Chapter 5: Career Management
Introduction
Objectives
In this chapter, you will
- identify common Canadian workplace interactions and behaviours
- identify the key elements of a common feedback technique
- give a short presentation to a familiar audience
- write an organized paragraph.
Video
In this chapter’s video, you will watch a short excerpt of a formal performance review meeting at CDN Malls. Before watching the video, think about the importance of performance reviews.
Discuss
- the reasons for a periodic review of one’s job performance
- how the feedback from a performance review might help an employee
- an example of when feedback at work or school has helped you improve
- what you know about how feedback is often given in Canada.
While watching the video, think about the questions below. Write down information that you think is important.
- Who are the people in the video?
- What are they discussing?
- Notice how the people are interacting. Think about whether the conversation is formal or informal. Consider their body language and eye contact. Think about how the context affects the level of formality.
Focus questions
Hi! I’m Sandy, your Workplace Mentor. Throughout this book, I will give you important pointers to help you understand the general environment in many workplaces in Canada.
- The feedback sandwich
- Active listening
- Reacting to feedback
In the video, you watched part of a performance review meeting.
Discussion 
- Whose performance review is it?
- How formal/informal was the language the people in the video used? Why?
- Are the people casual or serious during the meeting? Why?
- What is active listening? Is active listening important? Why? Do the people in the video demonstrate active listening? How?
- Sima gives feedback on two main points. What are they?
- Overall, is the feedback that Sima gives positive or negative? How do you know?
- Sima points out one area for improvement. What is it?
- Was the feedback received well? How do you know?
- Below are two pieces of feedback. Complete the following:
a) Read Feedback 1 and 2
Feedback 1 (Supervisor to employee)
Thank you for submitting the report at such short notice. The report is very thorough and includes all the important points. It appears that there are a few issues with spelling and grammar. Could we look at the report again before forwarding it? I really appreciate your attention to the customers’ needs, and you have made some excellent points in the report.
Feedback 2 (Instructor to student)
The paragraph is organized well, and you have used the appropriate words to help the information flow smoothly. I also like how your topic sentence gives the main idea about the paragraph. Let us look at these two sentences here. Do you think they support the main idea in your topic sentence? It’s always a good idea to read your sentences carefully to check if they are all connected to the main idea. This way you will have a really good paragraph. Now about your spelling and punctuation: I feel you have improved a great deal in these areas. It is clear that you are working very hard to improve your writing.
b) Complete the chart below. Identify the sentences from Feedback 1 and 2 that discuss what needs to be improved.
| Part of feedback that discusses what needs to be improved | |
|
Feedback 1
|
|
|
Feedback 2
|
c) Discuss your answers. What exactly has to be improved in each case?
d) In each piece of feedback, the person giving the feedback used indirect language. Identify the indirect language used in each piece of feedback and rephrase it in a direct way. Discuss your answers.
