American football. The professional league – NFL. Green Bay, Wisconsin. Cold. Very cold. The Green Bay Packers, the dominant football team of the 1960s. Their coach, Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest of all time. Their quarterback – play-maker, Spielmacher – Bart Starr.
Starr: quiet, serious, disciplined, selfless, talented, understated, fully focused on one goal only, winning. Winning championships. Starr to Lombardi: “Do not criticize me in front of the team, instead just the two of us. Otherwise I cannot lead the team.”
Penguin. An American publishing house (a part of Random House, which was acquired by Bertelsmann). A flyer tucked into one of their books purchased via Amazon. Quotes by reviewers about some of those other Penguin books:
“A work of art. One of the greatest political biographies ever written.”; “How non-fiction should be written.”; “Magnificent. I finished it with a sense of exaltation.”; “One of the world’s most original and provocative thinkers.”; “A mind-altering book.”; “The most important book on the Second world War in decades.”; “When you read it, you feel like you can topple giants.”
The New York Times online pubished an opinion piece by Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English Literature at Emory University in Atlanta, on May 9, 2015, entitled „What’s the Point of a Professor?“
In it Bauerlein – clearly an American of German descent – writes: „In 1960, only 15 percent of grades were in the A range, but now the rate is 43 percent, making A the most common grade by far.“
The auther further states that faculty members’ attitudes are kindly, too. In one national survey, 61 percent of students said that professors frequently treated them „like a colleague/peer,“ while only 8 percent heard frequent „negative feedback about their academic work.“
According to the survey more than half leave the graduation ceremony believing that they are „well prepared“ in speaking, writing, critical thinking and decision-making.“
„You can’t become a moral authority“, writes Bauerlein, „if you rarely challenge students in class and engage them beyond it. If we professors do not do that, the course is not an induction of eager minds into an enlarging vision. When it comes to students, we shall have only one authority: the grades we give. We become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.“
amazon(dot)com listed 22,000 books about „giving feedback“, 62,000 titles on „performance reviews“ and a total of 127 how-to books alone about „performance review phrases“, including Performance Appraisals and Phrases For Dummies.
Its profile states:
„Whether you’re a manger looking to implement employee appraisals for the first time, concerned with improving the quality and effectiveness of the appraisal process, or simply trying to save time and mental anguish Dummies provides the tools you need to save time and energy while presenting fair and accurate evaluations that foster employee growth.
This convenient, portable package includes a full-length appraisal phrasebook featuring over 3,200 spot-on phrases and plenty of quick-hitting expert tips on making the most out of the process.“
A reviewer commented:
„… This book gave me ideas on how to properly phrase what I was trying to communicate during the review process. There is a scenario for just about everything you’d cover in a employee review and it was so very helpful when I knew what I wanted to say, but wasn’t quite sure how to write it clearly….“
It’s Always Personal. Random House. 2013. Author Ann Kreamer writes about emotions in the workplace, especially during evaluations formal and informal. Statements about the book from amazon(dot)com:
“Ms. Kreamer comes down on the side of accepting and expressing one’s authentic feelings, though in sensible and constructive ways. It’s a stimulating read bolstered by snippets of some of the best recent work on emotional intelligence and the science of happiness.”The Wall Street Journal
“Kreamer demonstrates why emotion matters so much in the workplace–and, with practical advice, she identifies ways to be happier and more effective at work.” New York Times
“What’s the role of anger, fear empathy, anxiety and tears? This book explains them in ways that will make you a better worker, boss and human being.” Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, The Aspen Institute and former CEO of CNN
“Kreamer makes a solid case for her philosophy in the most compelling way possible, by appealing to rationality and the bottom line.”
hralliancedc(dot)org. January 21, 2015. A blogpost: Feedback: Its All Personal and Why That Matters.
Performance Reviews. “There aren’t many scheduled professional activities that can generate such an array of feelings for managers and employees alike…. Regardless of how one feels prior to and after receiving feedback, one thing is certain: Feedback is always personal.
Conventional wisdom and typical management training try to remove the personal aspect of feedback, even encouraging us to not take feedback personally. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Done well, the performance review is an opportunity for the manager and the employee to strengthen their bond, to commit to working on themselves individually and together, to continue to strive toward desired results.
American politicians have always had a close link between their politics and their personal lives, even from America’s first days as a nation. According to Gentlemen’s Blood: a History of Dueling by Barbara Holland, “In our early years a man’s political opinions were inseparable from the self, from personal character and reputation, and as central to his honor as a seventeenth-century Frenchman’s courage was to his. He called his opinions ‘principles’, and he was willing, almost eager, to die or to kill for them.”
As such, any insult to or disagreement with a politician was seen as a threat, and the politician usually responded by challenging his opponent to a duel. According to Joannie B. Freeman in Affairs of Honor, “Longtime political opponents almost expected duels, for there was no way that constant opposition to a man’s political career could leave his personal identity unaffected.”
The best known example of a political duel was the Burr-Hamilton Duel of 1804. Vice President Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had been political enemies for some time, when rumors that Hamilton had been saying “despicable” things about Burr prompted Burr to challenge Hamilton to a duel.
The accounts of the duel are somewhat conflicting, however, it is generally believed that Hamilton fired first, aiming high and missing. Burr then returned fire – his bullet pierced Hamilton’s torso, lodging in the man’s spine. Hamilton died the following morning.
Other famous American political duels included the Jackson-Dickinson Duel, the Clay-Randolph Duel, and the Lincoln-Shields Duel.
German teams maintain long lines of communication. Feedback takes place in a formal setting, once or twice a year, according to the company‘s official internal process. Seldom do German team leads give team members spontaneous, informal feedback. Germans focus on the details of their work and less so on where they stand individually in the team at any given time.
Discernment: the right to choose what should be done in a particular situation; the quality of being careful about what you do and say so that people will not be embarrassed or offended; the quality of being discreet.
Showing discernment or good judgment: the ability to make responsible decisions; individual choice or judgment; the power of free decision or latitude of choice within certain legal bounds; separating or distinguishing.
First Known Use: 14th century. Synonyms: discreetness, common sense, horse sense, levelheadedness. Antonyms: imprudence, indiscretion
A comment by a German with extensive experience at the university level in the U.S.: “I think the real issue here is not how grades are officially classified but that there is a much stronger tendency of grade inflation in the U.S.
Almost everyone gets an A, whereas a B already feels like a failure even though it’s officially considered “good”.
Germans – at least at university level – are much more likely to give a student a C and think that she/he did a good job. When professors give a B they think the student’s paper is great. A basically means a professor could have written this.”