Many of us review our past performance. Sometimes this is part of our annual reviews at work. Or reflecting on how well we did on our yearly resolutions or goals. For some, this is done a couple times a year – either through mid-year focal reviews, or simply by reflecting on how life has progressed.
Inevitably, at some point in time, you or someone on your team will face a period where everything feels at best stagnated, or at worst falling apart. And while this could be the actual situation at hand, more often – particularly for driven individuals – it is a perception issue born of ongoing stress and addressing a seemingly never-ending list of problems. We often get buried in the daily challenges of our organizations, and we do not stop to reflect on the actual progress that has occurred. Or this progress feels so slight as to seem insignificant.
This is once again where leadership can help with influencing perception. You cannot control the feelings of your staff, but you can influence their points of view. By being the person not tangled in the specifics, you can have lower emotional attachment, a more removed point of view, and offer a different perspective. While this is valuable support amid the struggle, there are also tactics that you can take as a form of preventative maintenance. One tactic is to create mechanisms that force a more detailed reflection on perceived problems and how they evolve over time. This is where a point in time review can come in handy.
What is the Point in Time Review?
Point in time reviews are things I have done for my team or myself during those times when the going seems particularly rough, or when someone is questioning if progress is actually being made. I also have done these with people who are new to the company or to a role if I know that they are going to be facing challenges from the start. This also works for the personality types that tend toward the negative, the perfectionist , and those who take faults and failures – even those belonging to others – into their hearts.
Informal Review – Reflective
In its simplest form, you can pose the following questions: “Look back at 90 days ago… where were we then? What were the complaints, the problems, the tasks, and the projects? Are they different now?” This is easiest to do if you have a definitive point in time to mark – a new hire, a promotion, a project kick-off. Make a list. Rarely are we in a position where there is only one problem. And the more things you can highlight that have changed, the more you can pull attention from the one item that is causing the biggest emotional drain… although you will need to come back to that later! Whatever is causing the current stress will need to be addressed as well.
You may need to do some of the review yourself if your team member can’t pull themselves away from the most recent issue. If they only have one or two items, you may be able to add another five or six to the list. However, it’s beneficial if you can get them to do as much of this on their own as possible. Don’t be afraid to point out the painful problems from 90 days ago. If they are better, it’s an opportunity to celebrate and highlight what works – even if it’s not at 100%. If problems are not improved, you have a chance to discuss why not – is there an outside influence, ineffective tactic, or other issue?
Sometimes, I’ll even do this as a spur of the moment activity that does not even require my team members to think back to 90 days in the past. I will open old 1on1 notes, find issues that we discussed at that time, and use that to fuel a reflective discussion. “So, let’s look at what we talked about back in July. Back then you were struggling with Jill…” You are keeping track of those 1on1s… right? We have a printable template you can use to aid you in your 1on1 note-taking.
You can make the above reflective review a bit more formal by having it in a written document rather than just talking through it out loud. You or your team member simply needs to write down the problems from the past, the current standing, and make any additional notes about what the influencing factors were. Save it, share it, and then go through it all again later. However, I tend to use verbal, free-flowing conversation for the simple point in time evaluation like that noted above. Then I use written methods when I want to have a framework that is more proactive.
Written Review – Proactive
A proactive, written structure helps if you have someone who gets lost in the negative thought processes of day-to-day firefighting. However, this requires more planning and tracking for follow-up. The formal structure involves:
- Create a list of the challenges going on today (not tomorrow’s worries, but today’s problems), and why they are problems.
- Add in the good things too – don’t only focus on the negative
- Add in manager commentary / perspective
- Put the list aside! Don’t look at it for 90 days.
- Pick a day in the future, pull out the list, and go through it item by item. What’s improved? What hasn’t? Why?
You can do this as a guided exercise, or you can let your staff do it on their own… although I strongly recommend the guided activity as it allows for the outside perspective to be heard.
For a more detailed walkthrough, you can access the training video that we have created. I have also created a printable template that you can use to help guide your conversations.
Personal Reflection
On an aside – you should try to find a mechanism to do this for yourself too! I personally keep a journal of sorts. In fact, I keep several, and I have tried assorted styles through the years. My most common is quite simple. Every Friday, I write down a few sentences about the week. Major projects, significant issues, or my wins… even my defeats. I capture my sentiment during that week too. Perhaps I’m feeling down or beat-up. Maybe I’m celebrating a success! The weekly ups, downs, stresses, and joys; they usually are noted somewhere in those brief sentences. Then, once per quarter, I do a quarter in review. At the half year, I do a 6 month, and at a year I do a full year. This is not my formal employee review for my company. This is my personal reflection. But it has helped me in several ways.
- It makes a free-form end of year review much easier! I’ve already written all the things that have gone on, I just need to capture it in a more concise format. No trying to remember what happened 9 months ago!
- When I’m in a tough spot, I flip back through the past. This is essentially the Point in Time Review we’ve been discussing. Sometimes you need the reminder of the things that used to bother you, but no longer are an issue. A small reminder of good things helping to offset or highlight a rough patch. Or sometimes in hindsight, things were not as bad as they felt in the moment.
- I smile and remember my successes. Maybe I note something that I’ll want to put on my resume later as a shout “hey, I did that!”
- It helps me see the recurring trouble spots more clearly. Maybe there is something I need to change. Or sometimes I myself need to change. If I am seeing month on month, quarter after quarter of unhappy commentary with no positive highlights, I must ask why. What has changed to push my viewpoint to one where the bad has outweighed the good to that extent?
We all need a pause for reflection. It is easy to get lost in the day-to-day struggles. The politics, the tasks, the meetings, clients, policies, procedures, and the million other things that go into being part of a business. It takes a concerted effort to step back occasionally and honestly assess how things are progressing.
