that we are not seeing the information. We outsource this, and it’s being collected by a third party, so I think it comes down to trust.
[00:06:15]
Denny: That’s interesting, Katie, and because last week we were in Dallas, and there was an outside speaker that was doing a little polling just through the cell phones, and one of the questions was, “Do the people in the Dallas-Fort Worth location feel like they’re getting proper, constructive, timely feedback? And the percentage was actually, I remember, it was 46% of the DFW people had indicated “no.” And so the observation I made to them was, you know, “This is interesting, because 46% of you were very willing to tell a perfect stranger that you’re not getting the proper and timely feedback, and yet I looked at the DFW results, and you were not willing to tell management that same thing.”
[00:07:05]
So I think your trust comment is right on. After the meeting, I was asked, “How can we assure people that it is anonymous,” and again, it’s like trying to prove a negative. That’s really not possible other than to show and indicate that we did hire an external party, paid quite a bit of money for that external party to handle this for us, to kind of keep that independence and create more of that anonymous type of culture.
[00:07:29]
So in the future, I guess we’re gonna have to figure out how to make that even more apparent that it just isn’t possible for anyone within CLA to tie any of the comments back to individuals. Now, with that said, I know there’s always somebody could still perceive that a comment could be correctly or incorrectly identified to them, and I don’t know if we ever, you know, can get away from that perspective.
[00:07:58]
Did anyone feel the technology that was used was somehow an inhibitor, or the way the questions were stated, or taking the actual survey itself? Deirdre?
[00:08:14]
Deirdre: Just a couple of comments on the questions themselves compared to the comments that were received. Just in looking at my individual results, similar with the firm, I suppose I got my results and was like, “Wow, fives and sixes. This is great.”
[00:08:33]
But then, when you scroll down to the comments, they were more granular, more detailed and helpful to specific things that I could be doing better, and so it made me think that possibly the questions were too general, and they didn’t allow–whether it was the options you got, one through six, and how they were worded, or the actual questions themselves weren’t as detailed as they could have been to give more opportunity to give somebody a lower score if that was needed.
[00:09:06]
And so then I would encourage, if you are looking at your results, to take those comments seriously, because if somebody took the time to write a comment and not just check a box, one through six, they really felt that that was worthwhile and something you needed to know about, and so now I’m thinking back again and saying, “Well, if I did get a five on something, or a 4.9, that’s very serious. That’s something that I should look at, and should I readjust or grade on a curve when you look at the results and start looking at really a 4.5 or a 4.9 being not a great score?”
[00:09:50]
Denny: And, Deirdre, just the scoring versus the comment issue, just to let everyone know where we are as of this recording, is all of the individual results, so anybody that received more than five people evaluating them, they received their personal information. We have also distributed it to all of the MPOs, so all of the offices have received their office results. All of management has received the entire firm-wide results by region and firm-wide and so forth.
[00:10:24]
When you look at the individual–I know personally, I had this discussion yesterday with some of the executive team members, and we were sharing kind of our individual results, comparing the scores to maybe some of the comments, and I think it’s very valid that the comments did not really necessarily tie to the scoring. Again, just like I said, every place in the firm, the scoring was five to six, but when you get into the comments, there might have been a different message sent. The report also gave kind of a variance report, because we all did a self-assessment, and so it compared on any of the questions where maybe an individual self-assessment was drastically different than the actual score.
[00:11:08]
But again, because the scores were so high, the variation was very minor, so there was not much to glean from the scoring system, again, but once again, you get into the comments, but I’ll be very transparent and honest as well, and that is, when your scores are so high and you see a comment, it’s so easy to dismiss it as a one-off comment, and again, that doesn’t benefit anybody.
[00:11:36]
Ultimately, from a firm-wide perspective, again, we were hoping to have the ability to really identify areas and individuals where we could go to and say, “You clearly have a blind spot from where you think you coach, how you live the CLA promise through the career-building firm and the feedback that you’re actually receiving,” and be able to have those kinds of discussions.
[00:11:59]
What I guess I’m disclosing to the firm here is, we probably won’t be able to do that, because of the results themselves. We are going to data mine the information further to say, “Can we glean things, even though the scaling initial view is confusing?” Because I think we’d all agree that’s not where the firm actually rates.
