"Most managers and supervisors view with great trepidation the annual performance evaluations they must prepare."

By Dean B. Wisecarver

Most managers and supervisors I meet view with great trepidation the annual performance evaluations they must prepare for workers that they supervise. This trepidation arises from the supervisors’ own past experiences – as both the recipient and the giver of such evaluations – where conflict arose over differences of opinion about the evaluated worker’s actual performance. This is unfortunate since the evaluations are nothing but a summary intended for others to read so they can get a feel for all that has been discussed and covered with the worker throughout the year. Not only should the evaluations be relatively easy to prepare, they should be virtually free of conflict. If you are one of those supervisors or managers that sees performance reviews as a stressful task, perhaps I can give you a new perspective.

Evaluations are for telling third parties how an individual worker is doing, not about telling the worker how he/she is doing.

As a supervisor, if you wait 6 months or a year to tell a worker how he/she is doing, you’ve already blown it. A good supervisor pays attention to what’s getting done all along the way, and provides regular and appropriate feedback.

The feedback should be carefully balanced, recognizing both the things done well and those that could be improved:“Thanks for getting that done.”

• “Thanks for getting that done.”
• “Nice job on that. You did it exactly as it should be done.”
• “Okay, that didn’t come out as we had hoped. Let’s talk about it and let me show you another way to do it. I want you to be successful, so let’s work it through.”

The sooner the feedback is given after the moment of the performance, the better. This regular feedback is essential and it’s one of the most basic responsibilities of any supervisor.

If this kind of regular feedback is offered all through the year, how can anyone believe the formal, annual performance evaluation is when you tell the worker how he/she is doing on the job?

So, why do the evaluation at all? Well, because some others in the organization need to know how the worker is doing to administer salaries, assess the need for training and developing people (especially supervisory and management people), to assess the overall productivity of the workforce, and a variety of other things. These people need a summary of how well each individual worker is performing. This, then, is the primary reason for requiring supervisors to write performance evaluations.

Evaluations should accurately reflect the overall performance, not just unique or standout situations during the evaluation period.

Since many supervisors are not paying attention to what really gets done all through the year by each worker he/she supervises, the annual summary evaluations tend to get filled with, or based on, the relative handful of exceptional situations the supervisor can recall. These tend to be exceptionally good things the worker has done, or, as all too often is the case, the exceptional screw-ups the worker has made. Thus, the summary evaluation tends to reflect only a small and not terribly representative sampling of acts, rather than reflecting the worker’s overall performance. Unfortunately, this also leads to giving too much emphasis on the screw-ups and negatives, and workers quite understandably feel resentment when confronted with this type of evaluation.

Instead, the summary evaluation should be accurate in describing the worker’s overall performance. This requires the supervisor to pay attention and get organized in making little notations about the worker’s performance all through the year. This comes easily to supervisors who try hard to provide meaningful and balanced feedback all the time. A little notebook in the pocket can be a big help. But, remember, jot down all the things you gave as feedback, especially the things done well. Then, refer to that little notebook when you do the summary review and the review will tend to be well rounded and accurate.

Evaluations should contain no surprises, either positive or negative.

This follows from the item above. If the supervisor pays attention to what gets done all through the year and makes little notes about these things all along the way, then only accurate and honest examples and conclusions find their way into the summary evaluation. Surprises – or having the worker find out something from the formal evaluation that the worker didn’t already know – are a source of intense and understandable anger and conflict.

There are lots of ways surprises show up. One common one is when the evaluation focuses on some element of performance that could be better but that, in the grand scheme of things through the year, was not a particular focus of the supervisor’s feedback. Taken out of context, the critical reference seems unfairly (to the worker) negative. This happens when the supervisor is not well prepared, as mentioned in the section directly above. When the supervisor relies just on memory, only the unique happenings tend to be remembered and these get blown out of proportion when they show up as examples in the summary performance review. This, of course, comes as a surprise to worker, who had no idea a particular issue was as big as it now seems in the formal review.

Most surprises tend to be negative. However, positive surprises can be just as devastating to the worker. If the review has many flowery and positive things to say about the worker’s performance and the worker did not expect such praise, it can cause anger and conflict just as intense as negative surprises. The gut level feeling the worker has could be stated as, “Why did you wait until now to tell me this? You’ve had me wondering how I was doing all year and now I find out I’m doing very well. That’s not fair!” And it isn’t fair.

