How to understand the complicated relationship of performance and potential | with Joanna Fennell

Foreign. Welcome to the Shortlist with Johnny Campbell. Welcome back. It's 2021. We survived. Hopefully you survived. Hope we survived through the Christmas holiday period through 2020. Whether you see it as that hell of a year or that amazing year that everything changed and accelerated, hey, we're in a new year, 2021, and guess what? The pandemic is still here and we still have loads more to talk about. And yes, people are still at the forefront of our organizations and in fact, you could argue they're more prominent with more issues, more transformation, more change happening than ever. So we've got years full of amazing topics and guests to keep you occupied and interested. Where can you find us? If you're watching us live right now, you're probably on YouTube or LinkedIn. We broadcast every Wednesday at 4pm UK time. But you could be listening to our podc, which you'll find on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. But if you'd like to know what our lineup of shows looks like for the next few weeks, or you want to delve into some of our back catalog, you can check us out@socialtalent.com the shortlist or browse through the litany of previous episodes in your podcast player and find one of them there. And if you like us, you might as well give us a five star review. And if you don't like us, delete us. Pretend we didn't exist, but do not give us a bad review. I will find you and track you down. So that brings us on to this week's show and this week's topic. And it's a great topic, really interesting one actually, and appropriate for this time of year as you get to year end reviews which many of you may be giving. Maybe you're sitting in on as well, or maybe you're having your own year end review. And that is to understand and get our heads around what is the often complicated relationship between performance and potential. And joining us this week we have Joanna Fennell, who's VP and Global HR business partner at Flex. If you don't know Flex, they're one of the largest organizations in the tech industry in the world. And Joanna's been a good friend of social talent over the years and has been someone who's always, I felt, had a really keen opinion on HR issues and talent issues. And I'm keen to understand. Joanna, first of all, welcome to the show. I'm hoping you can maybe introduce everybody to you. Who are you? Where are you joining us from? As well and why this theme really appeals to you and why you'd like to talk more and hear more perhaps from our live listeners on this as well. So, Joanna, over to you. Where are you joining us from? Give us a bit of background. Tell me why this topic.

Sure. So I'm joining from Sacramento, California, actually, outside of Sacramento, California. I live in a small community that you've never heard of and I've been in the hr space for 25 years. I've done a variety of things within HR and recently just finished up a four year working in talent acquisition and I've moved back to the HR business partner space and as I joined back, you know, really came in right as we were going through our talent review process and have had a lot of discussions with managers and leaders around talent development, around performance and separating out that performance to potential. So it's a topic that I have had numerous conversations over the last 25 years with leaders, with myself, with my own team and really very passionate in this space.

I'm confident we're not going to solve it, but I'm confident we're going to have a good discussion on it, that's for sure. Well, listen, before we get into that, you know what, it's been a heck of a year. There's fresh news. It's time for the news. So getting into our first news article that we dug out in the last week and of course there's, you know, this time of year is full of lists, Joanna. Right. But this is a pretty, pretty good one from our friends at People Matters based out of India. I actually spoke at one of their trade, their trade shows many, many years ago and a great bunch of people who have a great blog and some great writers like Jacob Morgan who's written this one on the evolution of hr. So it's kind of sitting back and looking at the last year and he's arguing that we're moving finally from filling gaps in jobs to unlocking human potential with a big list of perhaps strides, strides we've taken over the last year, if not many years forward in the area of human resources. Anything in this that particularly jumped out at you in the list, and I'll call out a few of them in a second, Joanna. But anything that kind of you felt was yeah, that really resonates with me. I'm seeing that or anything you say. I think maybe he's being a bit too over optimistic on, you know what.

I love what he wrote about. I think it's a transformation that HR has been taking really over the Last decade or more. In some companies, they're more progressive, some leaders are more supportive of this. But it's becoming much more common and I'm really, really excited about it. The things that I thought were really that resonated with me was that we're being asked to mentor and coach and give feedback. You know, I support a number of presidents and they're constantly asking me, how did I do? What can I do better? You know, what are you hearing? They are looking to me to partner with them, to help make them better leaders. And that's just such a wonderful place to be in. And it's just such a dynamic space. To really be able to influence and impact the organization and individuals is just amazing.