[00:12:25]
But can we take that rating, take the comments, and somehow still get to some good information and good reaction to all of this? Maybe we could shift the conversation to, what do we do different going forward? And I’m really now looking at the YET team, because this is your initiative, and this is one of the things the firm was willing to say, “Let’s pay the money, let’s spend the time, let’s do this.” How can we make it better going forward? And maybe it’s not even a survey. Is there any other ideas–or if it is a survey, simply what we can do better in the future, because we don’t want to just say, “Well, that didn’t work, and we’ll never do that again,” ’cause we want to continue to improve and we want to continue to figure out, how can the firm provide better coaching and better feedback? [inaudible]?
[00:13:19]
Man: So, one of the items we discussed yesterday was a range of the survey, as Sahan mentioned, some scaling, and maybe instead of having one to six, you just had one, two, and three, where it’s more simple from a perspective of someone who’s answering the survey say, “One, you’re doing a wonderful, great job, above and beyond,” and maybe if someone ranks someone as a one, provide three examples of why they’re ranking that person as a one, because we want to share that and share the best practices among the firm. Two, we are meeting expectations, and three, you just need some improvement, and if you do need improvement, you again, like Deirdre said, suggest two or three items where you can improve on.
[00:14:02]
That way, it’s a little bit less scaling from a one to six, and some education up front to say, “Hey, three doesn’t mean you’re in a really bad position. It’s just you need some improvement.” That way, I think the people who are providing the feedback won’t feel like they’re gonna hurt someone by providing their input. So that’s one of the things that came up, so maybe in the future survey, we might narrow that scaling a little bit to simplify it to one, two, and three.
[00:14:31]
Denny: Jess?
[00:14:32]
Jess: Another thing we talked about last night at dinner was some of the questions were related to, “Oh, does this leader live the promise?” And we all know we’ve talked as a group that the promise means something different to each of us. Does that leader maybe focus on industry specialization, so they’re living the promise? But there might not be a good coach in the career-building part of the promise, so really trying to maybe make the questions–I don’t know, maybe a little less around the promise and just maybe people skills.
[00:15:05]
Do they tend to get easily frustrated and come out and talk down to staff when they are coaching them or training them? Does their body language need improvement? Just other type of communication-type skills, not necessarily maybe about the promise, because it is kind of general and different to everyone.
[00:15:26]
Denny: Elliot.
[00:15:27]
Elliot: I would just follow up on that, what Jess said, is, wow, looking at the aggregate data, maybe we didn’t get what we were looking for as far as identifying regions or service lines or industries, but I still think there is a lot of value in specifically individual reports that each person got, because, you know, you can look at your blind spot, and while, you know, if you look at the scale, like Sahan brought up, maybe I gave myself a six, and I got a 5.5.
[00:16:02]
Well, your first thought is, “That’s pretty good,” but if that’s the widest gap that you have, there’s still some value in that, and that potentially is a blind spot for you. But even more than the one to six rankings, which, as Jess said, can be somewhat vague, there’s so much value in the comments that if people can focus on the specific feedback that they received as to, “Hey, this is something that you can do to get better,” and really invest in, you know, trusting that that feedback was provided with good intentions and taking it to heart, I think there can still be some really good value from this, even though we may not be able to say, “Hey, this region as a whole is struggling, but it could really help some of our leaders individually grow.”
[00:16:51]
Man: To follow along with what Elliot just said, not just the blind spot, because in my individual survey, I didn’t have any blind spots, and all my results were between five and six, as Denny mentioned. I think the individuals who got their surveys should then rescale their rankings. To me, if I got something that was 5.1 versus 5.9, well, 5.1 at that point becomes something that truly is an actionable place for me that I need to focus on, so my goal would be to take a look at, in conjunction with the comments that were made below, to look at my individual survey, and then my weaknesses are not in the threes and the twos, but improving what was 5.1, what was 5.2.
[00:17:35]
So I think, as Elliot mentioned, the data still is very valuable. We just have to reorganize the scale individually to see where we need to improve.
[00:17:47]
Denny: Jess.