Performance that meets expectations is a cause for celebration, not for ambivalence.

As a management consultant, I sometimes ask managers and supervisors a simple question: “If every worker in your organization did every aspect of his/her job exactly right every time, would you be happy?” Ha. The answers are always overwhelmingly affirmative: “Yes, I’d be absolutely delighted!” It’s fun to hear this response because, in reality, most managers and supervisors do not exhibit that same positive enthusiasm every time a worker simply does his/her job duties well.

Of course, the workers pick up on this and come to expect no response to all the good things they accomplish. Thus, when the formal evaluation comes around and it tells a worker he/she is meeting expectations and doing the job he/she was hired to do, the message is viewed as negative. The worker feels he/she has just been told he/she is only “average.” Who wouldn’t be disappointed or even upset? The goal is to provide constant, regular feedback that recognizes and celebrates all work that meets expectations. Unfortunately, most supervisors tend to provide feedback only for work that exceeds expectations (sometimes) and for work that falls below expectations (frequently). If people in your organization ever say, “No news is good news.” then something is wrong!

This last aspect has impact, too, on many pay-for-performance programs. When a newly hired young person is a quick learner and impresses the supervisor, it’s quite common for the supervisor to want to prepare an evaluation that states this new employee “meets expectations” in his/her performance. Okay, maybe this person meets or even exceeds the supervisor’s expectations for learning key aspects of the job. But what about the worker next to the new person that has been doing the same job very competently for 4 or more years? Surely, that is more valuable. Yet, in reality, this is the one who is “meeting expectations” on the job. The new worker is still learning and gaining the level of experience the more tenured person already has. So, how can we pay them the same? We probably can’t, so we give the veteran a review that states he/she “exceeds expectations,” even though it isn’t really the case, and the entire pay-for-performance plan gets ratcheted upward and distorted.

Thus, it is important to tell new people who are learning fast how proud we are of their progress without accelerating their rating until they truly meet all the requirements of their jobs. Meantime, we should celebrate those who do meet all the job requirements in their performance and not allow these people to feel “average” or unappreciated.

People build on what they believe they are good at and appreciated for, not on what they have been told to improve or fix.

This statement is essential for all supervisors to understand. Just like the old adage “the rich get richer,” those that believe they are good at their jobs tend to get better, perhaps because they get a level of satisfaction from being appreciated that they want to sustain. These people tend to be happier at work and tend to exhibit far less tardiness and absenteeism.

Of course, it’s the consistent, proficient performance of the mundane, routine daily job tasks that define an excellent worker. As stated previously, a good supervisor needs to pay attention to all these mundane successes and not let them pass without comment or in any way take them for granted. Paying attention also means making notes about these little, steady successes so that the summary evaluation reflects and accurate, overall assessment.

Recognizing and taking positive advantage of a worker’s strengths is more important to the health and viability of an organization that focusing on a worker’s weaknesses in an effort to force improvements.

The concept implied in this statement is easy to understand but bringing it about in any organization is difficult. Most companies create position descriptions and load them up with detailed duties and tasks, then try to hire people to do all that is described, and then measure performance according to the original position description. This is logical, but it is also generally impractical. We all know some people are better at certain tasks than others, perhaps because they like certain tasks more or because they have more practice at them than their peers. There could be a variety of reasons. The challenge for management is to recognize the individual talents and contributions each person can make that support the mission of the company and try to find ways to get those talents focused on the work at hand. Instead, what I see time and time again is an attempt by the supervisor to force the worker to do all aspects of his/her job equally well, or nearly so. Thus, there is a natural tendency to call more attention to the worker’s failures than to all the good things he/she does day in and day out.

Imagine this as a case of trying to put a square peg into a round hole. The supervisor is trying to shave off the corners, as it were, until the peg fits. I would suggest it is more productive to make the round hole larger and let the square peg fit without worrying that some areas are not completely filled. This allows for some success without constant picking at the unfilled areas. Ironically, it often happens that eventually the peg rounds out on his/her own and fills more of the hole than before, but only if success is the focus, not the gaps.

We at Synebar Solutions, as partners in the Hurtado & Associates Power insurance program, can help you with this important subject. If you haven’t done so recently, browse through our various training session descriptions in another section of this Web site. The sessions entitled, “Shaping Workplace Attitudes” and “Effecting Quality Performance Among Employees” are two that deal with many of the issues covered in this article. Let us know how we can help.