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The Performance Review Reckoning
3 Plays3 months ago
Annual reviews, awkward conversations, delayed feedback. We’re calling it out. This episode tackles what’s wrong with performance reviews and how leaders can replace them with honest, timely conversations that actually move people forward.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Fractional Frequency' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Fractional Frequency, our take on talent, people trends, and the reality of building up businesses in an economy that keeps rewriting the rules.
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm Amy Crook, founder of Strativist.
00:00:21
Speaker
And I'm Erin Todis, managing director of talent delivery, which basically means I live in the universe of finding the right people to make an impact for our clients fast.
Focus on HR and Talent Issues
00:00:30
Speaker
Around here, we talk about the real side of HR and talent, what works, what absolutely doesn't, and how to build teams that can carry a business, not drag it down.
00:00:40
Speaker
The breakdown trends share the behind the scenes of scaling a consultancy from zero and probably overshare a river because that's where the good lessons live.
00:00:49
Speaker
So whether you're building, hiring, leading, or just trying to keep your company profitable, you're in the right place.
Scaling a Consultancy and Performance Management
00:01:06
Speaker
in the same boat, like they are gearing up or have been gearing up for like a busy quarter.
00:01:15
Speaker
And this brings us kind of to our topic that we both decided that we would talk about today, which is performance management.
00:01:25
Speaker
And the reason that we are going to have a chat about that is that, you know, we've observed that
00:01:32
Speaker
Over the last couple of years now, teams have gotten smaller and smaller and the expectations have gotten higher and higher.
00:01:44
Speaker
And I think maybe six months ago, maybe a year to six months ago, the expectation was that AI was going to bridge that gap.
00:01:55
Speaker
of efficiency to make sure that the outputs were the same, but it hasn't necessarily paid off that way yet for some teams.
00:02:05
Speaker
And so the next thing that people look at is like, okay, so what does it make, what does it take to be a good team member in this area?
00:02:17
Speaker
And how do we hold people accountable to those standards?
00:02:25
Speaker
Hello?
00:02:26
Speaker
Sorry.
00:02:27
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:02:30
Speaker
Was that too much talking?
00:02:32
Speaker
That was probably too much talking.
00:02:33
Speaker
Like if you zoned out, that was probably too much talking.
00:02:37
Speaker
No, I didn't zone out.
00:02:38
Speaker
I was like trying to get this, like there was a pop-up on the Zoom and I was trying to get it to go away.
00:02:44
Speaker
And then I thought you were going to keep going.
00:02:46
Speaker
And then it became awkward silence.
00:02:50
Speaker
Okay, let's go again and I'll try and keep it a little short.
00:02:53
Speaker
Okay, sounds good.
00:02:55
Speaker
three two one hey hi how are you i'm good i am so glad to be back to normality after what felt like a very long um festive season how about you
00:03:18
Speaker
Same.
00:03:19
Speaker
My waistline is looking forward to some healthier habits, routines in the new year.
00:03:25
Speaker
And so I'm getting after that.
00:03:26
Speaker
I'm digging into the work and just feeling good.
00:03:29
Speaker
It's going to be a great year.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:32
Speaker
I feel that way too.
00:03:33
Speaker
It definitely...
00:03:34
Speaker
seems like we're all getting ready for, you know, big positive changes.
00:03:40
Speaker
And all of the clients that I've been speaking to have got big moves in the works.
Workforce Trends and Feedback Challenges
00:03:49
Speaker
And something that I know you and I have been talking about, and that has come up for us in our corporate careers, and then
00:04:00
Speaker
you know, more recently with clients is just how to effectively manage teams that have been downsized in terms of headcount, but the work volume is still high.
00:04:15
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, I guess I definitely know, like in my experience, they were expecting AI to kind of bridge that gap.
00:04:24
Speaker
How about you?
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, same.
00:04:27
Speaker
And this is making me think about an article that I took a peek at actually earlier this week.
00:04:35
Speaker
SHRM released their 2026 workforce trends or predictions of trends.
00:04:40
Speaker
And they talked a little bit about this.
00:04:42
Speaker
And one of their references was that most HR managers or HR leaders say that their people leaders are...
00:04:52
Speaker
in most cases, not able to give effective constructive feedback.
00:04:56
Speaker
And that's concerning, but I think a real thing for a lot of companies.
00:05:01
Speaker
Oh, a hundred percent.
00:05:02
Speaker
Like even the high level leaders that I've experienced of partnering with struggled around this and would, you know, fight to the death to give
00:05:14
Speaker
people a rating that perhaps wasn't appropriate rather than like have the conversation.
00:05:21
Speaker
But for me, I think it all stems to like being really transparent about what the key criteria and competencies are to be successful in a role.
00:05:33
Speaker
If you're really solid about that upfront, those conversations should be easier.
00:05:39
Speaker
I don't know.
00:05:40
Speaker
What do you think?
00:05:41
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:05:42
Speaker
I think sort of layered on top of that, what's fascinating is that so many industries have just sort of circled around this concept of the annual performance review.
00:05:53
Speaker
It's been a thing as long as I have been in my career.
00:05:57
Speaker
I know that much.
00:05:58
Speaker
And it seems as though, you know, we're kind of teasing at it.
00:06:01
Speaker
Thinking about is it a three-point rating scale?
00:06:04
Speaker
Is it a five-point rating scale?
00:06:06
Speaker
Is it once a year or is it twice a year?
00:06:08
Speaker
And really, there hasn't ever been much disruption to that model.
00:06:14
Speaker
But I think with the entry of AI and just the accelerated pace of business, I think that has to change at some point.
00:06:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
Like my best leaders that I've worked with over the years do not wait for an official company-wide performance management process or performance acknowledgement process to have those conversations.
00:06:41
Speaker
Like you should be having those conversations all the time and setting out clear expectations with your teams.
00:06:51
Speaker
So something that...
00:06:53
Speaker
I really like an anchor to when
00:06:56
Speaker
I'm working with clients on their kind of like talent management is that having very clear competencies that are tied to departments and roles and that they're broken out by level so that it's very clear for the employee to see, okay, this is the expectation.
00:07:21
Speaker
This is me just doing my job.
00:07:22
Speaker
Because, you know, there's also a lot of,
00:07:26
Speaker
you know, people do really great work and they kind of get to that performance management conversation.