Yeah, I think that that's a really important step forward. Right. It's a good way to measure it is that the HR team are being seen as consultants around people. It's like if you have a question around people, their development, how to deal with an issue, the hiring of those individuals, development of those exiting, it's like bringing the experts. And I think, Angus, point. One of the points maybe I got from the article was maybe in the past that level of expertise only extended to the legalities. Where do I legally sit almost, you know, what are our rights here as opposed to how do I, you know, get more for my people, how do I, you know, develop this person, how do we nurture a replacement or whatever, which is so much more. Why, why do you think that's happened? Like, what's been the catalyst? Like it's been happening before COVID hasn't it?

Yeah, it definitely has been happening before COVID I think a huge catalyst of it is just the, the shift between the companies being able to just pick and choose whoever they want and thinking like, you know, it's our choice to really the candidate having that control. Now that we're a global, you know, economy, global companies. I think I remember one of your quotes from Social talent training. The war on talent is over and talent has won. And that's really has been the case. So now companies have realized that they just because they have a job and they're going to pay somebody, that doesn't mean they're going to hire someone and keep them. And that they are realizing they have to make sure it's a right fit, that they have to provide opportunities, development. And so, you know, the typical older. I think what you would have seen like in the 50s, 60s and 70s just doesn't exist anymore. And you know, really the talent is the, are the Individuals who are making the decisions on where they want to work rather than companies these days.

Yeah, I think when you have a strong employment market and the ability to move and transfer your skills relatively easily, this is what happens. You know, the same way I have always used the anecdote of, you know, coffee stores, right. If you are the only coffee store in town, you can serve pretty crappy coffee and you don't have to have free WI fi, you don't even have to have seats. People just come and get coffee because you're the only show in town. But once you open up 20 coffee stores, you got to up your game, you got to have WI fi, you got to have foosball tables, you got to offer, you know, discount cards, you got to have premium roast, you got to add snacks as well. Like this is what happens. And employers are the coffee shops in that sense. You know, people have the freedom to move around and they will, you know, in demand skill skills, in demand talent. You, you can't just pay them because again, you don't just go, you don't buy the cheapest coffee. Right, right. And the converse of that is you don't just work for the employer with the biggest paycheck. You've got to have the other stuff there, there as well. I really liked, you know, some of the stuff that did resonate with me, particularly around the 2020 aspect or angle of this, is that I think the whole, the whole world is lent on people experts in the last nine to ten months in particularly, Joanna. And I agree with this because, you know, we started the conversation before we went live talking about, you know, workplace stress. And you mentioned some of the initiatives you've ran internally in Flex to try and bring speakers in and run events around that.

Yeah.

And I think that has been a big thing, you know, how to onboard somebody, how to manage somebody, how to deal with the stress that people have had, you know, being forced to, if it hasn't been something you've done in the past, really kind of cross that line between work and home. Because people have little ones perhaps, or older ones in their homes they're caring for. And it does impact work. And you have to address it. You got to deal with it, you got to help them. And people are working through a lot of stress and have been in their now second or third or fourth wave of COVID Do you think? So has that been a particularly maybe relevant thing to hammer home the role of HR in being people experts?

Yeah, because it really required all companies managers to come up with and use different skills. How do you keep a team engaged? How do you really understand how people are doing? How do you help them deal with stress? How do you provide flexibility? Because now their kids are home so you know, a four year old is going to walk in the room and say, hey, I'm hungry or you know, things like that. And so HRs, you know, what I've seen from my own and from colleagues in other companies, we've been really tasked to partner with managers to help them think differently and come up with different programs and ideas of keeping connection, keeping engagement, keep driving performance. But we're also seeing just this really big shift to focus on emotions. How are people doing? Because people are so stressed out and it is great to have Zoom or WebEx or other types of formats where you can see people visually, but you're losing that physical interaction and that physical connection still to a great extent. And how do you make up for that and how do you help people who are, who are in need of that but can't get it at the moment? So it's been, it's been, you know, it's been great to be in hr to be able to help people and really sit down and coach individuals and managers. And I think the need for HR right now is always important, but even more so in Covid times I'm going.

