Ten Evaluation Tips
Don’t rely on the formal evaluations. In most companies, they are a fact of life. That they might be wasteful and unpleasant doesn’t change their inevitability.
Remember, the objective is learning. Don’t let the formal system and annual appraisals turn you away from a larger truth: The purpose of evaluation is to identify the learning that will lead to higher levels of performance. Evaluations should be signposts for future learning, not law briefs about past transgressions.
Forget the “Golden Rule; learn the “Platinum Rule.” Don’t treat people the way you want to be treated; treat them the way they want to be treated. One way they probably want to be treated is as mature adults. If the task involves making judgments about someone’s work, the first step is to ask: “How would you like to be evaluated?” Resolving this question will help avoid adversarial attitudes in the subsequent dialogue.
Be sure of your goals and standards. Goals need to be more than prayers and must be linked to agreed-upon standards of measurement. People often resist standards, believing that what they do cannot be measured. But attempting to evaluate performance without first establishing agreed-upon goals and standards will inhibit rather than enhance performance.
Beware of expectations. It’s a manager’s job to create the conditions for people to do well. One of those conditions is an individual’s expectations. If people expect to do well (and have managers who expect them to) they probably will do well. Managers who expect little generally get little in return.
Learn to coach. Expectations are not enough to guarantee good performance. People who don’t know how to do something need to learn. That means they need coaches and teachers who can help, not overseers more interested in control. Most managers are not taught how to be good teachers. Too many are like older athletes who were once great “players” but failed to make the transition to coaching. There’s a big difference between having been a great sales rep and then coaching others to be good at it. Effective appraisals must begin with assessing the managers’ abilities as coaches.
Be careful with “constructive criticism.” All criticism is negative. Its intent may be constructive, but its inherent nature is negative, which explains why people don’t like it. Telling people they did something wrong may be an accurate appraisal of their work, but it does little to insure that the task will be done properly in the future, so avoid carping and cultivate teaching.
Evaluation must be continuous. Most appraisal systems are once-a-year rituals. Anne Seunier, a Princeton consultant, has observed: “Doing annual appraisals is like dieting only on your birthday and wondering why you’re not losing weight.” Editors need to negotiate goals and standards and monitor progress every day, not once a year.
Disconnect performance appraisals from pay increases. Determining how someone can improve skills and performance must be divorced from compensation decisions. Think about it; asking someone to identify and work on their deficiencies is asking them to be candid and vulnerable, not the kind of posture you want to take when your salary for the next year is at stake. If an appraisal of what someone needs to learn is linked to their compensation, honesty is often thrown overboard in favor of lobbying for a salary increase.Turn the process upside-down: At Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, CO, the evaluation is called APOP: The “Annual Piece Of Paper.” It begins with managers asking three questions:
What gets in the way of you doing your job the way you’d like to be doing it
What kind of learning would you like to do?
What quality improvement process are you working on that you need help with?
That’s an entirely different approach to appraisal. It invites individuals to assess their own work in order to identify obstacles and opportunities and how managers can help deal with them.
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