00:07:34
Speaker
They're like super pumped because they've done really good.
00:07:37
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, that's the expectation.
00:07:40
Speaker
Like that's like, you know, doing your job well, like that's, that's good.
00:07:47
Speaker
That's great.
00:07:48
Speaker
That means you're, you're successful or you're meeting expectations or,
00:07:53
Speaker
Not that I would ever settle for meeting expectations and I know you wouldn't either.
00:07:59
Speaker
But, you know, like if you are hitting those competencies and sorry, demonstrating those competencies and hitting your targets like that, that's the job.
00:08:12
Speaker
And so being really clear about that so that people aren't shocked either way, I think is really important.
00:08:18
Speaker
And of course, if there is
00:08:21
Speaker
an issue, having that conversation in the moment, like when you observe it.
Feedback in Remote Work Settings
00:08:29
Speaker
And I'm curious for your take on this, because I was having a conversation with a client the other day who mentioned that they're hearing some noise or some feedback from their management population about location or remote work as being a challenge in observing performance and giving real-time feedback during moments that matter or directly thereafter.
00:08:53
Speaker
What's your perspective on that?
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah, I do not subscribe to that school of thought.
00:09:01
Speaker
You know, we're adults in the workforce and our success should be measured by impact and results.
00:09:08
Speaker
So, you know, if it's your job to sell, then you're obviously going to be measured by your activity and by the results.
00:09:17
Speaker
If it's your job to build, then you're going to be measured by the quality and by, you know, meeting your deadlines and milestones.
00:09:29
Speaker
And if it's your job to
00:09:32
Speaker
recruit, you know, you're going to be measured by the KPIs that are tied to being in that space, but also like the hires that you've made.
00:09:44
Speaker
Like, did you hire people quickly that were of good quality and was everybody happy in the process?
00:09:51
Speaker
So I'm less concerned about, you know, how people get there and more about the fact that they get there.
00:10:00
Speaker
And I think that needs to be a shift in a lot of people's mindsets is that just because someone sat in front of you for 40 hours a week does not mean that they're being productive.
00:10:09
Speaker
I certainly was less productive in the office because it's so distracting, like saying hi to everybody and, you know, the walking between meetings and going between floors and the,
00:10:23
Speaker
extended lunches when you see people and so I I don't think that that should be um should be something people are worried about too much in terms of like where people are sitting but if you know if you've got somebody who's not motivated enough to do the work remotely then that's just a general like their person issue it's not the location strategy issue I would say makes sense yeah I just I'll go on
00:10:53
Speaker
Now, I'm just curious, as you're talking with HR leaders who are sort of grappling, you know, with either something similar to that example, or just in general with a management population who is not effectively delivering feedback, where are you starting with them?
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, basically, it's just making sure that you are
00:11:15
Speaker
giving the feedback in real time, because there's nothing worse than letting something build up and making it bigger than it is.
00:11:23
Speaker
But I think to take a step back from that, you have to have that mutual, like psychological safety with your employee, with your team member, that you can have those conversations without the employee feeling like it's
00:11:40
Speaker
a bad thing, right?
00:11:40
Speaker
You know, we it's a it's an old trope, but like feedback truly is a gift.
00:11:45
Speaker
Like, and I always said to my teams, I never learned anything from anyone telling me good job.
00:11:52
Speaker
Like, it's nice to hear, but I didn't learn anything from it.
00:11:55
Speaker
But if I can get some feedback on how I can improve on something and do better,
00:12:01
Speaker
that's helpful to me.
00:12:03
Speaker
So I think just setting up those parameters and making it a two-way street with people is like, you know, I want you to give me feedback too.
00:12:10
Speaker
You're in meetings with me and watching me.
00:12:13
Speaker
You know, you sit with me and hear me make decisions if you think I'm making a wrong step or if you think you have a different perspective.
00:12:21
Speaker
Like that's, we need to have those conversations in the moment.
00:12:25
Speaker
don't you know I'm not going to wait till your performance review to tell you that you know there's something you did six months ago that we could have corrected then and there that would not be an issue right now and please don't let me you know make a decision that you know because you're closer to the execution is not going to work right so I just I mean I've heard some horror stories over the years like
00:12:50
Speaker
somebody who reported into me after they told me their previous manager had created a spreadsheet.
00:13:00
Speaker
This is a company that did a performance review once a year and they had created a spreadsheet in every single big and small error that
00:13:09
Speaker
that this person had done, never spoke to the employee about it, just put it in the spreadsheet.
00:13:16
Speaker
For the whole year.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:19
Speaker
For the whole year.
00:13:21
Speaker
Didn't say a word to the person and then on their performance review, proceeded to pull up the spreadsheet and talk through a year's worth of big and small errors.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:35
Speaker
Wow.
00:13:36
Speaker
I don't know what I would do.
00:13:40
Speaker
Maybe get up and leave.
00:13:44
Speaker
I mean, at that point, you're just like, okay, like there's no hope for this person, but you know, that is a key example of like, just, you know, not great leadership, like have the conversations in the moment, because why would you sit on something that you can, you know, work through correct.
00:14:00
Speaker
And then it's not an issue that person's going to learn.
00:14:04
Speaker
They're going to be grateful for your guidance.
00:14:08
Speaker
And then it's not going to be, it's going to be a resolved obstacle rather than something that continues to persist.
00:14:17
Speaker
So I think making sure that you're creating an environment where those kind of conversations are normal and accepted both ways and just having them regularly.
00:14:30
Speaker
I always said to the managers that reported into me, no one on your teams
00:14:37
Speaker
should ever be surprised in a performance review.
00:14:40
Speaker
Either way, like no one should be surprised.
00:14:44
Speaker
Like if they've been doing a killer job and like exceeding expectations for the last six months, like we should be celebrating them and keeping them engaged and making sure that their work's recognized like regularly.
00:14:57
Speaker
And if someone's not performing, then we should be having those conversations with them regularly so that they know, okay,
00:15:06
Speaker
By the time I get to my performance review, I'm probably not going to get, you know, a high scoring number or term, depending on, you know, where you work, because I know that there's been these challenges in my reviews.
00:15:23
Speaker
And, you know, they also saw from me that that's how I approached it with them.
