Evaluating Without Demoralizing
Conducting effective performance evaluations is like painting a room. If you do the “prep” work diligently—all the sanding, spackling, taping, and priming—the actual painting is easy.
Performance evaluations, performance management, employee evaluations, employee appraisals—they have different names in different organizations—can be one of the most stressful aspects of management. They can easily become a point of contention, a highly emotional “he said / she said” drama. Or they can be merely the final step in a logical, constructive, satisfying process.
There’s some sentiment in management circles these days that traditional annual employee performance evaluations are useless—unsatisfactory and too often demoralizing, at best a blunt instrument for a delicate job. I’d argue that employee evaluations are one of the most integral but misapplied elements of management. After many years of using and receiving them, I firmly believe the problem is management itself—not the evaluation tool, but the way that tool is used.
Why is it in any way objectionable for managers to provide comprehensive assessments of how employees have performed over the course of a year? Isn’t providing thorough, thoughtful feedback a key function of management?
Unfortunately, all too often managers aren’t doing their jobs diligently, and in such instances problems with a formal evaluation just reflect broader problems of management. What kinds of criticisms of evaluations are most often heard? Here are two common ones: (1) Evaluations are too negative and critical—a litany of what you’re doing wrong—they serve mainly to demoralize. (2) Evaluations aren’t tough enough—managers duck or gloss over the needed, hard conversations.
Where do Type A and Type B managers often fit into this discussion? Not surprisingly, some hard-driving Type A’s will naturally fall toward the critical end of the spectrum, providing employees a “litany of what you’re doing wrong”—while more conciliatory Type B’s will fall into the camp that would rather avoid nettlesome, confrontational conversations and tend to focus on a pleasanter review of “what you’re doing right.” Safe to say, from a manager’s standpoint, there’s little to be gained by being overly aggressive in evaluations, or by preserving cordial relations with an employee at the cost of candor.
As with so much in management, the most effective path usually lies somewhere in the middle, when executed honestly and thoughtfully. Evaluations are an inherently emotion-laden situation: For employees they’re a report card on “how well you did your job.” With this perspective in mind, let’s look at ways for managers to make employee evaluations as constructive as possible:
Be candid about problems and generous when praise is due. This is pretty simple guidance: candor when needed and generosity when deserved. “Evaluating without demoralizing” doesn’t mean the conversation should always be motivating and positive. Far from it. As we’ve discussed earlier, management without firm controls isn’t management at all. Make no mistake—at the end of the day this is your evaluation of your employee. An effective appraisal should be an evenhanded accounting of results against objectives. It’s also an excellent opportunity for Type B managers who are naturally inclined to be forthcoming with praise to provide it when hard-won results surpass expectations. For an employee who’s given an outstanding yearlong effort, there’s no point at all being emotionally stingy. Let the person know what a fine job he or she did and how much it is valued. Most importantly, an employee should understand where the comments are coming from. They should be fact-based and make good logical sense.
Maintain frequent communication containing meaningful feedback. To return to our painting analogy, this is the sanding and spackling phase. The best way to avoid surprising employees during an evaluation (which usually means the evaluation resembles a train wreck) is to communicate frequently and honestly throughout the year—a facet of management that usually comes easily for Type B’s. How you do this of course is up to you. Personally, I found regular status meetings convenient and functional. In addition to providing the opportunity to discuss current projects, they were a place for immediate feedback, both good and bad, and no time for sidestepping problems. My preference was to hold weekly half-hour meetings for relatively new employees (or for veteran employees if there were issues to be resolved), and meet once every two weeks with employees who knew the job and were performing well. But there’s no right or wrong as to frequency—whatever suits your business needs. And of course there’s no point wasting valuable time in meetings. If everything is perfectly fine and there’s nothing to discuss, just end the meeting after two minutes and get back to work.
