Generative Performance

Generative Performance Management

Techniques for the busy manager

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Future Reflections

Description

Future Reflections is a discovery exercise. It promotes self-awareness, goal setting, joint design, and envisioning a successful future together.

Participants imagine themselves one year ahead, reflecting on their accomplishments and personal growth.

I’ve found this to be a strong excercise for getting to know people when they join your team. However, it’s most useful for defining up-front what success could look like, which is critical for providing rich feedback and coaching later on. It speaks directly to GPM’s core principle of Front-Loading.

Purpose

  • Discover what matters.
  • Make your aspirations explicit.
  • Box time to consider and refine those aspirations.
  • A catalyst for action with purpose.
  • Accountability.

Instructions

  1. Introduce the exercise: Explain that participants will engage in a reflective activity imagining themselves in the future, one year ahead.
  2. Time travel visualization: Guide participants to close their eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine themselves transported one year into the future.
  3. Writing the self-appraisal: Instruct participants to write a self-appraisal document evaluating their achievements, personal growth, and challenges overcome in the past year. Ensure they write the date in the future when the document is supposedly written.
  4. Reflection prompts:
    1. What goals have you accomplished?
    2. How do you know you’ve accomplished them (by what measure)?
    3. What positive impact have you had on others?
    4. How have you grown both personally and professionally?
    5. How would you describe yourself?
    6. How would you like others to describe you?
    7. It can be useful to review your job description and company/department/team objectives.
  6. Give time to write (approx 2 hours): Allow ample time for reflection and writing. Encourage specificity, honesty, and positivity.
  7. Joint design: Provide an opportunity for participants to share reflections. Refine and shape the reflections together for an agreed definition of success.
  8. Closing discussion: Engage in a group discussion about the experience. Encourage participants to reflect on insights and emotions and consider applying them to present and future actions.
Note: Use GPM’s core principle of being curious, not judgmental to create a safe environment for discussion. Emphasize personal growth and self-reflection, not evaluation by others.

What Next?

Future Reflections is not a set-and-forget exercise, its power is unlocked with the discipline to use the document throughout the year as a guide.

  • Refer back to the Future Reflections document with the participant on a quarterly basis throughout the year.
  • Make small refinements and addendums but avoid wholesale changes.
  • On the date when the participant wrote the document, email it to them and ask them to review and mark where progress was made and where it was lacking.
  • Assess the importance of any missed aspirations and key discoveries for inclusion next year.