00:15:27
Speaker
You know, there would never be, I just don't surprise anyone in a performance review.
00:15:32
Speaker
That's not what it's there for.
00:15:34
Speaker
It's to, you know,
00:15:36
Speaker
you know, to, if it's not been a great season for the, for performance, then that's, it's time to, you know, acknowledge it.
00:15:45
Speaker
We've had these conversations.
00:15:46
Speaker
We know what the challenges have been and we know what we need to do to make it better.
00:15:50
Speaker
Let's be forward facing and, and, and see what we can do to turn it around for next time.
00:15:57
Speaker
Or if it's been an absolutely killer six months, a year to sit, reflect, celebrate,
00:16:04
Speaker
And then, okay, what's next?
00:16:06
Speaker
What's the next step?
00:16:07
Speaker
Let's talk about that.
00:16:08
Speaker
But it certainly shouldn't be a like gotcha moment, you know?
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:13
Speaker
I love the bit about taking the emotion out of it too.
00:16:17
Speaker
I think that a lot of times is the biggest barrier or sort of fear that managers have when you're having the conversations consistently, when you've built a habit of sort of game plan together and debrief right after these moments that matter with your employees, then it's
00:16:33
Speaker
It's not a scary conversation to have.
00:16:35
Speaker
It's just normal, whether it's positive feedback, constructive, or a little bit of both.
00:16:40
Speaker
I remember being a brand new manager when I knew nothing and heading into performance reviews and stressing about the conversations, practicing my points, worrying about what I would wear that day to those communities.
00:16:57
Speaker
And 15 years later, I didn't worry about any of those things because to your point, if you're doing it right,
00:17:03
Speaker
It's just another conversation that you've had a million times before that.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:09
Speaker
And they already know.
00:17:11
Speaker
They know where they stand because you're just having those conversations regularly.
00:17:16
Speaker
But it all starts with...
00:17:18
Speaker
making sure you set up the type of relationship with your team, that those conversations are normal.
00:17:26
Speaker
And as I mentioned before, those like being clear about your competencies, you know, giving somebody a job description two weeks before they interview and then, you know, never addressing the responsibilities or the changes that take place in the workplace, especially over the last, you know,
00:17:47
Speaker
two to five years, we've seen so many different shifts and so many different expectation changes.
00:17:53
Speaker
So to just expect that that person who has been with you a couple of years can, you know, measure that themselves from an old job description, like, that's a big ask, you know, you need to be clear with them what your expectations are in the role upfront.
Competency Frameworks and Success Plans
00:18:11
Speaker
And if that's changing,
00:18:13
Speaker
That needs to be, you know, a conversation that takes place before you start measuring them because, you know, that's just, it's not going to lead to a good result when you think about those conversations that you need to have.
00:18:29
Speaker
And the only way that I've seen it work really well is by having like a very solid competency framework.
00:18:39
Speaker
And so how can you help if there are HR leaders or business leaders in general who are feeling like they could use a partner in preparing this or building this for their organization?
00:18:53
Speaker
What does that look like?
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:55
Speaker
And I mean, it really depends on how
00:18:59
Speaker
much they want to invest in the process so if you if you want to you know go all in and make sure that you're doing absolutely everything right to ensure success and high productivity in your teams then that revolves around reviewing job descriptions for each team
00:19:22
Speaker
pulling out the competencies of each role and each level, because it's going to be different.
00:19:29
Speaker
The expectations are different.
00:19:31
Speaker
And the things that I think we're measuring folks on more and more, which is correct, is like impact and agility.
00:19:39
Speaker
And so these are things that like, it's really hard to put in a job description, right?
00:19:43
Speaker
Like, are you agile?
00:19:44
Speaker
It's like,
00:19:46
Speaker
No one's going to say no, but, you know, be really specific about that.
00:19:52
Speaker
Like, what does that mean?
00:19:54
Speaker
You know, can people operate in ambiguity?
00:19:58
Speaker
Can people make decisions that are going to move things forward when they don't necessarily see, like, with a crystal ball into the future?
00:20:12
Speaker
Can people switch into different tasks as priority shifts?
00:20:19
Speaker
Can people even effectively prioritise?
00:20:22
Speaker
And so you have to have like a very clear set of behavioural based things.
00:20:33
Speaker
competency expectations, depending on the role, depending on the department.
00:20:38
Speaker
And so you would have that, you know, like I said, clean job descriptions, competency framework, and then you go into your coaching with managers around having these conversations and just working through performance cycles effectively.
00:20:55
Speaker
So, you know, at the very least, I would say, like, if you don't have the time or
00:21:03
Speaker
the ability to like roll out all of it, the very least that you should do is make sure that your managers are equipped to have honest conversations and know how to run a performance conversation.
00:21:18
Speaker
And that you have a really robust and transparent performance management process should things not turn around.
00:21:27
Speaker
um I think you know they used to be called pips now I've heard like success plans I don't know what what do they call success plans corrective action is what I interacted with most recently but uh success is much softer right yeah I like I like success plans it's like a little less intimidating but I mean honestly I
00:21:50
Speaker
They all mean the same thing.
00:21:52
Speaker
They mean that your performance is at a point that, you know, it needs to be corrected pretty swiftly for you to retain your position.
00:22:03
Speaker
So I think...
00:22:05
Speaker
Being really, and people like to avoid that conversation too, right?
00:22:09
Speaker
They like, you know, it's all, everybody likes to have the positive conversations, but they don't like to have, you know, anything that's too negative.
00:22:17
Speaker
But I think, you know, if you do have somebody that's underperforming, being able to
00:22:23
Speaker
refer back to a clear policy around, okay, so what does low performance look like?
00:22:29
Speaker
And then what are the steps that I need to take as a manager?
00:22:33
Speaker
And then being transparent on both sides.
00:22:35
Speaker
You know, if your performance dips below a certain expectation for a certain period of time, then these are going to be the next steps.
00:22:44
Speaker
and you know having a very structured plan document that's easy for managers to complete that's easy for employees to understand and take away and refer to
00:23:02
Speaker
I think is really important too, because, you know, like if you get to that point with somebody and you don't know like how to move forward, that's also really frustrating for managers.
