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Performance Evaluations – More Than Filling Out a Form
By Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden
You're four minutes into the second half of the championship basketball game. The clock works, but due to a computer glitch, the digits representing the score are meaningless. The numbers are there, but they bear no resemblance to the actual score. You have an idea the game's close, but you don't know for sure. Worst of all, you don't know if you're winning or losing.
That's how it feels when an employee receives inaccurate performance feedback, or none at all.
As Jan Carlzon, former president of SAS, the Scandinavian Airline, once put it, ``An individual without information cannot take responsibility. An individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility."
To give people a fighting chance of succeeding, offer credible, meaningful, and totally honest information about their performance in a timely and compassionate manner. One of the most uncaring things you can do is not to tell someone they're doing a lousy job, and then six months later, fire them for doing a lousy job. If you do that, you're doing a lousy job.
And if they're doing a great job, take advantage of the added motivation they'll feel when they realize you've recognized it. Tell them they're doing a great job, and exactly what they do that makes it a great job, and what other good things have happened because of it. If leaders spent even one-tenth as much time encouraging as they do correcting, they'd see a tenfold increase in motivation and productivity.
Your employees need regular, frequent, and informal feedback, as well as those infamous meetings to go over their written performance appraisals. I know you hate doing performance appraisals, but it's your job.
Appraisal is a process, not an event. To make that process easier, and more effective, remember that performance appraisals are more than ``filling out the form".
Many organizations that do an exceptional job of giving performance feedback see the process as a cycle. New employees should have a clear evaluation at the end of no more than 90 days. If both you and the employee decide at that point that the employment relationship is worth continuing on a more permanent basis, set up a regular cycle of performance monitoring, coaching, and evaluation.
One of the most grievous errors managers unwittingly commit is failing to give regular performance feedback. It doesn't matter much what time frame you use, but keep it consistent. A 12-month period seems to be standard, but there's nothing magic about that. Six months is probably better. Whatever you settle on, stick to it.
Start the cycle by sitting down with the employee in a controlled environment, free from distractions and interruptions. Collaboratively establish a set of performance objectives that the employee will commit to accomplishing between now and the end of the cycle.
Those objectives should be:
Measurable
Achievable, but challenging
Something the employee can get excited about, not just be resigned to.
Next, outline with the employee precisely how she will accomplish these objectives. Do it in real terms. Vague strategies yield weak results. Ask the employee what resources he needs to hit the mark, then make an equally binding commitment to provide whatever resources you control.
Once you and the employee have agreed on the objectives and the action plans, get it in writing. Not because you don't trust each other, but because you've got enough rolling around in your head undocumented, and you don't need any more.
Now the real work begins.
During the cycle, your job is to monitor. I didn't say stand over the employee, controlling every move, or even most. Provide support, answer questions, and do those things you've committed to.
Then schedule 2 or 3 strategically placed coaching sessions at regular intervals within the cycle. Go ahead, get out your calendar, and a pen. If it's a yearly cycle, at the end of, say, 4 and 8 months, sit down and evaluate where you are. If my objective is to hike from New York to San Francisco in a year, and 4 months into the journey, I've only shuffled through Buffalo, somebody's got some work to do.
Don't limit your coaching to those scheduled sessions. Be flexible and available to hear from your employee at any point along the way, or to offer support and course corrections whenever they're needed.
In giving feedback, follow these guidelines:
Give clear and accurate descriptions of the performance you have observed. Keep emotions out of it, and emphasize objective findings.
Focus on things the employee can change or control.
Balance praise with correction, but be clear in the message. Don't let it become garbled worrying that you'll offend by stating the truth.
A training classroom in a manufacturing plant where I once conducted a leadership seminar was adorned with a banner bearing these familiar words, ``Knowledge is Power". After we covered the issue of performance feedback, the Training Manager changed it to read, ``Knowledge about my performance is the power to improve".
Give your employees the power to improve with clear, accurate, and helpful feedback. Never ask your players to play without a scoreboard.
Please print the following attribution for this article: Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America) or www.ContentedCows.com.