To jump on that word you used, emotions. And quickly say hello and thank you to Stephen o' Donnell who's chatting live saying Happy New Year to us. Happy New Year to you, Stephen. And just a quick reminder, anyone watching or listening live, you can join the chat and conversation on YouTube or LinkedIn. Join us and ask any questions for Joanna or myself. For your contributions and thoughts around today's topic of performance versus potential, we'd love to hear from you. I'm going to move on to our second article again on emotions because this came into it in this Harvard Business Review article published just before Christmas on why capable people are reluctant to lead. I personally found this really fascinating. They examined what they felt were the three big themes or big reasons why capable people can be reluctant to lead. I think this is much more in the wheelhouse of our conversation today are those three kind of things. And I'm going to call them out just for the benefit of those who don't have the article in front of us. Right. So the authors identified three kind of risks. Personal risk, image risk, and the risk of being blamed as being the three big factors that perhaps led to people not wanting to lead, even if they perhaps Are capable, interpersonal, you know, what will other people think and relationship wise. Image risk. I saw interpersonal risk and image risk as having a huge overlap. If I'm going to be honest with you, I couldn't make a risk of being blamed. Kind of like owning the problem or owning the department. You know, of course, one, one attitude, the glass half full is I'll get the rewards of our success. But the other is the glass half empty. What if it all goes wrong? It's. Is it on me? Are these, are these kind of two or three themes, ones that you have seen yourself in your career and would agree with? And are there any others that maybe the authors here Missed? Missed.

Yeah. So when I read the article, it really made me think about early career. Um, you know, as I was starting to become and move into management level, my first promotion to a manager, I had a peer who was also kind of on that track, but in a different area. So we weren't competing with each other. But I got the promotion to be the manager of the department and my peer did not. And that, that I did realize, wow, that creates some, some awkwardness. She felt slighted. And so, you know, I did see that. But it really helped me understand the type of relationship that I wanted to have with the people I work with versus my friends in personal life. So I do think especially more early career, that does exist. And then, and then after that, it really is based on how the leader is driving opportunity and development. You know, I've certainly worked under leaders who like competition in a bit more of a fighting against each other. And, and then that does still produce a lot of this. Right. One person becomes the manager or the next leader and the other one feels slighted and you know, do they stay? Do they go? But I've also seen a lot of leaders that have done really well and have created an encouraging environment. And then when things happen and promotions occur, they're very positive. So for instance, I switched out of talent acquisition. I had a clear successor and my team rallied around my successor and have been super supportive, very thrilled, very engaged. And it has been extremely positive both for the organization as a whole and their continued performance. And so I think a lot of it is based on the culture and the mana and the leaders within the organization.

We've had Dr. Bev K on the show before and she's rejoining us later this month. And one of her books that she wrote, great book is called up is not the Only Way. I think she's going to be publishing her. Her latest edition of it in the next couple of months. And you know, Bev, Bev got me thinking about this, this, this idea that a lot of people have. I think a lot of, lot of leaders, perhaps maybe less mature, less experienced leaders, think that, you know, you want to reward somebody, give them more opportunity, you're going to promote them. Right. I think it's at the heart of perhaps this issue. Bev kind of expanded my definition, certainly with. She gave me seven categories. Are these high level categories of ways you can give somebody more opportunity? Only one of those is upward mobility. Right. You can work on, you can give them assignments, projects. There's loads of different things you can do with somebody. Mentoring opportunities, coaching opportunities. And I did look in that article, the HBO article, and one of the remedies or ways they mentioned you could perhaps get around the issues they talked about giving, call them life experiences of leadership as ways to, to let someone put their toe in the water, so to speak, to see, to see if they want to do it, but also to see if they're, if they have that potential as opposed to just making that decision. Like, like you, I was given a promotion two years into my recruiting career to be the manager of the team, or maybe less, because I was the biggest pillar. Right. Was that the right decision? I, maybe I ended up being a good manager or maybe not. But promote me, I know, was poor. I was just the big, the biggest biller. Right. So therefore I was moved up and that wasn't. I've seen that in other areas in my personal career. But that's been just the wrong call. Right?

Yeah.

People, people who worked with me will probably argue with the wrong call in my case as well. Joanna.

Right.

