Episode #448: Performance Appraisals

How did it go in the last episode working on Performance Alignment? This week we look at one of the most difficult areas of leadership – assessing others’ work performance. This whole process is important because it leads to promotions, bonuses, bigger responsibilities and also to people being deleted from the enterprise. No wonder each side of the table finds this process stressful.

Employees become nervous in this situation and bosses can also feel very uncomfortable. There is nothing worse than having to let people go who have been in your team, unless they are completely hopeless or evil. That is rarely the case. We are usually having to fire people who are average or slightly below average, who the big bosses have nominated for the cut.

I used to hate those department head meetings, where the whole population of the organisation is plotted on a bell curve of performance. By definition, a group of people will be in the bottom 10% and that will include your own team members at different times. You try to defend them, but sometimes the edict is “x” number of people have to be fired and you are the one who has to tell them. There is nothing more disheartening than to be the executioner, following an organisational process you feel is seriously flawed.

So how can we go about doing performance appraisals, where we are not the merchant of doom and deletion, but working with the survivors? We can use RAVE as a formula.

R – Review the Performance Results Description

There will always be a standard against which the person’s abilities and results can be judged. We are looking at their “should be”, what they are supposed to be achieving. This is the performance achievement we want to see. Often these are numbers, so the ideal outcomes are clear. With other jobs however there is more of a qualitative component which thrusts us into the foggy world of subjective judgements.

A – Analyse The Monthly Projects Lists

We are looking for the “As Is” performance currently being achieved. How is the individual doing across their key elements of the business. Where are they doing well and where are they falling short relative to the “Should Be” goals? What are their issues around non-performance? If we are not seeing the levels required, then we have to make some decisions. Is the person in the right job? This is a major decision point. It may be they are not and we can try and create a better fit for them. Perhaps we have realised they cannot make it and have to leave the firm. They are not necessarily a bad person, but their capacity is below what the organisation needs to succeed and they have to be replaced with someone who is more capable.

If we decide we should continue with them, we are interested in what changes need to be made to make the goals a reality. How can we help them to be successful? Where are their opportunities for improvement? In which areas will their improved performance help move the business closer toward achieving the outcomes required? This requires good clarity around what needs to be delivered and preferably, outcomes which can be measured. These could be results of activities, which lead to outcome results.

V-Vision

What does future success look like for the individual? We need to be very frank and clear about any gaps they need to close. Where does time, energy and resources need to be committed to help them grow. What will their individual growth look like? What assistance do they need to get to the next level? What do they need to be working on in order to move up inside the company? Sometimes bosses fear helping their staff move up inside the company because they worry their own job will be lost and their subordinate will replace them. It is possible, but if you are doing a great job becoming a leader producing machine, the organisation is more likely to give you more responsibility. All organisations are looking for leaders and if you can create them, that will be seen as an indication that you need to be promoted. Also, remember, you cannot move up if there is no one to take over the job from you, so we all need to educate our successors so that we can move up.

E-Encourage The Person

So often the performance assessment meeting demotivates the staff member. The leader’s communication style and approach are critical to ensure the person becomes even more engaged around achieving their next year’s targets. The review itself is a look backward to what happened. The process also has to set up the future as well and inspire the individual to do their best. This is probably one of the biggest breakdowns between the level the boss needs to be operating at and the actual communication job they are doing. “Let’s work much harder on this part of the process” is extremely good advice for all of us.

We only do these appraisals a few times a year, so it is hard to become skilled, so we need to prepare extremely well to make up for the lack of repetition needed to make us better at it. RAVE gives us a simple formula to use when doing work appraisals and against which to prepare ourselves.