00:23:15
Speaker
If there's no clear guidelines on, okay, like what's the timeframe that we're going to give somebody to turn things around,
00:23:24
Speaker
And, you know, your demands as a department don't change.
00:23:29
Speaker
And if you have somebody who's just not performing, who's just not a good fit for that team, then no one's benefiting from dragging that out.
00:23:44
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:23:44
Speaker
That probably sounds a bit brutal, but it's, but I honestly believe it's true.
00:23:48
Speaker
I have, I have never, and again, this probably sounds awful, but I have never termed anybody too soon.
00:23:59
Speaker
No, like it's always, you know, you, you, and you know, as a manager, you know, like,
00:24:09
Speaker
This, this isn't working, but it's being able to have those conversations being transparent and clear about the expectations and the employee understanding what the, you know, consequences are to not meeting those expectations.
00:24:23
Speaker
So it's really like, I would say from, from day one to today, to the final day, like performance management is something you need to be thinking about every single day.
00:24:38
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:24:38
Speaker
And I feel for managers and employees, especially coming out of 2025, this is a year of definitely disruption, definitely change, probably moving targets in most people's cases.
00:24:51
Speaker
And so these conversations are ones that people need to be prepared for on all sides.
00:24:57
Speaker
And I think that we're grappling with some concepts for the first time, all of us.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's true.
00:25:04
Speaker
And, you know, I just, you've got to either take the time to, and this is just like a, it's not strictly like tied to performance management, but just in general, you know, you have to educate yourself on how to use these tools to your advantage.
00:25:23
Speaker
And I'm not talking about like the ones that people are implementing like enterprise wide to help with like certain functions, but just in general,
00:25:31
Speaker
Just getting smarter about how you interact with LLMs, brushing up on your prompting skills so that you get what you need quicker, knowing what you can do
00:25:44
Speaker
you know, put in intern LLM to pull out your work faster and what really you need to double check.
00:25:52
Speaker
Because, you know, they're not perfect.
00:25:54
Speaker
They do spit out incorrect information, as we've said.
00:25:58
Speaker
The thing that I hope businesses in 2026 get their arms around is that the actual conversations that we have, like performance management conversations,
00:26:15
Speaker
or strategy conversations or anything that requires critical thinking, I hope we stop trying to replace that with AI because it's very smart, yes, but it's only gonna pull from things and granted it's pulling from everything, but there's no brand new idea is gonna come from an LLM because
00:26:42
Speaker
they're all other people's ideas that have gone into the cosmos and have been like compiled together and spat back out, right?
00:26:53
Speaker
So I just, I hope we get back to a little bit more human interaction where it matters and we...
00:27:02
Speaker
are thoughtful about where we use it and for what.
00:27:07
Speaker
Cause I did, didn't you tell me like that there was some kind of tool for like performance conversations that were, was going to be put together?
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:18
Speaker
I can't remember the name of that company, but there, there's some chatter about like an AI coach concept in that the tool could replace the
00:27:29
Speaker
feedback from a, from a leader or potentially the whole conversation?
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker
And, you know, it depends what kind of culture you want to have.
00:27:39
Speaker
I just don't think that that is going to foster like growth in a person.
00:27:45
Speaker
And I, I think it's, it's just kind of a, it's a bit of a mess.
00:27:51
Speaker
Like there's definitely a ton of places that AI can be plugged in and add a ton of value and speed things up.
00:27:58
Speaker
But when it comes to having like human to human conversations, like let's let's think twice about outsourcing that because, you know, people need to hear that their manager in this case cares and is invested and, you know, is coming from a place of experience and.
00:28:24
Speaker
So, yeah,
AI in Performance Management and Human Interaction
00:28:25
Speaker
I mean, it's interesting.
00:28:25
Speaker
I guess like there's so many tools now that can monitor your outputs.
00:28:32
Speaker
I guess like you, I mean, be careful what you wish for, like managers.
00:28:36
Speaker
You don't want to have these conversations because like your whole level could get eliminated.
00:28:40
Speaker
That's true.
00:28:42
Speaker
AI spit the work out.
00:28:45
Speaker
I think it's one of those things that we'll find out, right?
00:28:48
Speaker
Like I, I think about the time that I've spent recently with one of our new hires and, you know, taking somebody who's got really great foundational raw material, but who needs to learn a practice and a process really from scratch.
00:29:01
Speaker
And I, it is so clear to me, the quality of the input and the time and the training and coaching that I put in on a daily basis is
00:29:11
Speaker
I see come back out.
00:29:13
Speaker
And when I've been lazy or when my feedback has been just okay, that's what I see come back out.
00:29:20
Speaker
And I think, you know, I worry very much that if we replace the human brains that are delivering this feedback and coaching with sort of substandard computer ones that we'll see substandard output back out.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:38
Speaker
And I, you know, I'm not against like an AI coach per se.
00:29:41
Speaker
Like, I think, you know, generally we've got a whole, you think about the coaching that takes place in most, you know, organizations, it's normally reserved for the most senior people.
00:29:53
Speaker
that get an exec coach and, you know, they get that time and that investment and you have like a big population of like ICs and managers that don't necessarily get that chance to have a conversation.
00:30:06
Speaker
But I mean, you've got to make sure that people are ready to ask the right questions, that they're going to get something out of it.
00:30:15
Speaker
um and you know on a day-to-day basis like I I think it could be it could be a great thing for somebody to have like an AI tool to bounce an idea off you know before they you know take it to a human or before they like go running with it whatever it might be but these critical conversations and this um replacement of relationship like I it's
00:30:43
Speaker
it's not for me.
00:30:44
Speaker
Like, I just, I don't think it's a good policy.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah.
Conclusion and Podcast Engagement
00:30:49
Speaker
I couldn't agree more.
00:30:50
Speaker
Oh, well, I guess that wraps us up.
00:30:53
Speaker
So takeaways, takeaways, takeaways, takeaways.
00:30:57
Speaker
Number one, I highly recommend
00:31:05
Speaker
Getting your ducks in a row with job descriptions and competencies.
00:31:11
Speaker
If you are going to have a year of focusing on high performance, that's the best place to start, I think.
00:31:20
Speaker
Number two, what would you call that as the number two takeaway, Erin?
00:31:24
Speaker
Oh, that has to be about creating the space where there are conversations happening regularly between leaders and teams where it's comfortable.
