Phil Wilson (00:02)
Mike Perkins, thanks for joining us on the Left of Boom show. How are you doing?

Mike Perkins (00:07)
Doing great, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Phil Wilson (00:10)
Yeah, we really appreciate you joining us. So this is another episode in our next 52 weeks, uh, series. And I think this is episode 12 in that series, but we’re, today we’re going to talk about a subject that we, you know, I know is kind of near and dear to both of our hearts, which is, uh, performance feedback. And in particular, the role of first line supervisors in performance feedback.

Phil Wilson (01:01)
Yeah, great to see you. today we’re going to talk about performance feedback. And in particular, we’re going to talk about the frontline supervisors role in performance feedback, which I know is a, a subject near and dear to both of our hearts. Why don’t before we get started, maybe talk a little bit about your career and, how you got to where you are now, just so listeners kind of can hear a little bit of your journey. Cause it’s really interesting.

Mike Perkins (01:28)
Yeah, happy to share that. I started in the legal world many years ago practicing employment law and eventually left to go to work with a client in the employee management business, professional employer organization business, where I learned a lot about hands-on in the trenches management. We managed employees for about 200 companies and we had five to seven thousand worksite employees that we helped manage and I oversaw the HR function and the benefits function the safety functions there and I had a chance to really kind of get out of the law office and get into the real world particularly for small and mid-sized businesses. So I had a you know several years there and then ultimately before I went out on my own a few years ago I went to work for the rail division of Caterpillar and we had

Mike Perkins (02:20)
8,000 employees in 120 locations around the country in manufacturing and service and technology and all different types of areas. But I had HR responsibilities for half of the country there and then also with labor relations as well and oversaw both HR and labor functions, but also was involved in the employee hotline and where people would call with issues and concerns. so again, and a lot of times I would actually go into a plant and serve as an HR manager at a plant for a period of time while we were either in between managers and or, you know, going through some transitions. And so.

Phil Wilson (02:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (03:04)
Had a lot of hands-on HR experience as opposed to the back in the days in the law office where we just kind of try to tell people what to do.

Phil Wilson (03:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And a lot of coaching of supervisors around sort of, you know, doing their day to day and, and, and then of course on the flip side, also dealing with situations where maybe a supervisor didn’t really provide great feedback. And now, you know, all of a sudden you’re in a disciplinary situation where, know, well, why is this person only received great reviews, you know, in the past. so, so you’ve kind of been on both sides of that.

Mike Perkins (03:36)
Sure. absolutely. I’ve seen about, you know, every aspect of it. And I’m really a strong believer that the frontline supervisor is the most important company person in a manufacturing environment, in a logistics environment, in almost any environment for that matter, because they’re the ones that the employees deal with the most.

Phil Wilson (03:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (04:00)
They’re the ones that are the face of the company in the eyes of the employees. And they really have the most influence over whether that employee has a good day, a bad day, whether they’re productive, whether they like working there, whether they want to stay there or not, and whether they’re really going to be fully engaged. So I’m huge advocate of really training and helping those frontline supervisors become better leaders.

Phil Wilson (04:29)
Yeah, great. Let’s focus a little bit on that. as you know, I share the exact same feeling toward frontline supervisors. It’s the most important role in any organization. And I like to tell people, it’s also, it’s sort of the, you your culture is basically that relationship between the frontline leader and the people that they lead. Those day-to-day interactions are basically the operationalization of your culture.

And so I’d like to ask, you know, talk a little bit about around performance feedback and whether that’s encouraging people that are doing well or coaching people that are struggling, like how important is that frontline leader in performance feedback?

