TIMA Road Map #6: What Questions Should You Be Asking Your Instructors in Their Performance Review?

Phil: In this video, we're going to be talking about performance reviews. Well, what is a performance review? It's a chance for school owners, branch managers, to review their staff's performance and reset, realign the next goals for the following 3 or 6 or 12 months. It's a chance for the employee also to review the employer, and that's what we do. I think it's really important that it shouldn't be a one-way street, this performance review. I really want to know if I'm performing to the best of my ability for my staff and vice versa as well. So I don't just think it's a one-way thing. I'm sitting at the top of my ivory tower shooting down the barrel telling them what they've done wrong and how they can do better. It really should be a positive thing where we set out the goal, set out the expectations and also double ended. So I want them to tell me how I'm going as a boss. I want them to tell me if I'm providing a good enough service training, learning outcomes, experience, all that sort of stuff. So make sure that it's a two-way street, for sure. Graham: Hey, guys. Once you've collated that information you get that back, and there's some great software out there that will help you do that if you're not too savvy in that sort of questionnaires yourself, but it's important to understand what's sort of true. What do you want to find out? What's the information? So not just going in there and going, "How do you like your job?" "Well, what improvements are you doing? What are your goals for the future?" You know, really get an understanding of where they're at, because with our dojo and when we do these performance reviews, we do them once every 12 months as an official thing. Now, we're constantly talking to our team about how they're going, but it's a sit-down, official thing, because what that then does is gives us an opportunity to see, when we review pay structures, if the person is going to increase, if they're going to stay the same, or if there needs to be some course of action if they're not up to a standard. So we don't obviously hand out pay rise or pay increases at that time. That's the understanding for us. We get that review, and it's usually done six months later to see if they've increased. But what's involved here? It's mainly making sure that you've got a list of objectives that you want to see improved and areas that you want them to grow into. Obviously, they may be performing well, but we can always do better. Think about your belt grading. We start at white belt, you do okay, then you increase your levels as you go. Well, really, that's what this is. You're giving them the opportunity to up-skill themselves, plus from a business owners point of view, it finds out the gap in the information that they may not necessarily know. What do they need to move to the next level? What can I do as the employer to help them get there? So it's really important to make sure that you have some written information for them to take away once you've had your meeting. And I know myself and Phil have just completed a truck load of them recently with our staff, and the goal is to sit down with them. Have a face-to-face. Have a good conversation, usually about a half an hour. Talk about what's ahead and also too, you know, set some great goals for them. We don't want to see them just leave the meeting and go, "That was lovely. It was warm and fuzzy." I want some action steps and action points that they can really get their teeth into and see some great improvement. So this one is one of those things that's really vital in a business but gets overlooked often. When was the last time you guys actually assessed or checked your instructors, not just their performance on the floor, but how they operate behind the scenes? Phil: A couple of things that we've experienced in the past is that when you sit down in that performance review, you...sometimes you just get that, you know...it's an awesome feeling, and you get really good energy from that person. They're really excited about their job. Sometimes we've had people completely break down in tears, emotional because they've been holding stuff in and haven't had a chance to offload it. And you can really fix things for them or help realign and reset their goals and aspirations in this particular job role. And then on other occasions, we've also found out that this job is probably not really suited for them. And then in that performance review, rather than reviewing their performance and setting their goals, we're actually looking at what is the best way to let this person go on good terms as well. So don't just think that this performance review is setting yourself up for the future goals of, you know, your business, and this person is going to stay here forever. Ask the questions, "How are you enjoying it? How am I helping you? Are you getting enough time with family?" Because it's important that we're fulfilling their passions as a martial artist, we're fulfilling their passions in employment, but also helping them be social with their friends. We're helping them have more time with their family, because you know, if we're not careful, the balance, the work-life balance can soon be out of balance completely, and if they're not spending enough time over here and focusing all on here, well, they're going to burn out, and they're going to resent coming to work. So just make sure...I don't know. In our experiences, we had all those cases. You know, exciting, motivating, top one, people who break down in tears and unsure, you don't know what's wrong, and then those ones where we worked out that their career path with us is no longer going forward, so we set a plan for that as well. Graham: Hey guys, just a couple of dart point that you could write down for yourself, so I can give you a head start if you don't already do them. First and foremost, ask them how do they feel they performed last year. Geez. Okay. Cool. And this could be a written or could just be a verbal to start the meeting, because I know that that's sometimes the goal, and they'll go, "Well, to be honest with you, I felt really flat." Then you go, "Ooh, okay. I didn't see that one coming." So ask them how they went. How do they think you know they can improve their level this year? So what can they do to improve? When you ask them to list a few things, strengths and improvements. What are their strengths that they find, because you may not necessarily view that as their strength, but they do, and what's the other improvements they can work on? You might have some others you want to add into that that they might not even be conscious about. Again, we're talking about their vision, what's ahead. Where are you going to be? Where do you see yourself in one year, two years, five years? Because they may go, "In three years time, I want to travel," and then you go, "Okay, cool. That's not an issue as long as I'm aware of that." Or they may turn around and say, "I want my own dojo," which you never knew before. And again, one really great thing myself and Phil have always done in ours is, we turn around and have a questionnaire there going, "Guys, if this was your business, what would you do differently?" Or, "If there's three things that you can improve on, what would you do?" And man, we've had some really interesting feedback on that. We thought, "Well, that's a really valid point." Again, coming from their perspective, and we may not take that on board and actually apply it, but we can talk about why we do certain things and get their feedback on why they think that improvement would be valid in our business. So plenty of good stuff there, team. Hopefully that works for you, but you know, the most important thing is just constant checkups to see where they're at and obviously making sure that they're improving and growing with you guys. Phil: Well, guys, that's it for us in this particular video, so if you're watching this anywhere else other than our website, head over to TIMA. Check out all the goodies that we've got there. We can't wait to shoot you some new videos. So if you have any particular topics or things you want us to discuss, shoot them through to our email at [email protected], and we'll see if we can get some videos shooted for you guys. Graham: As always guys, that's us signing out, and we can't wait to see you back next time. So go get them this week, and have tons of fun. Pff.