00:31:36
Speaker
It's just part of the framework and the routine and feedback is felt as a gift.
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, love it.
00:31:43
Speaker
And then my last thing, just my little snippet of advice here for what it's worth is no surprises in performance reviews.
00:31:52
Speaker
If you are currently sat there updating a spreadsheet with one of your direct reports mistakes in, delete the spreadsheet.
00:32:03
Speaker
No surprises.
00:32:07
Speaker
My goodness.
00:32:08
Speaker
I had to mute myself.
00:32:10
Speaker
I was just dying laughing and coughing a little bit after this last few weeks over the holidays.
00:32:18
Speaker
I know.
00:32:19
Speaker
Oh, I got so sick over the holidays.
00:32:21
Speaker
Anyway, that's another story that we can take offline.
00:32:23
Speaker
But thanks, everybody, for listening.
00:32:26
Speaker
As per usual, like, please follow along on our podcast channel here.
00:32:32
Speaker
We have a LinkedIn page that you can follow along to, as well as Facebook and Instagram.
00:32:42
Speaker
Cheers, everyone.
00:32:43
Speaker
Thanks.
00:32:44
Speaker
Bye.
00:32:47
Speaker
What do you think?
00:32:49
Speaker
I thought it was good.
00:32:50
Speaker
I thought it was good too.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
I definitely waffle but like well I'll get better.
00:32:55
Speaker
What do you mean waffle?
00:32:58
Speaker
How are you?
00:32:59
Speaker
I'm good.
00:33:00
Speaker
I am so glad to be back to normality after what felt like a very long festive season.
00:33:11
Speaker
How about you?
00:33:14
Speaker
Same.
00:33:15
Speaker
My waistline is looking forward to some healthier habits, routines in the new year.
00:33:21
Speaker
And so I'm getting after that.
00:33:23
Speaker
I'm digging into the work and just feeling good.
00:33:26
Speaker
It's going to be a great year.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, I feel I feel I feel that way, too.
00:33:29
Speaker
It definitely seems like we're.
00:33:32
Speaker
all getting ready for, you know, big positive changes.
00:33:37
Speaker
And all of the clients that I've been speaking to have got big moves in the works.
00:33:45
Speaker
And something that I know you and I have been talking about, and that has come up for us in our corporate careers, and then
00:33:56
Speaker
you know, more recently with clients is just how to effectively manage teams that have been downsized in terms of headcount, but the work volume is still high.
00:34:12
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, I guess I definitely know, like in my experience, they were expecting AI to kind of bridge that gap.
00:34:21
Speaker
How about you?
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, same.
00:34:23
Speaker
And this is making me think about an article that I took a peek at actually earlier this week.
00:34:31
Speaker
SHRM released their 2026 workforce trends or predictions of trends.
00:34:36
Speaker
And they talked a little bit about this.
00:34:38
Speaker
And one of their references was that most HR managers or HR leaders say that their people leaders are experts.
00:34:48
Speaker
in most cases, not able to give effective constructive feedback.
00:34:52
Speaker
And that's concerning, but I think a real thing for a lot of companies.
00:34:57
Speaker
Oh, 100%.
00:34:58
Speaker
Like, even the high level leaders that I've experienced of partnering with struggled around this and would, you know, fight to the death to give
00:35:11
Speaker
people a rating that perhaps wasn't appropriate rather than like have the conversation.
00:35:18
Speaker
But for me, I think it all stems to like being really transparent about what the key criteria and competencies are to be successful in a role.
00:35:29
Speaker
If you're really solid about that upfront, those conversations should be easier.
00:35:36
Speaker
I don't know.
00:35:36
Speaker
What do you think?
00:35:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:35:39
Speaker
I think sort of layered on top of that, what's fascinating is that so many industries have just sort of circled around this concept of the annual performance review.
00:35:49
Speaker
It's been a thing as long as I have been in my career.
00:35:53
Speaker
I know that much.
00:35:54
Speaker
And it seems as though, you know, we're kind of teasing at it.
00:35:58
Speaker
Thinking about is it a three-point rating scale?
00:36:00
Speaker
Is it a five-point rating scale?
00:36:02
Speaker
Is it once a year or is it twice a year?
00:36:05
Speaker
And really, there hasn't ever been much disruption to that model.
00:36:10
Speaker
But I think with the entry of AI and just the accelerated pace of business, I think that has to change at some point.
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:21
Speaker
Like my best leaders that I've worked with over the years do not wait for an official company-wide performance management process or performance acknowledgement process to have those conversations.
00:36:37
Speaker
Like you should be having those conversations all the time and setting out clear expectations with your teams.
00:36:47
Speaker
So something that...
00:36:50
Speaker
I really like an anchor to when
00:36:53
Speaker
I'm working with clients on their kind of like talent management is that having very clear competencies that are tied to departments and roles and that they're broken out by level so that it's very clear for the employee to see, okay, this is the expectation.
00:37:17
Speaker
This is me just doing my job.
00:37:18
Speaker
Because, you know, there's also a lot of,
00:37:22
Speaker
you know, people do really great work and they kind of get to that performance management conversation.
00:37:30
Speaker
They're like super pumped because they've done really good.
00:37:33
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, that's the expectation.
00:37:37
Speaker
Like that's like, you know, doing your job well, like that's, that's good.
00:37:44
Speaker
That's great.
00:37:44
Speaker
That means you're, you're successful or you're meeting expectations or,
00:37:49
Speaker
Not that I would ever settle for meeting expectations and I know you wouldn't either.
00:37:55
Speaker
But, you know, like if you are hitting those competencies and sorry, demonstrating those competencies and hitting your targets like that, that's the job.
00:38:08
Speaker
And so being really clear about that so that people aren't shocked either way, I think is really important.
00:38:15
Speaker
And of course, if there is
00:38:17
Speaker
an issue, having that conversation in the moment, like when you observe it.
00:38:25
Speaker
And I'm curious for your take on this, because I was having a conversation with a client the other day who mentioned that they're hearing some noise or some feedback from their management population about location or remote work as being a challenge in observing performance and giving real-time feedback during moments that matter or directly thereafter.
00:38:49
Speaker
What's your perspective on that?