Mike Perkins (04:59)
incredibly important because if they’re not providing performance feedback then who’s going to? It’s either their peers or someone further up in management. Sometimes it’s someone from HR or you know in a different part of the management structure but ideally

Phil Wilson (05:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (05:34)
the frontline supervisor should be the number one and most important person in letting that person know whether they’re doing a good job or whether they’re not doing a good job and encouraging them and holding them accountable. so the frontline supervisor is the key link there. The problem is, as you know, with most companies or with many companies, is that the frontline supervisor is the person who was the best machine operator or the best, you know, most responsible employee that showed up on time in a department.

Phil Wilson (05:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (06:03)
or was good at what they did. But a lot of companies, and I would almost say most companies, do not really spend any time training those supervisors about the importance of their role, the impact that they can have, positive and negative, on employees, and then how to properly do it.

And so, as you know, I’m a big fan of the Approachable Leadership training and approach that you’ve authored and really promoted over the years because it really does teach supervisors how to be more available, how to be more interactive, and how to provide that type of feedback and performance management that is so often lacking. And when it’s lacking, there’s a ton of problems that evolve from that.

Phil Wilson (06:53)
Yeah, you promoting people that are expert at the work is not like bad. But. Yeah. And the best coach, right, is going to be someone who who knows and really understands the game like they don’t necessarily have to have been the star player, but they they they really do need to understand what it is that their team’s being asked to do and what are the best ways to do that.

Mike Perkins (06:59)
No, no, I mean you want to reward people for good work performance

Phil Wilson (07:21)
But the problem with promoting the high performer is that if you don’t also teach them how to be a good coach, their level of excellence and their level of knowledge almost becomes a negative if you don’t teach them how to use that as a way to raise the level of your team versus just throwing your hands up and going, well, you don’t do that nearly as good as I used to do it. And there’s something wrong with you.

Mike Perkins (07:35)
Exactly.

You know, some people that are promoted from within that are excellent performers at the mechanics of their job are great leaders. They’re natural leaders and they automatically know how to pull people along. But I would say they’re the minority. I would say most people that are really good at a specific function or within a department are really good for teaching the mechanics of the job, but they’re not very good at dealing with a low performer, of dealing with how do you deal with a perfectionist?

deal with a troublemaker? How do you deal with someone that refuses to be held accountable? And they just don’t have the tools or the equipment to be able to do that. And so they either default to someone else in the organization, which kind of removes some of the key role that they play. I mean, they’re there to manage people, not just manage processes. But also a lot of times, instead of dealing with and helping manage performance, they just stick their head in the sand and go, you know, or either they stick their head in sand and ignore it or they handle it wrongfully or in wrong or an inappropriate manner and they create more problems than they had to start with. It can be a real challenge.

Phil Wilson (09:02)
Yeah. Well, let’s go to sort of the positive side. So what have you seen is what works in terms of teaching a frontline leader around giving performance feedback. So this series is about companies that have been through a union election or have gone through a boom event. And now they’re in this kind of one year pathway to try to you know, make sure that the employee relations environment is strong. So, what do you train a first level leader to help them get good at giving feedback?

Mike Perkins (09:30)
Incredible important year. Yeah.

Yeah, well, first of all, that year is so critical and I’ve been through, I went through a very long process with a very ugly and very divisive union campaign in a facility where I was responsible for the employee relations. And then we spent the next year trying to repair the damage that had basically built up over the years leading to the union campaign and the union campaign itself. And so our focus during that year was, first of all, let’s get our policies right, let’s get our compensation right, let’s get all the fundamentals right, but let’s work on communication. Let’s work on helping supervisors to better relate to their employees and to improve the one-on-one relationship with the employees. Let’s work on making sure that if an employee having problems that that supervisor is communicating those issues and communicating you know the corrective actions that need to be taken but also on the other side is let’s reward what’s going well and let’s be sure to recognize that and encourage that because the power of encouragement to me is one of the most important powers superpowers that a supervisor can have because they can make the difference with just a few words or a few actions whether someone again is happy at work and motivated at work or whether they just walk through the day with a chip on their shoulder and they’re upset with people. so being able to identify the employees that are having issues and the employees that need encouragement is really, really important during this time period. It’s important all the time. mean, there’s really in the perfect world, there should be nothing going on in that 52 weeks after the campaign that shouldn’t have been going on in the first place but now it’s your time to fix it and so let’s go ahead and do it and do it right and so regular feedback is really really important and you know one of the and I don’t know you’re gonna get into this I’m just gonna jump ahead but you know the typical performance review process is typically broken it doesn’t work very well for a lot of reasons one is it still I find in a lot of the companies that I deal with is that they

Phil Wilson (11:32)
True.

