Posts by Walter Hoff

Those year-end performance reviews have been written.  The goal-setting discussions should have occurred.  If you are a people-leader and conducted these important discussions with your direct reports in the last few months, you deserved the big exhale, time off, or any other way that you decompressed and/or celebrated. But your job is far from over!

As we rapidly move toward the end of another year, one thing among many weighing on the minds of many managers is completing performance reviews on their employees. For many managers, this can be a painstaking chore.  Several well-known companies have abandoned performance reviews, instead attempting to have their managers do more frequent check-ins where…

I’ve been reading with great interest over the past several months that some of the largest corporations in the world are abandoning a process that has been around long before I set foot in corporate America –the annual performance review.

You’re either a new or established people-leader who has responsibility for managing people. You have always heard that you need to develop your people.  You no doubt have heard THAT statement, you know the one, “People are our greatest assets.” Makes me cringe every time I hear it.

I’m facilitating a session on communication or leadership when we come to talking about giving feedback.  I ask the question, “Who feels they get enough, by any measure, positive feedback?”

I was in the middle of facilitating one of my favorite topics with a group of newly-minted people leaders –coaching.  I made the comment that the most important thing a leader should do is coach her/his people.

You are undoubtedly familiar with the age-old term, “The captain must go down with the ship,” referring to if the ship is sinking, the captain must do everything he or she can to ensure the safety of everyone else before possibly abandoning ship.

The Matrix. No, not the popular movie and all its accompanying sequels. The matrix is what participants who attend the leadership development classes I facilitate call how they commonly have to get work done, through a labyrinth of internal and external business partners.