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, I, I'm not, I do not subscribe to that school of thought.
00:38:56
Speaker
I think
00:38:57
Speaker
You know, we're adults in the workforce and our success should be measured by impact and results.
00:39:05
Speaker
So, you know, if it's your job to sell, then you're obviously going to be measured by your activity and by the results.
00:39:13
Speaker
If it's your job to build, then you're going to be measured by the quality and by, you know, meeting your deadlines and milestones.
00:39:25
Speaker
And if it's your job to
00:39:28
Speaker
recruit, you know, you're going to be measured by the KPIs that are tied to being in that space, but also like the hires that you've made.
00:39:40
Speaker
Like, did you hire people quickly that were of good quality?
00:39:45
Speaker
And was everybody happy in the process?
00:39:47
Speaker
So I'm less concerned about, you know, how people get there and more about the fact that they get there.
00:39:56
Speaker
And I think that needs to be a shift in a lot of people's mindsets is that just because someone's sat in front of you for 40 hours a week does not mean that they're being productive.
00:40:06
Speaker
I certainly was less productive in the office because it's so distracting, like saying hi to everybody and, you know, the walking between meetings and going between floors and the...
00:40:19
Speaker
extended lunches when you see people.
00:40:22
Speaker
And so I don't think that that should be, should be something people are worried about too much in terms of like where people are sitting.
00:40:31
Speaker
But if you, you know, if you've got somebody who's not motivated enough to do the work remotely, then that's just a general, like their person issue.
00:40:40
Speaker
It's not the location strategy issue.
00:40:43
Speaker
I would say.
00:40:45
Speaker
Makes sense.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I'll go on.
00:40:49
Speaker
Now, I'm just curious, as you're talking with HR leaders who are sort of grappling, you know, with either something similar to that example, or just in general with a management population who is not effectively delivering feedback, where are you starting with them?
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, basically, it's just making sure that you are
00:41:11
Speaker
giving the feedback in real time, because there's nothing worse than letting something build up and making it bigger than it is.
00:41:19
Speaker
But I think to take a step back from that, you have to have that mutual, like psychological safety with your employee, with your team member, that you can have those conversations without the employee feeling like it's
00:41:35
Speaker
um a bad thing right you know we it's a it's an old trope but like feedback truly is a gift like and I always said to my teams I never learned anything from anyone telling me good job like it's nice to hear but I didn't learn anything from it but if I can get some feedback on how I can improve on something and do better
00:41:57
Speaker
that's helpful to me.
00:41:59
Speaker
So I think just setting up those parameters and making it a two-way street with people is like, you know, I want you to give me feedback too.
00:42:06
Speaker
You're in meetings with me and watching me.
00:42:09
Speaker
You know, you sit with me and hear me make decisions if you think I'm making a wrong step or if you think you have a different perspective.
00:42:17
Speaker
Like that's, we need to have those conversations in the moment.
00:42:21
Speaker
don't you know I'm not going to wait till your performance review to tell you that you know there's something you did six months ago that we could have corrected then and there that would not be an issue right now and please don't let me you know make a decision that you know because you're closer to the execution is not going to work right so I just I mean I've heard some horror stories over the years like
00:42:46
Speaker
um somebody who uh reported into me after they they told me their previous manager had created a spreadsheet this is a company that did a performance review once a year and they had created a spreadsheet in every single big and small error
00:43:06
Speaker
that this person had done, never spoke to the employee about it.
00:43:10
Speaker
Just put it in the spreadsheet for the whole year.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:16
Speaker
For the whole year, didn't say a word to the person.
00:43:19
Speaker
And then on their performance review, proceeded to pull up the spreadsheet and talk through a year's worth of big and small errors.
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:32
Speaker
Wow.
00:43:33
Speaker
I don't know what I would do.
00:43:36
Speaker
Maybe get up and leave.
00:43:40
Speaker
I mean, at that point, you're just like, okay, like, there's no hope for this person.
00:43:45
Speaker
But, you know, that is a key example of like, just, you know, not great leadership, like have the conversations in the moment, because why would you sit on something that you can, you know, work through correct, and then it's not an issue, that person's going to learn, they're going to be grateful for your guidance.
00:44:04
Speaker
And they and then it's not going to be it's going to be an resolved
00:44:10
Speaker
obstacle rather than something that continues to persist.
00:44:14
Speaker
So I think making sure that you're creating an environment where those kind of conversations are normal and accepted both ways and just having them regularly.
00:44:26
Speaker
I always said to the managers that reported into me, no one on your teams should ever be surprised in a performance review.
00:44:36
Speaker
Either way,
00:44:37
Speaker
like no one should be surprised.
00:44:40
Speaker
Like if they've been doing a killer job and like exceeding expectations for the last six months, like we should be celebrating them and keeping them engaged and making sure that their work's recognized like regularly.
00:44:53
Speaker
And if someone's not performing, then we should be having those conversations with them regularly so that they know, okay, by the time I get to my performance review, I'm probably not going to get
00:45:07
Speaker
you know, a high scoring number or term, depending on, you know, where you work, because I know that there's been these challenges in my, in my reviews.
00:45:19
Speaker
And, you know, they also saw from me that that's how I approached it with them.
00:45:23
Speaker
You know, there would never be, I just don't surprise anyone in a, in a performance review.
00:45:29
Speaker
That's not what it's there for.
00:45:31
Speaker
It's to, you know, to
00:45:34
Speaker
If it's not been a great season for performance, then it's time to acknowledge it.
00:45:42
Speaker
We've had these conversations.
00:45:43
Speaker
We know what the challenges have been and we know what we need to do to make it better.
00:45:47
Speaker
Let's be forward facing and see what we can do to turn it around for next time.
00:45:53
Speaker
Or if it's been an absolutely killer six months, a year to sit, reflect, celebrate,
00:46:00
Speaker
And then, okay, what's next?
00:46:02
Speaker
What's the next step?
00:46:03
Speaker
Let's talk about that.
00:46:04
Speaker
But it certainly shouldn't be a gotcha moment.
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
I love the bit about taking the emotion out of it too.
00:46:13
Speaker
I think that a lot of times is the biggest barrier or sort of fear that managers have when you're having the conversations consistently, when you've built a habit of sort of game plan together and debrief right after these moments that matter with your employees, then
00:46:29
Speaker
It's not a scary conversation to have.
