Having good assessment skills is critical in all phases of your life.
At home, with your spouse, you must consider the balance between intimacy, humor, white lies, finances, and talk and planning for the future versus current needs and wants. With children, you need to balance life lessons. A lot of our learning as children is through the mistakes we make, but we do not want them to make life changing mistakes/decisions. With our siblings and elders, including parents, we must balance family unity with being truthful, compassionate, available, and being enablers for difficult behaviors and/or situations.
What made me think of this topic today was some recent events at work. We are in the process of conducting performance reviews of our employees. In addition, with a new leader at the helm for our organization, different priorities and visions are being provided. This includes the long range and strategic planning that is my responsibility. In accordance with these situations, we are assessing the needs of our department, and the skill sets of our personnel, both for now, and for the future (at least half of our department, including myself, will be retiring in less than 10 years). One of the other department managers and I were talking yesterday and today, about the skill sets of one of his employees, and how we can transition her from his group to mine, and benefit the overall department: a win-win situation.
Just for the record, based on my experience, a win-win situation involves no compromise (which by definition implies that someone does not get everything they desire). So we are discussing roles and responsibilities, and how to ensure that we both gain by transferring this individual contributor to my group (previous discussions with her indicate she would like to work in my group). The whole discussion was prefaced on what her strengths and weaknesses are, and how best to leverage them. She is a hard worker, and it is our responsibility as managers to maximize her strengths and skill sets. This is how how you get employee engagement, increased productivity, and a great working environment.
I look forward to bringing this to closure, being in a winning situation, where everybody walks away feeling good. That will be "priceless."
1 comment:
Interesting! A win-win situation doesn't involve compromise...you wouldn't think that would be so, but it makes sense if you think about it. It means that everyone discusses and comes up with the best plan for all involved, rather than focusing on their own agenda.
Beth
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