How Would You Answer this Question?

When was the last time you asked this question of yourself? Today? This week? Last month? This year? If not recently, it's certainly time to have the conversation with your manager. That said, not only should you have the questions to ask, but you should also be prepared to answer questions as well. 

Let’s start with what your manager might looking for. Outcomes. Your ability to deliver on desired and needed future outcomes.  Not so much what you have done in the past as what outcomes you can deliver in the future. That’s the “what”.

 Additionally, your manager will be interested in the “how”. How will you achieve those outcomes? Most organizations want to know that you will deliver the desired outcomes in a way that is consistent with organizational culture, protocol, policies, and practices. 

Then, there is the cost of delivering on those outcomes. Your total compensation is an obvious offset. The higher your pay, the greater the value of outcomes you need to be delivering. Aside from compensation, other offsets might include training and development you need, technology, supplies/office space, and management oversight. These “costs” can quickly add up. The hard costs like compensation, travel, and training are relatively easy to figure. Other costs are not so obvious. For example, what is the cost your manager would put on the amount of time and effort she takes to manage you?  

Your manager, your organization, will likely “hire” you if the projected value of the outcomes you generate (your ability to deliver the desired future outcomes in a desired way) exceeds the costs of employing you going forward. The greater the excess value of delivering future outcomes over your cost, the greater the likelihood your manager will choose to hire you over other options.   

Of course, your manager has alternatives to “hiring” anyone to achieve the desired outcomes. Temps, contractors, consultants, or other third parties become options, especially when the value proposition for “hiring” you as an employee is uncertain or marginal at best. Since hiring implies your ability to deliver future outcomes, it becomes important that you are able to show a sustainable ability to generate “excess” value outcomes over costs.  

A track record of delivering outcomes in a variety of changing circumstances is helpful in demonstrating such capability. But that is not necessarily enough. 

Here are three areas that are important to helping show the ability to deliver future outcomes in changing circumstances: 

1.     Relationships. To what extent are you continuing to expand and deepen relationships across diverse stakeholder groups? Do you continue to expand and develop strong networks in a variety of functional areas and businesses in and out of your market? As organizational department and functional lines blur with cross-functional project teams and hierarchies collapse, your ability to work across lines will enable you to get more done. How well do you seek out and engage with people who possess perspectives very different from your own? These relationships will have a profound impact on your ability to deliver future outcomes in uncertain and changing environments. 

2.     People skills. Sure, technical skills matter, but not as much as people skills when it comes to being “hired” for longer term “future” outcomes. Technical skills are the most easily outsourced and since technology quickly becomes dated, it can be problematic to rely too much on technical skills. What about people skills? Of course, emotional intelligence is the price of entry for many roles. The ability to collaborate, problem-solve, work through conflict, and quickly build trusted relationships are essential skills. If you are a manager yourself, then important people skills include your ability to personally attract and recruit talent to your organization as well as to coach and develop team members. Your ability to sustain a talent-rich organization in the face of change is a crucial skill for enabling successful future outcomes.

3.     Information. The amount of information coming to us at any time can feel overwhelming. For many we have more information, more data, than we can possibility process. And the sources and amount of information continue to grow. As we all know, more is not necessarily better. Those who can effectively find the right balance of information with the skills to organize it, to reflect on it, and to make decisions using it, will have more time to leverage relationships and people skills in driving to realize outcomes.     

So, unless you just had the conversation with your manager about whether she would hire you today, it’s time. It’s time to have a clear understanding of the desired outcomes and what she sees as the “costs” associated with you in delivering on those outcomes. Once you know, the ball is in your court. Can you make the case?   

Don Lang is Principal at Talent Effects, (www.talenteffects.com), an executive and teaming coach, leadership development designer, talent acquisition advisor. He is also co-founder of Blue Key Partners (www.bluekeypartners.com)