But, but, you know, that is traditionally what people have done. You take the most successful person from a, from a, let's say, performance perspective and say let's give them the shot right, at leading and managing. So, so what is that critical difference or, you know, in your opinion or the research you've looked into, you know, what percentage of people do you think who are high performers also have high potential? Is there any data you've looked at on that?

I am, you know, from my own experience, I would say probably about 35% of the people who are high performers are also high potential. You know, in some groups, depending on the leaders and what they're doing to develop their people, you might see a plus or minus in that figure. But there's lots of reasons for that. There's reasons about them individually and their own personal choices. You know, I know when I had kids, I put a slowdown on my career so I could spend some time and focus on them as they were growing up. And they're much older than this, by the way. And, you know, then there's also the other pieces of it. And so, you know, to your point, Johnny, the decision to promote you, while I think you're fabulous and you've done a great job, wasn't the right reason. Right. And we need to create opportunities for people. One of the things I've done historically, I call extra credit assignments. And that's where as a leadership team, my team, we get together and we discuss what are the major projects, things that we want to change within our organization. And we then open them up to the team and say, you know, hey, who wants to work on this project? Who wants to be the lead on the project? Who wants to take different pieces of ownership and activity? Because it does exactly that, what Bev was talking about. It gives people an opportunity to raise their hand safely. There's still somebody who is taking care and making sure it's going well. It gives them a chance to get exposure to other areas. And then it also gives people a chance to have leadership experiences and then think about what they liked and what they didn't like about their approach. And so it's been a fabulous thing. We're doing that at Flex. We call it gigs at Flex. And so you see it a lot in the gig economy. And a lot of companies are actually adopting kind of that approach of opening up projects to larger populations than they typically have done in the past. And I think that's just a huge way to understand and see potential.

Yeah, we. Peter Hogg from Schneider Electric joined us in early December. I think our penultimate show. He shared what Schneider have done and think they launched a project, a piece of software that fronts this at the beginning of 2020 that enables people to find those opportunities and also to advertise our post, those opportunities where you kind of work a certain percentage of your time on this project for. For a fixed period and gain that experience? I think there are great ways to perhaps test who is the 35%. But do you think it also. Do you think it also would expand the 35% if there was more of that in companies, more of what you guys are doing and Peter's online. Hey, Peter, do you think if there's more of that kind of gigs at Flex and others and what Schneider doing in more companies, do you think it could open that pool more, do you think when we define who are the third of the folks who have that potential? Is it because they haven't had the opportunity to express that? Do you think from a more optimistic perspective, could that be a bigger, you know, could we grow our cohort of people who could have potential by giving them those opportunities?

Yeah, you know, there. I think everyone wants to be successful, right. They want to grow, they want to learn, they want, you know, maybe they say, hey, I don't want to lead a hundred people. And that's great. But why I even started with extra credit assignments and I encourage it in the, in the businesses I work with. And now gigs at Flex is typically what companies do and what leaders do is they know, an individual or two individuals. These people get it done. And so they always go to them and that's wonderful for them. It gives them the experience. They're really growing and learning. But you have all these other people have capabilities that you just aren't necessarily aware of, all their capabilities. So I like the idea of opening up projects and saying, who wants to be involved one because they're raising their hand. They're saying, hey, I'm interested. Sometimes, yes, I do actually go to someone say I want you on this project. I think because of these reasons you should be. But that's giving me visibility. That's giving my leaders visibility to a lot more people than our typical go to. And that's then enabling us to raise up a lot more people because they're, you know, more people are getting exposure than the typical one or two.

So if we have listeners today who are heading into performance reviews with their teams. Right. They're kind of beginning of the year as a lot of us do, or they're maybe just end of a quarter. What advice would you give them on how to identify individuals who have that high potential and separate them from those just being really good performers for the last period.

