4 Ways to use child-like curiosity in performance reviews
My 4 year old is always going through my stuff! He knows about the bag with old watches, the drawer with rechargeable batteries, and the Spiderman onesie my brother got me for my birthday (story for another day). His curiosity even extends to my behavior with recent questions including:
Why do you want me to go to upstairs earlier? Is it a punishment?
If I come and sleep in your bed what will the consequences be?
He is extremely curious and while at times I’ve found it very frustrating (cue the list of broken things) it really does serve him well. It has led to renegotiated timeouts, win-win bed time routines, and a very high hit rate for him not being kicked out of our bed.
These recent interactions and the start of my workplace year end performance reviews have had me thinking about the power of curiosity. In particular how curiosity unearths the unexpected, helps us maintain perspective, and can get even more valuable as the stakes go up.
In ‘difficult’ or ‘high stakes’ conversations our instinct towards FIGHT, FLIGHT, or FREEZE often come to the fore. These are typical threat responses and at work these responses often show up to our performance review meetings where we:
FIGHT: make others justify every point of feedback and resist anything we don’t agree with
FLIGHT: the urge to start researching new roles/jobs/projects as soon as a 'difficult' conversation ends
FREEZE: Listen passively and often lost in our thoughts of how to express what we really think
I’ve learnt that I tend to drift towards some version of Freeze when I am not appropriately prepared for a ‘difficult’ conversation. So as I’ve been preparing to have a series of performance review conversations I’ve been thinking about how I can stay CURIOUS. So here's a list of 4 ways you can use curiosity to have great performance review conversations
Be curious about…
Your goals: feedback that helps you progress towards your goals is great! There’s always even ‘2%’ of truth (& hopefully a lot more) in all feedback and reminding yourself about your goals helps you seek out that value. It can also be helpful to think about what the goals of the person you are talking to are. It could give you a way to frame feedback and test if you’re having a conversation that they’ll value too.
What is going well & why : We can be so wired to look for what may not be working or how we want to be different that we miss a lot of useful information & context. We also miss out on the chance to build advocacy for ourselves and celebrate what we’re doing well. We work really hard to get better and so staying curious about the things we did to generate those wins can be a very useful reflection.
What you’re unsure about & circle back: sometimes we get feedback and we’re unsure what to do with it. I think it can be helpful to identify when that happens , share you’re not sure about it, and ask for a follow up conversation to go even deeper. This will give you some space to reflect on the new input, identify some new questions, and decide how you want to respond to it
What you’re not talking about: A performance review conversation is as much about setting a platform for the future as it is looking back. So ask yourself what may not have been covered that is important to the future and ASK about it. It may be about your role, your pay, wider organization changes, life changes, things you want to learn, resources you need to hit goals, the list is endless. Asking a forward looking and specific question can sometimes help open up these line of conversation and a few I like are - "what goals/outcomes would be most meaningful for you to achieve in the next year"; "what do you feel most unsure about when you think about the next year of work"
So to everyone with a potentially 'difficult' conversation coming up - good luck and stay curious!