00:46:32
Speaker
It's just normal, whether it's positive feedback, constructive, or a little bit of both.
00:46:37
Speaker
I remember being a brand new manager when I knew nothing and heading into performance reviews and stressing about the conversations, practicing my points, worrying about what I would wear that day to those communities.
00:46:53
Speaker
And 15 years later, I didn't worry about any of those things because to your point, if you're doing it right,
00:47:00
Speaker
It's just another conversation that you've had a million times before that.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:05
Speaker
And they already know.
00:47:07
Speaker
They know where they stand because you're just having those conversations regularly.
00:47:12
Speaker
But it all starts with...
00:47:15
Speaker
making sure you set up the type of relationship with your team that those conversations are normal and as i mentioned before there's like being clear about your competencies you know giving somebody a job description two weeks before they interview and then you know never addressing the responsibilities or um the changes that take place in the workplace especially over the last you know
00:47:43
Speaker
two to five years, we've seen so many different shifts and so many different expectation changes.
00:47:50
Speaker
So to just expect that that person who has been with you a couple of years can, you know, measure that themselves from an old job description, like that's a big ask.
00:48:02
Speaker
You know, you need to be clear with them what your expectations are in the role upfront.
00:48:07
Speaker
And if that's changing,
00:48:10
Speaker
That needs to be, you know, a conversation that takes place before you start measuring them.
00:48:15
Speaker
Because, you know, that's just, it's not going to lead to a good result when you think about those conversations that you need to have.
00:48:25
Speaker
And the only way that I've seen it work really well is by having like a very solid competency framework.
00:48:35
Speaker
And so how can you help if there are HR leaders or business leaders in general who are feeling like they could use a partner in preparing this or building this for their organization?
00:48:49
Speaker
What does that look like?
00:48:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:51
Speaker
And I mean, it really depends on how
00:48:55
Speaker
much they want to invest in the process.
00:48:59
Speaker
So if you if you want to, you know, go all in and make sure that you're doing absolutely everything right to ensure success and high productivity in your teams, then that revolves around reviewing job descriptions for each team, reviewing
00:49:18
Speaker
pulling out the competencies of each role and each level, because it's going to be different.
00:49:25
Speaker
The expectations are different.
00:49:27
Speaker
And the things that I think we're measuring folks on more and more, which is correct, is like impact and agility.
00:49:35
Speaker
And so these are things like it's really hard to put in a job description, right?
00:49:39
Speaker
Like, are you agile?
00:49:41
Speaker
It's like,
00:49:42
Speaker
No one's going to say no, but, you know, be really specific about that.
00:49:49
Speaker
Like, what does that mean?
00:49:50
Speaker
You know, can people operate in ambiguity?
00:49:54
Speaker
Can people make decisions that are going to move things forward when they don't necessarily see, like, with a crystal ball into the future?
00:50:08
Speaker
Can people switch into different tasks as priority shifts?
00:50:16
Speaker
Can people even effectively prioritise?
00:50:19
Speaker
And so you have to have like a very clear set of behavioural based things.
00:50:29
Speaker
competency expectations depending on the role, depending on the department.
00:50:34
Speaker
And so you would have that, like I said, clean job descriptions, competency framework, and then you go into your coaching with managers around having these conversations and just working through performance cycles effectively.
00:50:52
Speaker
So, you know, at the very least, I would say like, if you don't have the time or the ability to like, roll out all of it, the very least that you should do is make sure that your managers are equipped to have honest conversations and know how to run a performance conversation.
00:51:14
Speaker
And that you have a really
00:51:17
Speaker
robust and transparent performance management process should things not turn around.
00:51:24
Speaker
I think, you know, they used to be called PIPs.
00:51:28
Speaker
Now I've heard like success plans.
00:51:30
Speaker
I don't know.
00:51:31
Speaker
What do they call it?
00:51:32
Speaker
Success plans.
00:51:33
Speaker
Corrective action is what I interacted with most recently, but success is much softer.
00:51:39
Speaker
Right.
00:51:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:40
Speaker
I like success plans.
00:51:42
Speaker
It's like a little less intimidating, but I mean, honestly, I,
00:51:46
Speaker
They all mean the same thing.
00:51:48
Speaker
They mean that your performance is at a point that, you know, it needs to be corrected pretty swiftly for you to retain your position.
00:52:00
Speaker
So I think being really, and people like to avoid that conversation too, right?
00:52:05
Speaker
They like, you know, it's all, everybody likes to have the positive conversations, but they don't like to have, you know, anything that's too negative.
00:52:13
Speaker
But I think, you know, if you do have somebody that's underperforming, being able to,
00:52:19
Speaker
refer back to a clear policy around, okay, so what does low performance look like?
00:52:25
Speaker
And then what are the steps that I need to take as a manager?
00:52:29
Speaker
And then being transparent on both sides.
00:52:31
Speaker
You know, if your performance dips below a certain expectation for a certain period of time, then these are gonna be the next steps.
00:52:40
Speaker
And, you know, having a very structured plan document that's easy for managers to complete, that's easy for employees to understand and take away and refer to.
00:52:58
Speaker
I think is really important too, because, you know, like if you get to that point with somebody and you don't know like how to move forward, that's also really frustrating for managers.
00:53:11
Speaker
If there's no clear guidelines on, okay, like what's the timeframe that we're going to give somebody to turn things around,
00:53:21
Speaker
And, you know, your demands as a department don't change.
00:53:26
Speaker
And if you have somebody who's just not performing, who's just not a good fit for that team, then no one's benefiting from dragging that out.
00:53:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:53:41
Speaker
That probably sounds a bit brutal, but it's, but I honestly believe it's true.
00:53:45
Speaker
I have, I have never, and again, this probably sounds awful, but I have never termed anybody too soon.
00:53:55
Speaker
No, like it's always, you know, you, you, and you know, as a manager, you know, like,
00:54:05
Speaker
This isn't working, but it's being able to have those conversations, being transparent and clear about the expectations and the employee understanding what the consequences are to not meeting those expectations.
00:54:20
Speaker
So it's really like, I would say from day one to the final day, like performance management is something you need to be thinking about every single day.
