This is another one of my favorite leadership and management topics. It is an imperative in a highly competitive and fast growing market. This especially relates to performance reviews, whether they be informal hallway conversations, informal reviews, or formal written reviews. I expect some people who have worked with me before that read this will emit a small groaning noise as they read this part (You know who you are!!) This is a lesson I learned early in my engineering days and I expanded it as I applied it to my management career.
As a young engineer I was fortunate that I was give as much responsibility as I could handle. After I had been there a while and accomplished some solid results, it was time for a formal performance review. I came prepared with a self-evaluation (unbiased, of course!) and was shocked when I received my review from my manager and found out he didn’t share my frequent “Exceeds Expectations” and “Outstanding” grades on the various elements. Fortunately I was smart enough not to share my self-evaluation with him, but I did ask what I had to do to get higher ratings than “meets expectations”. He explained that in the engineering group, the expectations were set at a high STANDARD – certain things were expected of everyone in these positions. He further explained that the group hired only the best, and that is what gave the group a competitive advantage. He then gave examples of things that would be considered above expectations. This was an eye-opening experience from me that I took to heart.
Fast forward now to my first General Management/President job. We were growing to be the worldwide market leader in microsampling devices and needed very strong talent to keep our momentum and leadership position and so we hired the very best people we could. During the performance review process, I liked to go over the written reviews before they were given. Experience told me that no matter how much training we gave managers, most did not spend enough time and energy preparing for each performance review. That meant the written reviews would be virtually worthless other than a “feel good” session. From my perspective, if you are not going to put the time into a performance review, it is just not fair to the employee you are reviewing – then surprises happen, which are not good. If you are not committed to spending the time, then just don’t do the review.
Invariably most managers will have a number of people in their group who “try hard” or are “good people”. My comment to that manager is that EVERYBODY in the organization should meet that criteria – so isn’t that EXPECTED? I found it very frustrating to find people marked as “exceeds expectations” or “outstanding” or “needs improvement” on performance elements without any written explanation or examples listed as the the reasons for the rating.
How does a person who needs improvement understand what they need to improve upon if you don’t give very specific examples of things where they came up short? How do you identify performance or behavior that you want replicated and people to be rewarded for their effort? A good manager would have already discussed these items and the review would be nothing more than confirmation of something that he or she already knows. This is where a manager will often say “but he/she tries really hard!” My response is “Really? So you don’t expect a person in that position to have these qualities?”
I always asked that managers write down just a few specific examples of that person’s performance that exceeded expectations for that position. If the manager could not rattle a couple of examples off the top of his or her head, I would tell them to spend some more time on the review. If the wanted to keep the rating, they had to justify it with examples that defended the rating. It really isn’t that hard to do when someone really is stepping above and beyond expectations. My take on it is that if a manager could not give specific examples, then either the person being reviewed doesn’t deserve the higher rating, or the manager himself may have a performance issue.
I suspect that with today’s younger generation that I will have to adjust my approach a bit, but I think a core aspect of keeping expectations high is still critical for high performance organizations.