[00:17:49]
Jess: I think with your question about how do we improve this going forward, I think the first thing we need to do is figure out how to address these results even though they may not be exactly what we were looking for, ’cause we have to do something with them, so whether it’s data mining, whether it’s fixing the scale of the results, I think it’s going to be key, because the worst thing that we’ve been hearing as we’re talking to [inaudible] is that “my voice never matters. I say things all the time, and it doesn’t go anywhere.” So that might be why some people didn’t fill out the survey, ’cause they’re like, “Well, I tell people to their face, I’ll tell my MPO, I’ll tell my coach, and nothing happens, so I’m gonna put it out there in an electronic survey and think something’s going to happen.”
[00:18:32]
So I think going forward, it’s gonna be very important on how we address the results. Somehow we have to do something, so then everyone will start to build trust and see, little by little, because I think, again, we’re not gonna be able to do a switch and then all of a sudden, everyone’s gonna say everything that they’ve ever thought and provide all this constructive criticism to help our leaders, but I think, over time, as we improve our culture of timely, constructive feedback and coaching, we’ll get there, so maybe three years from now, we’ll get those type of honest feedback results, but it’s not gonna happen overnight.
[00:19:07]
Denny: [inaudible].
[00:19:08]
Woman: Echoing what Jess has said, it’s really in the culture, and whenever we want to change the culture, it takes time, and I think that while we look at the result, we evaluate and, you know, might not be what you expected, but in the end, I think this sends out a really positive message, saying, “Okay, we’ve heard from the [inaudible] and the [inaudible], you know, the comment about this. That’s why the initiative was introduced and was carried out, and the firm actually listened. Our voice was heard.”
[00:19:38]
So at least, like, that part of it, I think it’s really positive, and it’s changed, but, you know, slowly, but it’s getting there, so I think it will take time. It will take more of us, more participation. So while we look into the result, we dissect it, we talk about suggestions, but also, we have to look at the big picture as well, and the outcome, and the intention behind it.
[00:20:02]
Woman: I think that with these results now, [inaudible] individuals see, “Okay, here is what they mentioned that I could improve.” If we take a step away from the scaling and look at the comments, how do we address those? What steps do we take to ensure that the areas that someone took the time to say that we could improve on, that it’s being addressed? So is that working with our coach, then? Is that holding the MPOs accountable to working with those people?
[00:20:29]
Is it the CPOs? Who do we have who hold those individuals accountable to make sure that the areas that they need to improve on, they’re working on them?
[00:20:38]
Denny: You know what I heard–and those are wonderful comments–is there’s some comments around process, and then there’s comments around culture, and probably, you know, for the CLA family, the two culture pieces that I’m gonna ensure you we’re gonna continue to work on to improve–one is the trust factor within our culture, and Jess, what you touched on a little bit is what I just call empathy within the organization, and we’re not gonna give up.
[00:21:09]
I don’t want anyone to take this message in this podcast that somehow we’re gonna give up on this. We’re gonna continue to try to improve this culture, as [inaudible] said. It’s gonna take time, but we are going to get there. I’m asking all of you, to the degree we can, continue to try to build that trust, and we know trust is a two-way street, so we have to improve that.
[00:21:31]
And on the empathy side, I hope things like this lets all of you know we do need your feedback. We are looking for change, and that change has to continue to move in the right direction itself. Next steps: we are going to have all of the chief practice officers reach out to the managing principals of the offices and look at their information within their offices, and come up with individual plans on how they’re going to address the survey results.
[00:22:04]
Instead of having one broad methodology of how we address it, let’s individualize it. That was decided yesterday, and that’ll start to be rolled out as we go forward, and then ultimately, as we continue to look for this feedback and improve the coaching process and ultimately move further along the career-building firm, I’m just asking, within the CLA family, let’s work together to improve this.
[00:22:28]
It’s gonna take all of our efforts, and since I have this opportunity, a special thanks to the young executive team. This issue, and on many other issues, you’ve been a tremendous help to management, to me, to the firm, and really representing the CLA family. Thank you very, very much.
…
Denny is the chief executive officer of CLA. As he goes about his duties related to the oversight of CLA’s direction, operations, expansion, and strategy, he is also an enthusiastic ambassador for the CLA Promise. He is fully committed to the firm’s position as a professional services firm that delivers integrated wealth advisory, outsourcing, and audit, tax, and consulting capabilities to help our clients succeed professionally and personally.
I think this discussion raises many valid points. I know, in our office, many people felt that there wasn’t enough time given to provide feedback. The whole process felt very rushed.