Mike Perkins (11:58)
do it once a year and you know and and and so you get once a year you’re getting feedback from your boss as to whether you’re doing a good job or whether you’re doing a terrible job or you need to improve on things and and that’s not a good model. The second thing is is that supervisors usually aren’t very well trained on how to do those feedback sessions and how to do those evaluations and so they don’t do a very good job when they do them once a year. And then the third thing is they always seem to be in a, it seems that they’re always at the worst time of the year. And they’ve got production requirements that they’re under pressure. And then so they kind of pencil whip these evaluations or computer whip on whatever you would say.

Phil Wilson (12:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Perkins (12:49)
So they throw them together in a hurry and they rely upon maybe a few things they remember from the recent past. They don’t keep good records to go back and say, let’s look at Joe’s last year or Mary’s last year and see how they’ve done and what some of the strengths and weaknesses are and some of the feedback and how they’ve responded. They don’t have any records to go back to. So they rely on their memory and their under stress and they’ve got to get them out. You know, I’ve got to do 35 evaluations in a week and I don’t have time, I’m already under a And so they just…you know, throw them together, do a crappy job. Sometimes they don’t even sit down with the employees and talk them through it and tell them why or listen to the employee to hear their side of it and to hear what they think is gone well or not. They just throw these evaluations out there. Sometimes they’re tied to a pay increase. Often they are. And they go, okay, you get.

Phil Wilson (13:27)
Yeah. which increases the stakes even higher. Right. And you’re like, I don’t want to tell this person like they’re not going to get a raise. So, so you give them a good rating that they don’t deserve.

Mike Perkins (13:45)
Yeah, it’s an ugly process. to be honest with you, I haven’t found a good one yet or great one yet. I think the best process is not, you know, once a year, let’s sit down and talk about performance and pay. I don’t think that’s a good process. I do think that that process is broken, but I’m surprised how many companies and major companies still use that. And so, you know, you have to have a process that allows for regular and candid two-way communication between one-on-ones, preferably between a supervisor and employee. Whether it’s monthly, whether it’s weekly, or at least quarterly, there should be that one-on-one give and take where you’re giving feedback, you’re receiving feedback, you’re making course corrections with the employees, ⁓ you’re really listening to what their challenges are, trying to remove their obstacles. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not going to have an effective performance management process.

And maybe some of it’s tied to pay, maybe it’s not. I personally just prefer to keep them separate so that you can focus on the issues and everybody’s not sitting there going, how much money am I going to get? Which is kind of about halfway through an evaluation, the employee sits back and goes, okay, I heard so and so got 3%, so and so got 2%, so and so got 4. How much am I going to get? I’m hearing this message. I don’t like the way it’s going. I’m thinking 2%. Yeah, so I mean, it’s.

Phil Wilson (15:07)
Right. Yeah, right. This is sounding 3%.

Mike Perkins (15:26)
It’s very frustrating, both for the employee and for the manager.

Phil Wilson (15:29)
Yeah, and the employees not even listening to the feedback because they’re just listening for the number, right? Yeah.