Engage in a dialogue, not a monologue. The year-end appraisal is an excellent time for meaningful dialogue. This can be a time for Type B open communicators to shine. Significantly, it’s also a chance for an employee to give his or her own perspective on many things: the job, the company, you as a manager, strengths and weaknesses and overall performance, ways to improve operations, and so on. It’s a chance to step back and review the year from a high level: what worked and what didn’t, and how things can work better in the future. Without exception, the best managers I’ve known were good listeners, genuinely interested in what their employees had to say. The very act of being thoughtfully listened to is a positive experience—an easy way to turn an event that’s often perceived as one-sided criticism into a respectful exchange of ideas.
Make time for a (future) development conversation. A good way to wrap up the evaluation process on a constructive note is to finish by setting up a separate development conversation. This upcoming meeting will be a chance to discuss the employee’s short- and long-term career goals, skills to acquire, opportunities of interest, mentoring possibilities, and so forth. It shows your sincere interest in the employee’s future (which in itself, if perceived as genuine, goes a long way toward building loyalty). It’s a tangible way to give the evaluation a positive, forward-looking orientation.
Of course the evaluation itself is only the tip of the managerial iceberg. The foundation, the infrastructure, on which an evaluation is based, should be built many months earlier. For a Type B manager who doesn’t, shall we say, relish disputes and arguments, well-conceived employee job objectives are an invaluable asset, a manager’s best friend, because if constructed properly, they provide a road map that can guide you and your team and will help ensure that employees are focusing their efforts where they should be. They provide a tangible scorecard at year end to see how actual achievements measure up, quite literally, against what was intended.
This is what Ken Blanchard refers to in his classic bestseller The One Minute Manager as “no surprises” management:
“So is One Minute Goal Setting just understanding what your responsibilities are?” the young man asked.
“No. Once we know what our job is, the manager always makes sure we know what good performance is. In other words, performance standards are clear.”1
As they always should be. However, in the real world most managers spend a fraction of the time they should developing their employees’ annual objectives. When one considers the uses to which these objectives will ultimately be put—the yearlong yardstick against which you measure your employees’ overall performance, with likely compensation and bonus implications—it’s easy to see their importance from a management standpoint. Yet busy managers often view annual objective setting as a bureaucratic exercise, a nuisance, a distraction—with other more pressing daily operational issues at hand.
Solid objectives help take the drama and uncertainty out of year-end performance reviews. (While some companies are moving away from traditional annual reviews, whatever the exact performance-rating framework they use, these organizations will in all likelihood still need some sort of evaluating, sifting, and sorting process.) Let’s consider some typical hypothetical scenarios. Type A managers may find themselves embroiled at year end in a heated, contentious dialogue with an employee who feels he or she has performed considerably better than the manager does (a not uncommon situation). Or, with that same hypothetical employee, Type B managers may find themselves wanting to avoid that same emotional, angry discussion. In either instance, clearly measurable employee objectives can make such difficult conversations immeasurably easier. It’s not you as a manager being hard or capricious or nasty or unreasonable. It’s simply: Here are the objective standards—how did your performance compare? It’s all very clear, recorded in black and white. It removes subjectivity and guesswork.
That’s why they’re called “objectives”—not “subjectives.”
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Let’s consider five key components of well-designed employee objectives. They should be:
Clear. First and foremost, job objectives need to be clear. If objectives aren’t clearly defined at the outset, it sets the stage for later problems. Absent appropriate clarity, when it eventually comes time to evaluate performance “he said / she said” situations easily develop.
Measurable. Job objectives should always be as specific and measurable as possible. Specificity helps remove subjectivity from the process. For example: Respond to all client phone calls within fifteen minutes. Make ninety widgets a day. Tame three wolverines each month. Regardless of the nature of the business, ensure that the volume of expected activity and the time of completion are readily measurable and clear.
Agreed upon. Objectives are most successful when employees are closely involved in the objective-setting process. A collaborative process, rather than a unilaterally imposed one, tends to promote employee engagement. This is not to say that employees get to decide how much work they do—managers are always the final arbiters of the goals that are established. But being closer to the actual work, employees may have more accurate assessments of how realistic certain goals are, and may have insights into more nuanced measures. There’s also very practical value in having an employee take an active role in the goal-setting process. As a manager, you want your employees to have this added level of responsibility for their performance—skin in the game.
