Take a moment together to review the content and discuss with the team how you work together and want to collaborate. Self-assessments, mandatory for pension funds, can contribute to achieving effective team dynamics and the effective action of the individuals within them. Not only good for team dynamics and job satisfaction, but this also allows you to go much faster on content. Recently, Arjen Verwer supervise the self-assessment at Pension Fund Meubel, where Petra de Bruijn is chairman of the board.

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Using self-assessment as a means of connecting

The intake with Petra and her fellow vice-chairman showed a clear goal. The self-assessment served as a tool for connecting a team in a relatively new line-up. Recently, a number of members' maximum terms of service of 12 years expired, which resulted in the replacement of a number of board members and thus a new team composition. In addition, the introduction of the new pension system makes for an exciting time as a board.

A pension fund board is responsible for balancing the interests of the decisions to be taken. To achieve this, all board members must feel enough trust and safety to express differences of view and to have an open discussion. “Self-assessments contribute to creating understanding for each other, allowing you to work better together and create a balanced culture of discussion,” explains Petra. “That's why I thought it would be a good idea to do a self-assessment now. So that we have a good basis for the coming period, in addition to being simply mandatory. You really need each other to make difficult decisions.”

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From team dynamics to individual learning goals

The approach of the self-assessment was to initially look for opportunities for improvement in team effectiveness, focusing on Pension Fund Meubel's “governance policies”. Are the beliefs still relevant and up to date? Should 'beliefs' be added or removed? “A 'governance policy' at Meubel, for example, is that someone does not sit on rock, but that we decide everything in a collective way, that there is room to discuss a wide range of arguments and that you are transparent about what agenda you are pursuing,” says Petra.

Afterwards, we looked with the board to see whether these revised governance beliefs also live in practice: what is already going well and what could be better? We then made the translation to the individual director. Given who the board wants to be as a team, what are the learning goals of the individual directors? Building on formulating individual learning goals, we went one step further in this, interchangeably. 'feedforward' to give.

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Feedforward

The idea of feedforward is that you get as many tips as possible from as many people as possible in response to a self-chosen learning goal. So it's about mass, you get a lot of different tips, and you'll end up choosing a few that you'll do something with. Actually, feedforward is feedback's cheerful brother. It provides a positive energy where the receiver does not get defensive. “The feedforward helped us enormously to end the day on a good note. It resulted in a nice and positive end to the day,” says Petra. In addition to positivity, feedforward ensures that every driver walks out the door with something concrete to practice with in the near future.

When we asked Petra how her own learning goal is doing, she answered with a laugh: “I have decided to let discussions run a little more. Especially because I noticed that I'm sometimes too tight on top of it and I like it more smoothly. So that's what I'm trying to do and it works. This is also because the self-assessment gives me the confidence to work on it, because everyone is working on learning goals in the same way. During sessions, the learning objectives pop up regularly, because people openly make a certain choice through a learning goal that they have agreed with themselves. In addition, there is another open conversation about that learning goal.”

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Independent guidance during self-assessments

Petra made the choice to ask an external party to supervise the self-assessment.” In general, independence is important. The added value of an external party is that this person has no interests, can look at the evaluation objectively and is not concerned with their past. This gives you a business neutral meeting,” Petra explains.

At the same time, it is very important that the person doing the evaluation has great support and favor among directors. Otherwise, you can still bring up the topics like that, but then you won't let your mouth shut. “Someone has to connect with your world of experience,” says Petra. Last year, Summiteers assisted Meubel in improving cooperation between the accountability body and the board. Thanks to the pleasant cooperation, Arjen Verwer was subsequently also allowed to supervise the self-assessment. “The trust in Arjen was already placed in this first assignment. That was a good basis for also starting Meubel's self-assessment,” says Petra.

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Want to know more about self-assessments?

In addition to self-assessments with pension funds, self-assessments in each team are relevant in order to reflect on team dynamics and the individual's share in them. If you are curious or simply want to exchange views about self-assessments, please contact Arjen.

Of course, you can also get in touch with us via LinkedIn and our website.