Mike Perkins (15:33)
absolutely yeah i want to know i want to know what I’m going to be able to pay for all this Christmas presents i just bought yeah

Phil Wilson (15:38)
Yeah, which is super understandable. So I’d like to touch on a couple of quick points. So the first one is, you know, the, feedback is not just for people that are failing, right? In fact, if you are not giving recognition and positive feedback when people are doing a good job on a regular basis, not once a year, but like once a day, if you are, If you’re focusing all of your energy and attention on the folks that are struggling and failing, you know, you are in some ways almost teaching the organization that if they want attention, they just need to screw things up. Right? So like you’re, you, you want to celebrate the, the good work and the great work that’s happening every day and oftentimes, even if you have somebody who is struggling a little bit,

Mike Perkins (16:23)
Absolutely.

Phil Wilson (16:35)
If you can just give them some encouragement and talk about the things that they’re doing well, but you know, going back to, know, I talk about the hero assumption all the time, but like if you’re, if you’re focusing on, I think that you’ve got what it takes. I think you’re worth investing in. I know that you can do great work. They will rise to the occasion and you might not even have to have a lot of negative performance conversations with them because they want to impress you and they want to perform at the level that you believe in.

Mike Perkins (16:43)
Yeah, right. Man.

I wish more supervisors would do that. mean, really, and I’ve followed and 100% subscribed to the hero assumption and being able to encourage people and being able to build them up because I’ve found that they will rise to the level of our expectation. And if our expectation is that that person’s a poor performer and they’re never gonna make it, they’re never gonna make it. I mean, unless banning a miracle, barring a miracle, but.

Mike Perkins (17:32)
But, you know, so I think you need to spend as much time, first of all, with your high performers who do need some encouragement and who do need some affirmation, even though we may think, they’re high performer, they’re great, they’re, you know, they’re well off.

Phil Wilson (17:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (17:48)
They want that just as badly as someone who may not be as high a performer. They want that affirmation. They want that encouragement. They want that recognition, at least most do.  And so you’ve got to spend as much time with them as you do with the low performers because those are the people that are…

Phil Wilson (17:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (18:05)
you know, providing the output and that are getting the work done and that are making the sales or whatever. The low performers, obviously, you’ve got to try to pull them up and I’m a big believer in coach them up or coach them out and hopefully coach them up. I mean, that’s the intent. But if they’re not responding to coaching, then, you know, strong performance, aggressive performance management needs to take place. And maybe that person needs to be in another role or in another company because

Phil Wilson (18:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (18:35)
they’re dragging everyone else down. So those are the two ends of the spectrum and then the ones in the middle, those are the ones that I think are most right for coaching daily interaction, encouragement, course corrections when necessary. So all of those, depending on, it doesn’t matter where they fall on the spectrum, they all still need attention. one of the, I think one of the errors that a lot of managers and supervisors do is they either

Phil Wilson (18:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (19:05)
They ignore the high performers, which, you know, a lot of times they’ll just get frustrated and move on. Or they spend so much time focusing on the low performers that they forget about everyone else. Or sometimes they’re not comfortable confronting the low performers. And then they, you know, they drag the whole organization down. And so…What I’ve found is that if a supervisor doesn’t have the tools, doesn’t have the mechanism or the training to properly hold people accountable in a positive manner, not in a berating manner or anything, but if they aren’t holding people accountable, then they tend to either ignore it if they don’t have the right tools and the problems just promulgate and become more substantial.

Phil Wilson (19:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I’d like to weigh in on that, that point. Like it’s human nature to avoid conflict. Right. And most supervisors that haven’t got a chance to like practice these conversations and be able to role play these conversations and maybe game plan the conversations with someone who is either naturally gifted or just has experience and is well-trained. They will avoid the conversations.

Mike Perkins (20:20)
Yeah,

Phil Wilson (20:21)
You know,

Mike Perkins (20:21)
absolutely.

Phil Wilson (20:21)
you’ve helped teach approachable leadership and one of the exercises that we do is one of these where you give feedback and one of the learning points of that is that little pit you feel in your stomach before having like a difficult talk. That’s what leadership feels like if you’re not having. Yeah, if you’re not having that feeling, you’re just not doing it right. And the and then the flip side is by avoiding the conversation, you know, you are essentially saying

Mike Perkins (20:32)
Yeah, absolutely.