Meaningful to the organization. It’s important that individual goals are not developed in isolation, but are closely aligned with broader organizational objectives. The most thoughtful job objectives frequently take time to develop, requiring back-and-forth dialogue among manager, employee, and senior management to ensure that effort is being expended in the right organizational direction. (There’s no point spending time taming wolverines when what management really needs is antelopes!)
Ambitious yet attainable. As we saw with Dave’s unfortunate example back in Chapter 4 on the importance of standards, it’s critical that the bar be set at the right height. Set it too high and frustration and burnout result. Set it too low and you’re not doing your job as a manager to optimize employee productivity. Ideally you want objectives that talented individuals can reach with strong, sustained effort.
For the Type B manager who wants to help ensure a successful and drama-free evaluation season, thoughtful behind-the-scenes preparation is key. To help with these preparations during the year, three simple questions you can ask yourself will let you gauge whether or not you’re on track:
It’s a simple equation: If the answer to any of these three questions is a resounding no, that’s a red flag and it’s time to try quickly to get your managerial house in order—communicating with your employees and reviewing major objectives, results, and feedback . . . to at least lay the groundwork before more formal evaluation processes actually take place. But if all these steps have been diligently managed, annual evaluations should be easy and stress-free, more afterthought than drama.
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Even in evaluations, authority takes many forms. You don’t need Type A intensity and a booming voice when you have logic and data on your side.
Marcia, a first-year manager, was not looking forward to this employee evaluation session. Henry, one of her direct reports, was loud and outspoken, but he was also regarded as knowing the direct marketing business well and had long been rated a top performer. (Marcia felt that it probably didn’t hurt that Henry had enjoyed a longtime close working relationship with her predecessor, Ed, the veteran manager who had retired.)
Now Marcia was planning to move Henry down a notch, from “Exceeds Expectations” to “Meets Expectations,” and she anticipated Henry would put up a fuss. Which he did—immediately in the meeting. “How can you say I ‘meet expectations’?” he protested. “I know more about this direct marketing operation than everyone else here combined!”
Marcia was by nature a relaxed and quiet Type B sort of person. She was logical and well prepared, two key reasons she’d been promoted into management. “No one’s questioning your experience,” she said deliberately. “You know I value it and rely on it. But look at your first and most important objective—the number of leads generated for our sales force. We both agreed on a figure of twenty thousand at the beginning of the year—an 8 percent increase over last year, ambitious but not out of line with prior increases. You ended the year at 19,600 . . . an increase over last year but still 2 percent below the target we agreed on in January. You know I have high regard for your knowledge of this business and the broader industry environment. But these lead-generating numbers that are core to your operation . . . well, they are what they are.”
Marcia took a deep breath and waited for an angry onslaught while Henry went back over his own data. To her surprise, when he looked up he nodded and spoke more calmly. “Well, I suppose I understand,” he said surprisingly quietly. “Guess it’s kind of hard to argue nineteen six exceeds twenty.”
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If there’s one key takeaway from this chapter, it’s that most managers spend a fraction of the time they should optimizing employee objectives. When considering the long tail annual objectives have—tangible practical value over the course of an entire year—I always felt that a robust dialogue—maybe three or four drafts back and forth, and also including my own management at some point in the process to be sure they “bought in” to the direction we were taking—was always well worth the time. I never once regretted it. I saw it not as a waste of time but as an investment of time—an investment in clarity and employee performance.
Management Insight
When it comes to employee evaluations, we have a tendency to blame the message more than the messenger. Well-planned evaluations, based on fair logical objectives, are actually an excellent opportunity to provide holistic messages that are candid, thorough, and motivating. This ability is one Type B managers excel at, and one others will find it valuable to cultivate.