There is something oddly satisfying about watching a movie you’ve already seen. You already know how the story twists and turns, but you notice details you missed before. You hear the characters’ dialog with new understanding. You notice visual details that make the images more meaningful. As you watch a favorite movie over and over again, your attention falls on smaller and smaller details. The more of the film you experience, the more you enjoy it, and the more you appreciate the people that created it .
Performance evaluations should feel very similar. Talking about past work should feel like watching a movie you’ve seen before. Neither the evaluator nor the employee receiving feedback should be surprised by the content of the conversation. Both should understand the theme and the arc of the story long before they sit down together. And both should come away from the conversation with a better mutual understanding of successes, failures, motivations, and goals. Evaluator and employee alike should leave the table looking forward to a sequel with clear ideas of how the next chapter will go.
If you are a leader in a structured organization, you own the review process for the people you evaluate. Its success or failure and its value to both employees and the organization are dependent on your careful, consistent and honest approach to it throughout the year.
Evaluating performance is a challenge
Formal evaluation systems serve several important functions in a structured organization. Organizations design evaluation systems to communicate expected behaviors to employees. They describe the hypothetical model performer and compare employees to it. Formal evaluations are often a key data source in the leader selection process. Organizations that do not evaluate their people honestly and effectively will not select the best people to serve as future leaders.
The stakes are higher for the employees being evaluated. Because promotions or bonuses hang in the balance, evaluations are financially important. The psychological ramifications are even greater. People want to feel that their work is valued and they want to feel that they are successful. Employees receiving less than stellar performance feedback may feel it as a blow to their self identity or self worth. Haphazardly delivered negative feedback can leave a person in emotional distress. Poorly executed formal evaluations can hurt performance, the opposite of their intended outcome.
There is a huge gap between the outcomes of evaluation done well and done poorly. The difference is determined by the attention, courage and diplomacy leaders apply to the process.
The leaders quest to deliver great feedback
Great leaders pay attention to employee performance all the time. Most supervisors pay attention to their employee’s task completion and deadlines. But most supervisors also get stuck in the tyranny of the present, the rut of getting done today what needs to be done today. They lose sight of the totality of a person’s performance. Often, when it is time to write a formal evaluation, leaders find themselves struggling to remember what an employee did all year. It’s easy to remember the projects they completed, but more difficult to remember the other ways an employee contributed to the organization’s success. Did they help build a strong workplace climate? Did they spend time mentoring others? Great leaders know the content of the performance evaluation inside and out, and closely observe every employee’s work in each area.
Leaders that pay attention to their people will notice when they do things that are particularly good, or show a particular need to improve. Better attention will lead to more frequent performance recognition moments. In those moments, great leaders have the courage to speak up and share those observations with the employee. It’s usually pretty easy to do that when the feedback is positive. Everyone likes to give and receive good news. It is far more difficult to give feedback about needed improvement.
Weaker supervisors are reluctant to have those difficult conversations. They may withhold their feedback until the performance evaluation is due, when they are forced to say something. The inevitable surprise for the employee is the worst possible outcome.
Leaders need to overcome their reluctance to have an uncomfortable discussion and provide negative feedback immediately. They should also provide positive feedback right away. Bad news gets worse and good news loses it luster as time passes. The best results come when both are delivered promptly.
Skillful delivery of feedback is the last part of effective performance evaluation. Feedback is only useful if the recipient can hear it. Leaders need to think carefully about how to provide feedback to someone in the time, place, and manner that it will be best heard. Those conditions will be different for every person, so leaders need to know their people and think about each individually. One employee may prefer to hear negative feedback face to face during a lengthy conversation, while another may prefer a short chat. Some employees may want something in writing they can refer to later, while others may be horrified if the feedback is written down at all. The key is that the delivery method should reflect the recipient’s preferences, not the leader’s.
Will you be the hero or the villain?
If a leader has done their job well throughout the year, a performance evaluation conversation can be a productive and even enjoyable chat for both participants. The evaluator can recap their previous conversations, perhaps talking about the changes or improvements the employee made throughout the period. That conversation will be familiar, and therefore comfortable, for the employee. Perhaps there are still things the employee needs to work on, but if the leader communicates that in a way the employee can hear most easily, the conversation can start from a mutual understanding of the problem and finish with a shared vision of the future.
If the leader has been lazy, the employee will be surprised by sudden negative feedback. Their natural reaction will be shock or denial. They will have negative emotions. There will be an immediate hit to the employee’s trust of the leader and of the organization. In that unhappy state, the employee will not be ready to have a meaningful conversation about changing things going ahead. They will first need to make sense of the surprise and disagreement about what happened in the past before they look to the future.
In this case, the evaluation system has done more harm than good. And the leader will have been at fault.
If you lead people in a structured organization with formal performance evaluations, you should use the concept of a movie the employee has seen before to guide your preparation for formal evaluations. Spend time all year collaborating with each person to co-write the story you’ll tell in that meeting. You’ll provide a sense of comfort and enable a focus on the future that will help your employees perform their best and feel their best.