I’m a very experienced manager in retail in the UK. In a recent performance review its been pointed out that I’m not a team player. This has come as a shock to me but I do realize that its what other people say I have to consider. I’m currently dealing with many performance issues within my store. I have completed a feedback exercise and am building this into a development plan for myself. I just need some help to turn this perception of me around , whilst at the same time being firm with the non performance issues and certainly not looking like I’m backing in to people. I am a strong leader, I’m working with a team of managers who on the whole have less experience than me. how can I turn my perception around?
The Team Doc Says…
The short answer here is that your actions will help turn around people’s perceptions of you. It’s really hard for people to change the way they behave and I congratulate you for taking action. To ensure you are staying on track with your new behaviors, make sure you take some time at the end of each day to look back and analyze what went well that day and what you could have done better. Don’t be too hard on yourself — we all make mistakes. Just jump back in and work to do better the next time.
I also want to address what happened to you. Feedback should never come as a shock to anyone. I think it’s sad that you had to find this out at your review. That’s a really poor management practice on your supervisor’s part. You could make some efforts to manage this going forward by asking for feedback at regular intervals. Better yet, you could demonstrate the right way to give feedback by practicing it with your own team of managers. Here is a good guide to giving feedback.
And remember, the best feedback is given at the appropriate time and is specific and actionable. I suspect the feedback you got was neither of these.
Good luck and let me know how this works out for you. Anyone else have suggestions to offer? Please leave a comment.
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