Phil Wilson (20:50)
And sometimes often on the employee review form, you’re like, ⁓ meets expectations, meets expectations, meets expectations. You’re, you’re basically teaching that what you’re doing now is fine. And then when it finally comes to that point where you have had enough and this person is not fixing whatever challenges that they have and you decide it’s time to write them up or even worse, fire them.

You know, the first question a lawyer is going to ask is like, well, let me see their performance reviews. And, and when they’re all saying that the person’s great, you know, they’re you’re now really on the hot seat as the supervisor. It’s like, well, we can’t. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Perkins (21:29)
Absolutely. I remember those days as an attorney trying to defend companies who terminated somebody and talked about how non-productive and how bad an employee the person was. And then you pull out those performance reviews. Those are the ones that go up on the big screen in the courtroom and they say, meets expectations, does a great job with this. And they’ve been either pencil whipped or something. They’re so infrequently held that somebody’s conduct might have been great in January.

It was awful in November, October, November, December, but you know, and they get fired in December and all they have is that performance review from last January. rah rah rah, great employer. But I’ll tell you another, what happens when companies don’t do a good job of giving that accountability, holding employees accountable and giving that feedback. had a situation years ago where I did a basically an environmental assessment at a client location and I went there

Phil Wilson (22:02)
Right.

Mike Perkins (22:29)
And I started interviewing people at all levels from management all the way down, people on the floor and everything else. And it was a beautiful facility, really first class products and everything else. But They had bent over backwards so far to not create friction with employees that they failed to hold employees accountable on some of the basics like safety items and operations, know, forklifts or lift trucks and, you know, just data attendance issues. They were just kind of letting people slide. And so what happened was the morale of the whole place went down. And so when I interviewed some of their top employees, they said, I’m not working as hard as I used to and I’m not giving it as much effort as I used to because all these people over here, they don’t show up on time, they don’t work hard, they don’t do anything. Why should I bust my tail when they’re not doing it and nobody’s being held accountable?

And I thought that was really interesting. so I said, tell me your worst employee here. And they pointed out a guy and said, he’s one of our lowest performers. so I went over there and I started chatting with him. How do you like working here? That’s OK. I said, if you had any complaints, what would your complaint be? He said, they don’t hold anybody accountable around here. I almost busted out laughing because he was one of the guys that was the least accountable. But he was complaining that no one else was

Mike Perkins (24:01)
being accountable and again because no one else was then why should I go and bust my tail or do anything you know above and beyond.

Phil Wilson (24:10)
And what I love about that story, this was a point I was going to make anyway, and this story is a great version of this. know, that feeling of getting, even if you’re getting negative feedback, if you’re getting coached about like, look, I think you could do this better. That conversation that you’re avoiding by not holding that individual accountable, you know, you are avoiding the conversation that might be the one thing that turns them from a zero to a hero, right? sometimes people just need that bit of encouragement that, know, I, okay, I see it now. I’m letting the team down. I wanna do better. Like that, avoiding that conversation prevents them from getting that opportunity to do that. And most people will do that.

Mike Perkins (25:04)
Yeah, what you find out when you have those conversations, that’s why I’m such an advocate of regular one-on-ones with employees, is that you find out whether it’s an issue of skill, whether it’s an issue of will, you know, what is it that’s keeping you from being, you know, the best you can be? And a lot of times it’s something, it might be a skill issue, it might just be a bad attitude, or it might be some external factor, a health issue with a family member, or, you know, some kind of external problem that they’re going

Phil Wilson (25:17)
Yeah. Right.