00:54:34
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:54:34
Speaker
And I feel for managers and employees, especially coming out of 2025, this is a year of definitely disruption, definitely change, probably moving targets in most people's cases.
00:54:47
Speaker
And so these conversations are ones that people need to be prepared for on all sides.
00:54:53
Speaker
And I think that we're grappling with some concepts for the first time, all of us.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's true.
00:55:00
Speaker
And, you know, I just, you've got to either take the time to, and this is just like a
00:55:08
Speaker
it's not strictly like tied to performance management, but just in general, you know, you have to educate yourself on how to use these tools to your advantage.
00:55:19
Speaker
And I'm not talking about like the ones that people are implementing like enterprise wide to help with like certain functions, but just in general, just getting smarter about how you interact with LLMs,
00:55:32
Speaker
brushing up on your prompting skills so that you get what you need quicker, knowing what you can, you know, put in into an LLM to pull out your work faster and what really you need to double check because, you know, they're not perfect.
00:55:50
Speaker
They do spit out incorrect information, as we've said.
00:55:54
Speaker
The thing that I hope businesses in 2026 get their arms around is that
00:56:02
Speaker
the actual conversations that we have, like performance management conversations or strategy conversations or anything that requires critical thinking,
00:56:19
Speaker
I hope we stop trying to replace that with AI because it's very smart, yes, but it's only going to pull from things and granted it's pulling from everything, but you know, there's no brand new ideas going to come from an LLM because there are other people's ideas that have gone
00:56:42
Speaker
into the cosmos and have been like compiled together and spat back out, right?
00:56:50
Speaker
So I just, I hope we get back to a little bit more human interaction where it matters and we,
00:56:58
Speaker
are thoughtful about where we use it and for what.
00:57:03
Speaker
Because I did, didn't you tell me like that there was some kind of tool for like performance conversations that were, was going to be put together?
00:57:13
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember the name of the company, but there, there's some chatter about like an AI coach concept in that the tool could replace a
00:57:25
Speaker
feedback from a from a leader or potentially the whole conversation yeah and you know it depends what kind of culture you want to have I I just don't think that that is going to foster like growth in a person and I I think it's it's just kind of a it's a bit of a miss like there's definitely a ton of places that AI can be plugged in and add a ton of value and speed things up
00:57:54
Speaker
But when it comes to having like human to human conversations, like let's think twice about outsourcing that because, you know, people need to hear that their manager, in this case, cares and is invested and, you know, is coming from a place of experience and
00:58:20
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
00:58:22
Speaker
I guess like there's so many tools now that can monitor your outputs.
00:58:28
Speaker
I guess like you, I mean, be careful what you wish for, like managers.
00:58:32
Speaker
You don't want to have these conversations because like your whole level could get eliminated.
00:58:36
Speaker
That's true.
00:58:39
Speaker
So AI spit the work out.
00:58:41
Speaker
I think it's one of those things that we'll find out, right?
00:58:44
Speaker
Like I, I think about the time that I've spent recently with one of our new hires and, you know, taking somebody who's got really great foundational raw material, but who needs to learn a practice and a process really from scratch.
00:58:58
Speaker
And I, it is so clear to me, the quality of the input and the time and the training and coaching that I put in on a daily basis is
00:59:07
Speaker
I see come back out.
00:59:09
Speaker
And when I've been lazy or when my feedback has been just okay, that's what I see come back out.
00:59:16
Speaker
And I think, you know, I worry very much that if we replace the human brains that are delivering this feedback and coaching with sort of substandard computer ones that we'll see substandard output back out.
00:59:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:34
Speaker
And I, you know, I'm not against like an AI coach per se.
00:59:37
Speaker
Like, I think, you know, generally we've got a whole, you think about the coaching that takes place in most, you know, organizations it's normally reserved for the most senior people.
00:59:49
Speaker
that get an exec coach and, you know, they get that time and that investment and you have like a big population of like ICs and managers that don't necessarily get that chance to have a conversation.
01:00:03
Speaker
I mean, you've got to make sure that people are ready to ask the right questions, that they're going to get something out of it.
01:00:11
Speaker
And, you know, on a day to day basis, like I, I think it could be, it could be a great thing for somebody to have like an AI tool to bounce an idea off, you know, before they, you know, take it to a human or before they like go running with it, whatever it might be.
01:00:27
Speaker
But these critical conversations and
01:00:32
Speaker
this replacement of relationship, like, it's not for me.
01:00:41
Speaker
Like, I just, I don't think it's a good policy.
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
01:00:47
Speaker
Oh, well, I guess that wraps us up.
01:00:49
Speaker
So takeaways, takeaways, takeaways, takeaways.
01:00:53
Speaker
Number one, I highly recommend...
01:01:01
Speaker
Getting your ducks in a row with job descriptions and competencies.
01:01:07
Speaker
If you are going to have a year of focusing on high performance, that's the best place to start, I think.
01:01:16
Speaker
Number two, what would you call out as the number two takeaway, Erin?
01:01:21
Speaker
Oh, that has to be about creating the space where there are conversations happening regularly between leaders and teams where it's comfortable.
01:01:32
Speaker
It's just part of the framework and the routine and feedback is felt as a gift.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:39
Speaker
Love it.
01:01:39
Speaker
And then my, my last thing, just my little, my little snippet of advice here for what it's worth is no surprises in performance reviews.
01:01:48
Speaker
If you are currently sat there updating a spreadsheet with one of your direct reports, mistakes in delete the spreadsheet, no surprises.
01:02:03
Speaker
My goodness.
01:02:04
Speaker
I had to mute myself.
01:02:06
Speaker
I was just dying laughing.
01:02:08
Speaker
I've been coughing a little bit after this last few weeks over the holidays.
01:02:14
Speaker
I know.
01:02:15
Speaker
Oh, I got so sick over the holidays.
01:02:17
Speaker
Anyway, that's another story that we can take offline.
01:02:20
Speaker
But thanks, everybody, for listening.
01:02:22
Speaker
As per usual, like, please follow along on our podcast channel here.
01:02:28
Speaker
We have a LinkedIn page that you can follow along to, as well as Facebook and Instagram.
01:02:38
Speaker
Cheers, everyone.
01:02:39
Speaker
Thanks.
01:02:40
Speaker
Bye.