The joke inside the frame
There is a joke buried inside appreciative performance conversations, and it is that you already knew this. You knew it in college and you unlearned it in your first management job, and now here we are, in a magazine, telling you the thing your grandmother told you for free. This is the industry.
The good news: Reviews that grow the person and the system simultaneously. Also, they take less time than the sandwich review, statistically. The better news: recovering the knowing is faster than acquiring it the first time. The neural grooves are still there; they are just under some professional laminate.
An experiment for the coming week
Run one meeting according to this chapter and one meeting exactly the way you always have. Do not tell anyone the experiment is happening. Take five minutes afterwards, alone, and write a paragraph on each.
You will notice things you did not intend to notice. This is the mechanism. Reflection is not the reward for practice. Reflection is the practice.
The trade you actually made
You did not pick up a technique. You picked up a way of being in the room that will now leak into every other room. This is by design and also by accident; we cannot in good conscience promise the leak is optional.
In six months you will forget you were ever the other version of yourself. Your team will remember, briefly, and then they too will forget. This is what real change looks like — like it was always this way, and you were being ridiculous to think otherwise.
Real change looks like it was always this way, and you were being ridiculous to think otherwise.