Mike Perkins (25:34)
through and if we don’t know anything about that person and what makes them tick and what encourages them and discourages them, then we can’t help them. And so we are either tolerating them or we’re not trying to coach them up. And as I say, I really believe in coaching up. ⁓ And if we’re not doing that, then we’re doing them a disservice. I mean, we spend a lot of money hiring that person, training them to do the basic functions of the job. But if we’re not willing to invest in trying to help them reach their potential,

Phil Wilson (25:51)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (26:07)
then we’re wasting our time and money.

And there’s not a ton of great employees just waiting to come to work at a lot of places. So we owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves to help them rise to the highest level possible. then if they can’t cut it and we can’t fix the skill issue or the will issue, then maybe we cut our losses at that point. one of the other things is that supervisors tend, when they start addressing issues, a lot of times they do it either

Phil Wilson (26:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (26:40)
not enough or they do it out of emotion and one of the big things that I like to emphasize is you can’t manage people well when you’re managing from emotion. You have to be deliberate, have to be calm, considerate, you have to speak in a tone that…

Phil Wilson (26:57)
Yeah.

Mike Perkins (27:01)
enhances communication rather than cuts off communication or puts people on the defensive. And so if we show them we really care about them, go back to that poor performer, hey, you know, we know we hired you, we knew that you were capable, we know that you’re capable now, point out some positives of when that person did a great job. What’s holding you back? What are we doing? What am I doing? And how can I help you to get to the point where you feel like, hey, I love working here, I love my job,

And I want to be the best that I can be. But if we’re not having that communication, we lose the opportunity.

Phil Wilson (27:40)
And, you know, I would say accountability is a two way street, right? Like my job as your leader is to give you the feedback. This is what I’ve observed. It’s below the standard. like, let’s talk about how, what can I do to help you? What do you need to know or learn? What other kind, what else, what other help do you need to sort of get to where I know you can be? ⁓ and then you help me understand like, is that? What are you going to commit to do to

Mike Perkins (27:44)

mmm-hmm

Phil Wilson (28:10)
get this turned around that then gives you now they’ve they’ve agreed and promise that they’re going to do something which you can observe. Do they do it or not? ⁓ And you know, then you’re going to continue to have discussions with them a termination. I can understand like a disciplinary action could be kind of a, you know, a one time event or whatever, and it might be a surprise in the moment when it happens. A termination should never ever be a surprise. In my experience, I have had to terminate people that I really enjoyed working with that I thought were really great people, but they were just not able to do the role that, that we had hired them to do. And you work really hard to try to get them to the point where they can get there. But at that point, that conversation, those like, like,

Mike Perkins (28:40)
No, absolutely.

Phil Wilson (29:07)
I’m still like, are a great person and you are going to perform great somewhere. It’s this role just doesn’t fit for you. And we don’t really have anything else where you could be successful here. So you’re going to, you you need to do it somewhere else. like, but that, you know, if you’re, if you are not having those accountability discussions, sort of leading up to it, you know, then you are in a situation where it’s a big surprise and then it’s super emotional. ⁓ and

Mike Perkins (29:17)
Yeah.

Phil Wilson (29:36)
And that’s when you get sued.

Mike Perkins (29:39)
Yeah, because their response is, well, you’re not letting me go because of a performance issue. You must be discriminating against me. It must be because I am whatever, you know, whatever protected characteristic they might fall under because you’ve never talked to me about my performance. You’ve never coached me through my performance. This is a total surprise to me. You’re right. It should never be a surprise. It should never be an emergency, you know, unless somebody, you know, is…

Phil Wilson (29:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (30:07)
violent at work or whatever, even then, put them out on leave or whatever. But I’m a big believer in just taking your time, making sure you’ve done everything possible to salvage that employee who you’ve recruited, who you’ve invested in, who you’ve entrusted with your business or part of your business, and then give them the opportunity to survive or to thrive or not. But you and I have also both had people that we’ve had to part ways with. And if we do it again, professionally, non emotionally, we’ve coached them up, we remind them of all the past of what we’ve tried to do to help them make it successful. It’s almost their decision that they don’t want to work there anymore. And then also a lot of times those very people will come back to you years later, maybe after some of the emotion of having lost a job or whatever wears off and they’ll go, best thing that ever happened to me. Thank you. know, guess what I’m doing?