Yeah. So I've been, you know, a couple of areas that I always think about in the questions that I ask myself for, for my own performance, when I look and write my own self review that I look at for my teams and when I have conversations with leaders is what if? What have I done that moves the needle? Have I maintained status quo or am I actually changing my job because I'm changing what we're doing, how we're doing it? So that's one piece. Like if they're maintaining status quo, then they're performing. But if they're really actually trying to drive and make life better for the customer, make life better for themselves or for the team from a work environment, then that's saying, okay, look, they're looking at it differently, they're thinking creatively, they're being more and heading more in that route of strategy rather than just taking things as they are. I also very much look at how it got done was, yes, I've seen a lot of people where they've delivered the results, they've met the deadline, but they've left a wake of people damaged. And so are they not only successful in managing up, but are they also successful managing horizontally and below them? And so that's another critical piece from my perspective. And then your typical everyone hears this, the learning, agility, are they able to understand and grasp new concepts, work on projects they're not necessarily the subject matter expert on. And also do they display emotional intelligence? I think those are really critical pieces that I look at and that when, when I'm in a conversation reviewing talent and talking about potential, those are the four questions I ask.

We got a comment in from Peter, from Schneider saying he looks for in his team, he looks for his team to write a balanced appraisal, not just a sales pitch. Self awareness and critical thought is important and shows potential. I think you'd probably agree with that as well.

Oh, totally. Yeah. And I think that naturally comes when you're challenging the status quo. Oftentimes that means you're challenging yourself in the status quo. How have I improved myself? What are the areas I need to develop in? Yeah, I think status quo is both yourself and the work that you're doing.

So tell me about again on the topic of, you know, being it being January, we're broadcasting this. You're in a performance review or you're heading into one and you a fair idea of whether this person is going to be a high potential or just a high performer. But the person perhaps who's high performer, you think is somebody who sees themselves as a high potential individual and they're therefore probably expecting to be rewarded for this achievement of performance with an upward opportunity.

Yeah.

How do you address that? What are some good tactics to deal with those issues? Do you even leave it as late as the performance review? Or maybe you're just, you're trying to do things much earlier to try and try and head that off.

Yeah, I think if you're having a performance conversation and the person is surprised, then as a manager, like I've failed. If I feel that people should know very, very clearly where they are throughout the process. Because, you know, besides the fact that goals change, priorities change, Covid is a perfect example. What we thought we were going to be doing this last year is completely changed because of COVID And if you don't adjust, you know, and help your team adjust, that, that's an issue. So I really do believe that you have to have regular conversations. You know, I, I've very supportive of really, you know, opening that conversation, building that trust, which takes over time to really understand what are people's interests, what do they want to do, but also having those conversations of being really honest about where, where the growth areas need to be for them to be ready for that next level. And if you have those conversations and walking into the performance review or the, or annual refraction or whatever you call it, is really more of a repeat of conversations that you're having at least quarterly, if not, you know, regular, you know, more regular than that.

Great question in from Sarah Jane Walker and she's asking Joanna, do you think that 360 reviews are beneficial so that the individual can see what others feel about their performance too?

I do. I think Sometimes people use 360s as a corrective and I don't agree with 360s being used as a corrective. I think 360s need to be used to really help fine tune individuals and really give them the visibility to maybe some of the things that they were kind of aware of that they need to improve on or were just completely blind to. I think it also very much though depends on who's selected. So making sure you have a good breadth of people, not just people who are going to say you're great, but people who are going to be really honest and say, yes, you do a good job, but here's some things that you need to give feedback for. So I've delivered 360s work with people. Sometimes I see 360s that are fantastic because those who are contributing have really contributed. And I've seen three 60s that haven't been very helpful because nobody gave any comments. They wrote all wonderful ratings and you know, that, you know, just like any sports star, actor, you know, nobody's perfect. There's always places for us to work.

Yeah, I'm always concerned personally. But the politics of 360s, you know, you know, do you work in an environment where your genuine opinion is going to be trusted and will it be held against you by your boss and therefore how candid can you be? What's the culture and the rest of the business around that? But I do agree that, you know, I used to look at Glassdoor ratings of CEOs and you see, the odd CEO got 100%. You went, well, that's.

Yeah.

Nobody's perfect. How can you have 100% reading? There's definitely something up. You know, you have to have something wrong to make them genuine. Otherwise, you've got this robot that you're working for.

Well, and you read those Glassdoor reviews, and for any company, some people are saying, great work life balance. Other people are saying, horrible work life balance. You know, it just. It depends on one's perspective. It depends on one's job. So there's. There's a whole variety of degrees. We could have a whole conversation on Glassdoor.

We could go to town on that. That could be a whole show.