Phil Wilson (31:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Perkins (31:06)
now and I love working here and it’s the right job. Everybody that we hire is not in the right job and sometimes we have to find out the hard way and you know it’s you know again whether it’s skill or will it’s you know they just may not be in the right place.

Phil Wilson (31:09)
Yeah. Well, we’re coming up towards the end of our time. So why don’t, um, yeah, I know. So let’s, let’s kind of sum up, you know, if you’re, so you’re an employer, you’ve come through a union organizing campaign and you’ve got, you know, a group of supervisors that are kind of, you know, probably varying skill levels. And, normally if you’ve had a campaign, there’s probably some challenges with that group of first line leaders. What would you say are like the two or three most important things an employer can do with that group of frontline leaders in that, you know, 52 weeks that they’re that they’re in.

Mike Perkins (32:02)
Yeah, great question and a good way to sum up. First of all, make sure you got the right people in the right place — some people have created such animosity between themselves and their work group that it may not be salvageable. Some people just don’t have the skill set to be a people leader. They can run the machine great, but they just don’t have the patience, the emotional stability, emotional intelligence, the listening and communication skills to really be able to lead workforce, a workforce through a very, very delicate and sensitive time, that 52 week period.

And so if they’re not the right people, then get the right people, you know, in the right seat on the bus. And then, you know, invest in your supervisors. Train your supervisors. Make sure they understand the importance of their role, the impact that they have, the importance of being approachable, the importance of providing regular and consistent feedback, the power of encouragement. All of those things that, you know, the hero assumption, those things that you talk about in leadership and also in approachable leadership. This is the time. This is the time. This is the critical time to give those supervisors the charge is that not only are you leading the process, but we really need you to step up and be an outstanding people leader.

Phil Wilson (33:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Great, great advice. I think, you know, I guess I would sum up, even if you do have a formal, you performance assessment process that you go through, that performance feedback is really sort of separate from that process. The performance feedback is something that should be happening all the time. And in particular, if you have an annual review process, some of the things that you mentioned, then that means when you’re having these performance feedback discussions during the course of the year, you need to have a file or someplace where you’re keeping track of like, this was a conversation that we had about a positive thing. This is a conversation that we had about a development thing. This is a conversation that we had about the attendance or whatever, but like that needs to be documented throughout the year so that if when you do get to that point, you have a year’s worth of performance that you’re measuring, not just what happened in the last month, because that’s not fair. You know, some people they’re going to get a higher performance rating than they deserve. And some people are going to get a lower performance rating than they deserve because it’s just that recency bias. So I think that that’s good.

Mike Perkins (34:35)
Sure. Yeah. Right. No, I agree. mean, keeping that record, those records, you have to wait, but you shouldn’t wait. Even if your performance review process is annual or even semi-annual, you should be, unless you’ve got 500 employees that you directly supervise, which is not the typical, the typical frontline supervisor maybe has what? 10 to 25, maybe 30 employees. And there’s no excuse. And I really mean this. There’s no excuse for not having.

Mike Perkins (35:15)
one-on-ones with your employees on a regular basis, whether it’s weekly, bi-weekly. I if you can do it daily, do it daily and give them that encouragement, give them that course correction. And then, you know, it’d be great if you can document all that. And you ought to be encouraging and giving positive feedback about three times as many times as you’re giving corrective feedback because, you know, that’s the feedback that’s going to have the greatest impact.

Phil Wilson (35:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure. Mike, great, great stuff. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us and it’s great to see you and look forward to seeing you soon.

Mike Perkins (35:51)
Good to be back and thank you and keep up the good work. Take care.

Phil Wilson (36:00)
Thank you.